[sugarglider]

It really was very strange, and as I look back on it, I'm trying to just not let it bother me or take it too personally.

The bullying mentality just seemed to be part of the culture of the company. Almost all of the workers were there on a short-term contract basis, so maybe the insecurity of this had something to do with it. The contracts were on a project by project basis, and each project went for a week at most, so luckily it was very easy to just leave when I'd had enough.

What was really odd about it was that the company had a stated ethos that it worked under a "flat hierarchy" i.e. there were no bosses, everybody was equally important, and having your say was encouraged and expected. I went to a training day, and was shown a demonstration of how this very open, liberal, warm-and-cuddly kind of system was supposed to work. But when I actually started working there, I found that pretty well the complete opposite was true.

It was kind of like the Soviet Union - while everyone was all cozy with the idea that all the workers were being treated equally and were free from being bossed around, a really ugly, oppressive, abusive power structure just kind of naturally moved into the vacuum and set itself up.