"Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown."

- Henry IV, William Shakespeare

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Understand two things.

One, what you’re dealing with.

Two, Human Resources doesn’t give two shits about you. HR exists to protect the company’s interests and the employees who’ve been there the longest. Have a plan ready because the chances of a workplace bully being penalized are slim to none.

Context. The team leader gets her ego bruised and feels stupid at the start of your second week there. Upon chastising you impatiently for doing something she hadn’t instructed you — a sudden shift from her sweet and polite demeanor — you explain to her that the additional instruction had come from her underling and “I’m just doing what she told me to do.” Because the team leader was on leave on Friday.

Her voice is suddenly shaky. She has trouble looking you in the eye for the remainder of the day.

***

Everything changes.

Direct communication suddenly stops. Passive-aggressive behavior commences. Avoiding eye contact when she’s present. Makes a point of talking casually and cheerfully with the team members you sit between. Training is turbulent and inconsistent.

When she does force herself to come over, around 3 p.m. a few days later, she hits your keyboard aggressively while typing. Like a child trying to control a tantrum. She adopts an impatient, condescending tone when you ask questions. Like you’re a 5-year-old.

She observes silently and sullenly as you start to time code a new practice file.

“I notice that you always press the arrow up key. Why do you do that?”

“I think the text appeared too late. I’m trying to sync it with the scene,” you respond.

That’s what another team member had taught you the previous week, but you don’t say that part. You don’t want to sound like you’re blaming others for instructions given.

“You don’t use the arrow up key. Use the left or right key,” the team leader says.

You say okay, and do as she says.

You’re confused about a scene.

When you asked the team leader about it earlier, she responded as though she was exhausted by a stupid person, sounding as if she was about to cry, even though it was your first time asking the question, and dealing with such a scene. You ask the person to your left about it. She says she’s not sure, so you ask the team leader’s underling, who comes over. She gives a clear explanation.

You say the team leader had explained it differently. The two of them are quiet. You realize in that moment that you can’t place blame on their leader. You humbly suggest instead that you didn’t understand.

They nod.

Yes, this is the mentality of the herd.

***

You type your daily report of the day to be emailed to the team leader. Under the comments section, you say you had been experiencing some confusion with time coding but are getting the hang of it by now. You don’t mention how the unstable training has forced you to have to figure certain things out on your own through trial and error. You might sound like you’re pointing fingers, or whining.

Team members aren’t keen on acknowledging that the problem might be on their end.

By the middle of the second week, the team members who are not a part of her clique have observed on breaks, “How come they’re not really training you?”

They inform you that the training and communication had been consistent and fast-moving with previous new hires.

“I’ve defended myself before, too,” one says. “But she didn’t get mad.”

It’s because we are not all the same, Ami.

***

You respond to an email she sends.

She had asked you to complete the numerous HR training courses on company policy and work conduct. New hires are required to complete them within two weeks. She’s busy preparing for the team meeting.

You tell her half of the HR courses were completed and submitted to HR last week and the other half a few hours ago. Tell her you will just go over some client guidelines again.

At the end of your response, suggest that the team meeting that will take place later is an opportunity to share feedback. Tell her you’re looking forward to hearing about how you’re doing.

You’re extending to her a chance to openly say to your face that she has a problem with you, in front of the entire team, or if you have done something wrong.

She doesn’t reply. Continues to ignore you and avoids the topic during the meeting.

The only time she looks at you is when you ask a question or answer one that was posed to the whole team.

She doesn’t want the others to know that she has a problem with you. She doesn’t want to appear unfavorable in in front of them. Perhaps she’s afraid of what you might say in response.

She is baiting you.

Offer an olive branch at the end of the work day.

Placate her by asking directly if it’s alright if you take off now. She was sitting back in her chair, chatting with one of her clique members. Looks startled when you appear before her. She calmly tips her head forward. With the air of a queen nodding solemnly to a subject. One who asks for permission to take leave of their palace duties for the day.

When the elevator arrives, there is a group of Chinese employees from a higher floor inside, conversing heatedly.

You step inside. Listen to them gripe about their terrible boss in Mandarin and English until you reach the lobby.

You have a cigarette in the parking lot.

Everything will be okay. Stay positive.

***

The cycle starts all over again the next day. It’s being made apparent that you need to be continually punished and made to grovel at her feet.

She messages you in the team chat that she will be in a little later and will go over your completed file then. It’s a message you’re getting regularly. You glance over at her underling from time to time, but she says nothing to you lately. She has no instructions to relay again.

You wonder if the team leader might have decided after that day you defended yourself that you weren’t right for her team.

Was she testing how you would react to her abrupt insolence?

Had that been her plan all along?

To hire you simply so she could play a game and try to tear you down? She hadn’t expected you to thwart her insolence on your fifth day.

You had unknowingly breached some sort of delicate belief system within her. You were plain-spoken. She hadn’t asked her underling for an update, nor was she updated.

She realizes now that you won’t stroke her ego or kiss her ass or allow her to disrespect you. That’s what she wants.

Bit odd, you think.

During the job interview, someone asked how you respond to criticism. You replied that people have to be able to take criticism. It’s a way to improve. And as most people from writing-intensive backgrounds will acknowledge, critiquing each other's work, sometimes brutally, is standard. You have to be able to take it.

The same person also asked if you were an introvert or extrovert.

You almost quoted Carl Jung — “There is no such thing as a pure extrovert or a pure introvert. Such a person would be in a lunatic asylum.”

But you didn’t want to sound pedantic, or like an asshole. You understand the setting you’re in. Not everyone can appreciate such type of discussion.

You tell the three of them sitting across the table from you that you lean towards introversion, and that you like solitary work, but if the situation calls for it, you will speak out and say something.

The team leader had asked, in the same interview, how you felt about working under younger people. Because she once had an older man quit the team.

“He couldn’t take instruction from younger people,” she said, gazing pointedly at you.

You replied that you were used to it back in college, especially in a country like America. No one cares about age there. “As long as everyone is respectful, there won’t be a problem,” you said.

You had been on both sides. They knew you had gone back to school a little later to complete your degree. But hadn’t asked what it was like for you to teach older students — many of whom had been in their 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s, from different backgrounds and cultures. This fact was written on your resume, which all three of them had in front of them.

You wonder if it’s a contributing factor to the high number of school dropouts in Malaysia — teachers who speak like Hattan.

That and the problem of teacher absenteeism.

You knew not to speak down disparagingly to your older, or even younger students. Because that’s how you get people to stop coming to class. Or feel demoralized to learn. You knew the importance of clear communication.

It also sets a bad example, both in terms of being dignified and respecting the dignity of others.

You hadn’t offered them this information but shrugged it off at the time. They weren’t interested to know if you had had any problems with older students you had taught. You hadn’t.

Things are self-evident now.

Many of these inadequate Malays are eager to seem worldly but are too far up their own asses to see how their hubris handicaps them, and in turn, affects others, standards, and society. Typical Malays, or even Malaysians, have a bad rap. Evolved Malays you’ve met in the US had warned you.

They are unwilling to learn and exercise self-awareness because that would suggest they are mediocre and not in charge.

Ironically, that hubris and unwillingness to evolve, is what reveals their callowness and insecurity — that which they desperately try to hide.

It’s the comfort of lecturing or advising others about the importance of taking criticism, or instruction, of cultural differences, of professionalism, but being unable to accept it when you point out how their actions seem to consistently contradict their words.

It’s that curious cultural characteristic in Malaysia, where people enjoy the sound of their own voices more than they can comprehend what the words they use mean.

Words are stripped of meaning when self-absorbed asshats use them, whether erroneously or intentionally.

It is a clear indication of what they understand, or don’t, about themselves and others in the world.

The few Evolved Malays in the office from other teams — the older, genuine ones who mostly speak in Bahasa Melayu — reach out to try to understand you as a person and proudly share their experiences that vastly differ from yours.

Upon learning about them, you react with a sincere, “That’s even more impressive. The US…Who cares?”

They have empathy, are secure in themselves and know that life isn’t about competing all the time, especially with your own people.

They don’t need to have the most basic things explained to them. They know how to communicate effectively.

They’re not the type of Malays who, after the customer hands them something over the counter and waits for an indication of the next steps, are silent and unforthcoming for a painful length of time that you have to finally help them and ask because it’s clear that they have no idea how to keep things running smoothly, “Is there anything else or are we done here?”

They miserably, and as though confused as to why you’re still there or are not a mind reader, say yes, dah.

These people are disruptors of flow.

Preventers of progress.

Withholders of information.

The Evolved Malays know how to be respectful, and understand that different strengths should be valued and serve as an asset to a group. It is how the group gets ahead. That is more beneficial than seeing different Malays as a threat that needs to be forced out of the group as insidiously as possible, so the inadequate Malay alone is prioritized and isn’t exposed for what she really is.

The group becomes fragmented, weak, and eventually, ruined.

The widespread, resistant mentality runs counter to Asian and Muslim values. But the Malays have different interpretations, perhaps incomprehension, of those values despite being Asian and Muslim.

You are reminded of high school, which is what this team you joined feels a lot like. The Sungai Penchala kids were more open-minded, down-to-earth, and had a strong sense of self. The TTDI kids, not so much.

You don’t know the details of what happened with the older man who resigned.

But as you observe the team leader’s behavior and overall character more and more, you think to yourself, I think it’s safe to say the problem is you, kot.

***

Stay calm. You need to be clear-headed and paying attention.

Psychological games will have an effect on you. Presumably, you’re not a machine. Or a Stoic.

***

She makes a point of standing directly in front of you for an extended period of time. Expects you to greet her when she shows up late.

Ignore her. You’re working. She waits. Just stands there.

Leave half an hour early that Friday. There is poison in the air. It swooshes in all directions when she walks around the office, chatting and laughing, and it gets into your lungs.

You need a cigarette anyway.

Tell the others that it’s because you don’t want to be caught in traffic. You know how untrustworthy a few of them are.

You’ve noticed that they’re acting strange.

***

You make note of contradictions or strange things she says or does that are red flags. The ones you had brushed off on your first day.

Because you don’t spend your time playing a game of “gotcha!” with everyone you meet. Only the ones who make it known that they are playing a game with you.

“They get defensive. It’s natural for people to be defensive,” she says, smiling sympathetically.

You had asked how freelancers respond to their work being criticized. It was your first day. The two of you are sitting at your desk.

She gives an example of how to translate foreign content so the original meaning isn’t lost. Proudly describes how she had come up with the idea of using a well-known Malay rhyme, translated into English, that had no similarities to the foreign content.

She half-assed it? That seems unprofessional, you think to yourself but react with a nod and an impressed, “Oh.”

She is looking at you expectantly and you want to be polite.

Before that, you had asked her if it was alright if you took a leave of absence on Monday. You showed her an X-ray of your cat, and that you had received a call from the vet earlier. Maggie’s condition is serious and you need to take her for a scan at a different clinic.

Adopting a concerned demeanor, the team leader brings a hand to her chest, and gazing earnestly into your eyes, tenderly says, “I can understand when it comes to cats.”

A feeling you have felt many times in your life shoots through you. You shrug it off. There is nothing wrong with wanting to establish intimacy or find common ground.

It’s the abruptness of wanting to gain someone’s trust and approval — a common trait of master manipulators — that haunts the back of your mind.

At the welcome lunch, she asks very suddenly, “So…do you keep in touch with friends from high school?”

What, you think to yourself.

Days after her ego is bruised, someone you knew back in high school gets in touch with you. You hadn’t spoken to them in years. You wonder if it’s a coincidence. Yeah, maybe.

Slide your plate of vegetarian aglio olio to the team member sitting to your right at the lunch. Offer her to try some — it’s a habit you picked up from your mother in your youth.

The team leader, sitting directly across from you, watches silently. She quickly slides her bowl of already-finished noodles toward the same team member and urges her to try the leftover soup.

This is called ‘mimicking.’

***

Document everything. It’s a pain in the ass, but it comes with the territory. You already know what these types are capable of.

Never underestimate the lengths a person — one who feels poorly about themselves — will go to.

***

Send her an inappropriate email at the start of the workday the next week.

It’s 9 a.m. and your mind is distracted. Tell her what you think of her. In retrospect, you don’t know what’s inappropriate about it.

“You called her a narcissist,” the senior executive HR lady pointed out to you a few days later.

Yeah, you think. And?

Sometimes you just need to call a spade a spade.

You don’t think that’s the same as directly calling a colleague a “bitch,” “nutjob” or some other vulgar term.

What’s the difference if you sit down with the team leader and say to her face, “Listen, I don’t mean any disrespect, but you exhibit the traits of a narcissist and it’s disruptive and disturbing.”

You had acknowledged to her, to HR, to yourself that the e-mail was unprofessional. Frustration had been pent up inside. People don’t just wake up one day and send someone an aggressive e-mail.

People don’t just commit murders, run amok, leave a relationship, or lose their minds.

How do they determine what is and isn’t inappropriate, anyway, you wonder.

Is being emotionally driven in the workplace, especially as a team leader, appropriate? She’s been a team leader for three years — does her not knowing how to handle her emotions or ensure the team runs smoothly considered appropriate behavior?

Is being dishonest to her superiors about why a team member sent her that e-mail appropriate?

Is being psychologically abusive, because you know how that leaves little to no evidence, appropriate?

You already know the answer.

In the e-mail, you also tell her she has created an unhealthy work environment. That you’d like to sit down and talk when she comes in. It’s the second time you’ve asked in an effort to clear the air.

It’s what she’s waiting for anyway — an outburst of some sort — after denying the opportunity to resolve any conflict the previous week.

She knows the effect her actions have. With the silent treatment, shutting down voices, and ignoring problems, resentment gets pent up inside the target. It starts to affect you.

The perpetrator aims for this.

It works to their advantage.

***

Go straight to HR.

She’ll be running to them to file a complaint against you after showing the email to her Chinese managers.

“Is this normal?” she asks them, distress in her voice, as though she is being attacked by an uncouth person unexpectedly, as she re-enacts her reaction to you and at the counseling session a few days later.

No, but neither is your behavior.

Predictably, she makes no mention to them of her own conduct that led to your sending the email.

HR opens an investigation.

You don’t name names when detailing different events but HR guess. It’s the second-smallest team in the office. Notify the two other team members who aren’t part of her clique as a heads-up.

***

She finally agrees to sit down and talk with you. It would’ve been the common-sense thing to do as a team leader, you think. But HR had to instruct her to do it after she ran to them to tell on you.

What a sudden change in her usual leisurely manner, you observe.

The drama needs to happen so her true self can emerge, along with the opportunity to showcase her acting chops.

***

You submit a completed file at 2.15 p.m. At 2.25, you send her a message via team chat, informing her of it and asking for the next steps. She doesn’t respond.

At 4.00 p.m., after looking over at her underling numerous times to catch her eye but to no avail, you send her a message via private chat asking if she has any instructions for you. The underling says she will ask the team leader. A moment later she tells you to just go over client guidelines again.

You scroll through guidelines until 5.50 p.m.

Other team members have already left.

***

Apologize via email at the end of the work day for the email. You knew right after you sent it how unprofessional it was of you. Apologize again to her face the next day when she shows up to work.

It hasn’t been disclosed to you yet that she has already run to HR and her managers, showing them your e-mail as though she is in shock.

Apologize for neglecting to read the written instructions she sent via team chat because you had instead gone on the verbal instructions of her underling last week.

You had leaned forward and asked the underling, “Ada any specific instructions tak?”

The team leader had been sitting beside her, making a point of not communicating with you, and muttered something to her.

Her innocent underling, who the team leader uses in her game of triangulation, is one of those nice types who’s being abused and doesn’t even know it.

It’s not really any of your business.

Some people ignore that sick feeling they get in the pit of their stomach around a particular person. It’s part of the traumatic bonding process.

The surreptitious ill-treatment they receive is evident to the perceptive eye. And those who’ve been in the same position in the distant past.

There isn’t much you can do. Some people allow themselves to be abused, and the reasons for it are far-ranging.

Note to yourself that the team leader is incapable of owning up to or apologizing for her behavior for the past several weeks — a common trait of those with low self-worth and deep insecurities but an inflated sense of self.

***

The first thing you do upon walking into the meeting room is greet her like an extrovert.

You’re easy-going and direct in your greeting, which makes her stutter in response.

And then you apologize for the email you sent.

“I realized right after how aggressive the tone was and felt disappointed in myself that I had sent it.”

She says okay. Asks what you’d like to discuss.

The team leader innocently denies that there’s any friction, implying that it’s all in your head.

You had said you’d like to address the friction between the two of you and clear the air.

And then, while avoiding eye contact, she attempts to tear you down: 

“You are the slowest new hire I’ve ever had.”

She says it with a smirk.

You accept her feedback and ask if her delays in training you or reviewing your practice files are a contributing factor but she ignores the question.

You tell her she’s the most unprofessional person you’ve ever worked with.

It also bemuses you that you’re only hearing about how slow you are at that point after you’ve raised complaints with HR.

You quickly consider what she’s just said.

Is she saying you’re slow because you had written in a daily work report about your confusion with time coding — abusers use any type of weakness you share with them to use against you when they need to chip away at your self-esteem or distort the truth — or because she’s incompetent and is twisting the truth as a defense mechanism?

Perhaps you are slow. You’re not really concerned about that bit of feedback. Because if she is adept at anything, it’s wasting other people’s time, and needing to have others tell her how to do her job.

And she is now exposing herself to you and believes you to be stupid.

The team leader tries to pit you against the last new hire by asking why you can’t be more like her.

“It only took her one day to learn time coding. I trained her myself,” she says like a bad teacher, in that motherly voice abusers like to use, to belittle a young student.

The goal is to make you feel inadequate in comparison.

You wonder if she had been on leave or coming in late as well when the last new hire joined.

Or if her underling had taken over her duties.

Make note of it all.

Record the conversation.

She is intent on making you the person she thinks you should be — a stupid, incompetent five-year-old.

She needs to project everything that she is onto you.

It is her best defense strategy.

Don’t bat an eyelash and nod.

Say, “Okay” to everything she says.

Listen carefully.

Abusers have specific ways of speaking.

They use specific language on their targets.

Listen as she confirms, without realizing it, that she is a bad team leader: The excuses that have been well prepared, the inconsistencies and contradictions, the denials.

Every single thing you say, or have raised with HR is shut down swiftly.

She shakes her head dismissively, her eyes closed, when you say her unprofessional conduct will affect team morale.

“This team has the lowest rate of rejections from clients in the whole office,” she says proudly.

“Oh good,” you say, nodding. It’s probably because ninety percent of the workload is shouldered by freelancers, you don’t say out loud. The other teams in the office don’t have that same luxury.

It’s an inaccurate portrayal of the truth, but she’s not concerned with the truth.

She uses the excuse of “family problems” several times for her leaves of absence and coming in late on other days.

You wonder if HR has sat through their own HR training courses — hours of it — that new hires are made to sit through. It’s stated that employees allowing personal problems to interfere with work is against company policy.

Denying that there’s any friction allows her to not address her poor emotional and behavioral control and own up to anything, but assure you that you’re imagining all of it.

You’re crazy.

You’ve been through this before.

There is always a specific pattern.

Many Malaysians learn this duplicitous behavior from a young age.

You understand what is happening.

Always the same story.

You can see that this game of psychological abuse is fun for her. She is eager to play the role of an exemplary leader, one who lies through her teeth to fulfill this illusion.

She is enjoying it.

***

Enforce boundaries.

Tell her you have zero tolerance for abusive behavior.

That you’ve dealt with this type of situation before.

She stares at you blankly.

Say as tactfully as you can that it isn’t nice to sabotage others and that you’re sure she agrees.

Bring up the Hattan case from several months back, because she sometimes speaks like she’s a graduate of the Hattan School of Communication for Typical Malays.

“That’s just how I talk,” she says.

Bring up her emotional behavior and the keyboard incident.

“That’s just how I type,” she says.

Later, she’s typing softly on the laptop in front of her and suddenly remembers to start typing like a loutish person.

She laughs nervously and quickly says, “See? This is just how I type.”

Remain quiet and nod, indicating that you understand.

It’s best not to agitate her.

Even though you also know she will continue with the covert tactics long after the meeting is over.

Even though another team member had witnessed the keyboard incident, and expressed shock. She had asked you about it after it happened. It suggests how pronounced and unusual the occurrence was. She has been working with the team leader for nearly four years.

The team leader presses you for the names of team members who had made casual remarks about the keyboard aggression and your bipolar training process.

“I’m going to need to have a talk with them,” she says intimidatingly.

“There’s no need to bring them into it,” you say. They made observations with no ulterior motives.

Do we live in an authoritarian society and is this an authoritarian company?

Are people not allowed to make observations, have opinions, draw comparisons, and criticize others?

You wonder in your mind if she unofficially ran things in the office, and if everyone else was on board with it.

***

Divide and conquer.

It is another standard tactic to identify.

The team leader uses another team member who’s not part of her clique to stress supposed slights made about you:

“___ even said, ‘I explained it to her a few times but…dia macam tak faham.” (translation: She doesn’t seem to get it.)

You nod. Say you understand.

Refrain from mentioning any of the unflattering remarks made about her or badmouthing anyone has engaged in. People who can’t keep secrets are the worst.

Certain things said in private conversations should remain private. If the group is falling apart and is devoid of high standards, it’s due to bad leadership.

And bad individuals who commit themselves to normalizing bad leadership.

The team leader has to rely on “strength in numbers.”

She needs to get as many people involved as possible.

She can’t handle anything on her own, especially the conflict she initiates.

She sows discord within the group she’s supposed to be leading and turns people against each other as part of her game strategy.

HR has had to instruct her to talk with you.

The team leader gets to continue playing a game with you that she controls. She is forcing you to participate against your will.

If you raise a complaint, she has excuses and justifications ready. The new hire is just crazy and wants attention.

The other team members only see you kicking up a fuss with HR. They don’t suspect anything. The team leader ensures this. She is the victim in all of this.

She is baffled by your behavior, she might tell them. She’s so stressed about the new hire attacking her, wanting attention. She already has so many family and health problems to deal with.

They feel bad for her.

Good leaders lead by example, are no-nonsense, and principled, and keep their team, tribe, group, and family together.

Bad leaders are dishonest and cause conflict and division. They play games.

You know from experience.

***

More gaslighting and projection transpire.

Suggest to her that the passive-aggressive behavior and withholding of consistent and proper communication is an impediment to progress and a poor use of time.

“Here at _____, we don’t engage in handholding.”

She patiently explains this like an important person who’s bored and trying to dodge the facts you’ve just stated.

Says it as though she’s reading from a prepared script.

Doesn’t look at you when she says it.

You nod and say “Okay.”

A classic maneuver of trying to make you seem needy for her attention. She is very busy, has personal problems outside of work and you’re desperate for her to teach and mother you because you’re inept and inferior.

It helps her feel important.

She is admitting something to your face, without realizing it — her self-esteem is at rock bottom.

You get flashbacks of Neve and Bonnie.

Might as well have brought a checklist into the room with you. The entire meeting, you would just be going down the list, ticking one box after another. You just do it mentally.

Ask her why she doesn’t just have her underling give you instructions. That was the case on the first day she was absent, wasn’t it?

A few other people in the office also opined later, in private conversation, that it’s common sense to delegate someone else with the task to keep things moving when the team leader isn’t around.

“ ____ answers to me,” she responds pridefully. “Everyone answers to me.” Her eyes close fleetingly.

She says that only she can train you, so you have to wait until she’s around.

Smirks.

You suggest again how that hinders your learning process if you have to wait for her to be around. Because even when she’s in the office, she avoids you.

She replies gently, with a condescending laugh, like she’s embarrassed for you, “I can’t sit with you all day.”

You are witnessing before you a person who is unable to contend with reality.

Instead, reality must be distorted to coincide with her fantasy.

You say, “I hope you don’t.”

She smiles.

A chill runs down your spine.

***

The pathological liar emerges.

Give her another example of why you think she’s unprofessional. You are simultaneously implying that she is entirely focused on trying to demoralize you and enjoying it.

You already know she is unable to apologize or own up to her behavior. You want to see if she’s capable of showing appreciation to someone.

Bring up the file that was rejected by a client on the third day you were there — the one she had bragged about to you.

She had sent a message in the team chat asking all members to help with a more accurate translation. You paused the HR training course you were halfway through.

You read the file for the first time. Fixed it within ten minutes. The file is promptly accepted by the client once she re-submits it.

She laughs at this and blames the client for not knowing what they wanted before they rejected it.

“And it was _____ who worked on that file, anyway,” she says.

You’ve met _____. She was a longtime team member who resigned recently. Her last day had been on your third day.

Remain silent. Poker-faced.

Just gaze steadily at her.

She is on edge from nervousness because of the silence.

And you’re thinking about how she is placing blame on a team member who is not there to defend herself.

And that she had bragged on your first day before the file was rejected, while the two of you were alone at your desk, that the original nonsensical translation was her idea.

She quickly says, “Actually,” and then delivers the last part of the sentence slowly, “The whole office worked on that show…”.

Stares at you, smirking. 

She sure does smirk a lot, you think to yourself.

She’s implying that you’ve just criticized the whole office and all teams by calling everyone unprofessional.

“Doesn’t matter. I stand by what I said,” you say. 

She looks confused.

The smirk disappears.

The concept of having principles and sticking to them, no matter how unpopular that might make you, is a foreign concept she can’t comprehend.

You suddenly feel exhausted.

“And I’m not talking about the show, I’ve never even seen it. I’m talking about that specific episode,” you say.

She looks flustered and is stumped for a response.

You realize how making other people look bad comes with ease to her. You understand now that the team leader can’t take criticism. She is vehemently opposed to the truth about herself..

Her mask has slipped numerous times already.

You know what you’re up against — someone who has never had to take accountability for anything.

You are dealing with a seasoned liar.

***
She repeats that you are slow.

Here’s an idea, you think to yourself. How ‘bout you take some fuckin’ pride in doing your job and train people properly like a self-respecting person would?

We all know this team is dependent on freelancers, most of whom are Chinese, while this group of all-Malays floats on a delusive representation so you can think you’re the shit.

“Okay,” you say.

She then says, while nodding, as though attempting to placate you in the way an adult offers a child a cookie to stop a tantrum, “But I’ll give you a live file to work on.”

You’re leaned back, quiet, in your chair.

You reply, “If you say I’m the slowest new hire you’ve ever worked with, then don’t give me a live file. You should be giving me more practice files to work on.”

Why in the world would you say a person is slow, doesn’t understand things, repeatedly imply that they’re stupid — because that’s what good leaders do — and then do the irresponsible and asinine by assigning them a live file?

You know there are certain elements of the conversation that you won’t share with HR when they ask for details.

There is a cloud of unfairness that hangs, along with an ever-present gleaming sword, over the team leader’s head.

You’ve seen them following her around shortly after you first joined the team.

She is oblivious to both.

Your eyes flicker briefly up to the sword above her, suspended in the air in that small room.

It’s unfair to her because she did not realize what she had walked into by playing this game with you.

***

The conversation ends on a positive note.

Before that, you imply as tactfully as you possibly can, that she feels bad about herself.

She looks at you and almost sadly, in a small voice, as though you had hit a nerve or touched on something true, asks, “You think I feel bad about myself?”

You feel bad inside.

You know the two of you are not the same.

Not the same skin tone.

Didn’t have the same education or knowledge processes and experiences.

She is younger than you.

Is used to getting her way.

So you don’t say yes. Say you don’t know. Suggest that her behavior indicates something is wrong on her end.

You are uncomfortable and are aware of how you’re suddenly fumbling for the right words. You just want to be at your computer, working.

Tell her she can be upfront with you if anything is bothering her because you prefer being straightforward.

She denies anything is wrong. She dances gracefully between everything you say.

Both of you know exactly what she’s doing.

Tell her the ball is in her court now.

It’s another olive branch you’re extending to her. You know how desperately she wants to feel powerful.

Her face falls as you say this to her. Because you’re expected to beg and flatter her.

Tell her you’ll let her decide whether or not you’re a liability to the team. Because all she’s done is tear you down and try her damnest to make you doubt yourself and your capabilities.

It hasn’t worked.

Don’t tell her this.

It will only disappoint her some more.

All you’ve thought after she repeatedly calls you “slow” in your two and a half weeks there, or exploits others to back this claim is, “Great, a new challenge.” 

You understand that it’s not the intended reaction she wants from you. She believes that you should react to criticism the same way she does, as though you are the same person.

She wants to break you down and make you feel as small as she feels.

You’ve known Malaysians like this since your youth, including abusive teachers, who needed to belittle, insult, and humiliate others to feel powerful. They needed to project everything bad about themselves onto others who were the opposite of what they were.

They wanted certain students to feel inadequate and ultimately give up on themselves. 

To set their own group back.

To believe in their own inferiority.

Impede progress for everyone.

Some were regularly absent.

You had cut school a lot back then. Walked the two miles home after the morning assembly, let yourself into the empty house, and then sat in your room and read the books you wanted to read. Tried to educate yourself.

You earned a reputation for being stupid and a “problem child” at school, from teachers and students alike. It didn’t matter. You knew you were learning from some of the best thinkers in the world in the safety of your own room.

***

Confirm with her that there are no personal emotions involved. Because you’re both in a workplace setting.

Being discreetly petulant is just as irksome as someone dramatically fake crying in a team meeting to show their obedience to the team leader they talk shit about in private.

She confirms it.

You mention again how workplace bullying creates an unhealthy environment.

She hesitates. Says, “That happens everywhere.”

You note that she hasn’t once tried to affirm that she doesn’t condone it. Or shown embarrassment for being criticized for disturbing behavior, or that her team is suddenly under a microscope.

You wonder if it’s because Malays like her are under the impression that such behavior is normal. They’ve never been told otherwise.

It’s likely that she has never been held accountable for anything before, but has learned — been taught— that she can never be wrong.

Before you get up to leave the room, she asks suddenly, “May I know why you sent me that email?”

“Everything was pent up inside. Having to keep things inside starts to affect a person after a while. It’s not a good way to handle things.”

She stares at you, a look of disappointment settling in her face.

You realize you had given her the wrong answer.

“Okay,” she says in a small voice.

You leave.

***

The next morning after you come in, you receive an email from her. She’s not at work again.

It’s a recap of what had been discussed between the two of you. No doubt it was sent to HR separately.

In it, she takes a completely different, and dismissive, tone from where you had left off face-to-face the day before.

She casually states that every issue you had raised was just your subjective opinion.

The team leader implies, with a tone of infantile stubbornness throughout the write-up, that there is still a problem and she’s not interested in resolving it.

Bullies don’t like to back down — this is customary.

You have no reaction while reading her version of events. It’s predictable.

She had lied at the conclusion of your talk by agreeing that the matter was settled.

Right after your discussion with her the previous day, she sent you a new practice file to work on. Had come over to you and good-naturedly given you a few instructions.

But the cycle of abuse must continue.

It is ingrained in the Malaysian psyche.

The place where, after a century of psychological abuse inflicted by Europeans on the people, ill-considered compromises made for sovereignty, and remnants of colonial rule that have continuously gone unaddressed, the mentality that persists to this day is of defiant infantilism.

If we just ignore problems or deny that such problems exist, hopefully, they will go away on their own or fix themselves.

Logic, and evidence, suggest the contrary.

Logic, and evidence, indicates that those problems can only become worse.

***

You don’t think much of her, or her email.

You don’t reply to it.

She wants a reaction out of you.

HR has asked you for details on the discussion you had with Meyna as well.

You write them a summary, stating at the end that you considered the matter resolved on your end and the ball is in the team leader’s court.

She has already revealed that she is still playing a game with you, and is enjoying it.

You feel deeply embarrassed for her.

***

Write your daily work report for the day.

Respond to a comment the team leader had written in your last practice file. A mistake you made in the opening credits that she has critiqued and would like you to fix.

You’re confused.

You mention the client guidelines given to you for reference. The rule is specifically stated regarding opening credits and you followed it.

The team leader never responds to your observation.

***

HR calls for a counseling session the next morning.

Two people from management who you’ve never met before are present as well.

The team leader starts by giving her version of events first.

She says that she was on medical leave on certain days and on others due to “family problems.”

You make a mental note of how HR hasn’t, in fact, sat through their own training courses on workplace conduct and policies. They don’t say anything about the team leader’s personal problems interfering with work.

Apparently, they only make new hires sit through that shit.

It makes them sound good. It gives off the impression that they’re a highly ethical company, by making a lot of false statements — some of which had made you snicker — of which they have no intention of abiding.

It reminds you of the current government.

Irrelevant information is offered by the team leader to overcomplicate the specific issue and help make the team leader sound like she’s a very busy person.

The excuses flow one after another to conveniently shoot down any criticism, inconsistency, and unprofessional conduct on her end.

HR’s senior executive, an Indian lady, is taking down notes and nodding enthusiastically as the team leader speaks. Her Chinese junior, along with the two female Chinese managers, are silent for the entire counseling session.

The team leader repeats in front of everyone the gaslighting and projection she had directed toward you in private.

In a frustrated, motherly tone, says, “I can’t sit with you all day” and “We don’t engage in hand-holding here.”

She is confident and seems proud of these two lines she uses. To illustrate to others who she has decided you should be as a person.

It’s how abusers smear their targets.

By completely dismantling your identity and who you are as a person.

Remain silent.

Watch her as she speaks.

You want to be respectful.

She is performing.

Allow her to finish speaking before revealing to everyone that you had graduated from a university that catered to independent learners.

The program was designed for those who disliked the traditional classroom environment.

You had gone back to school as an adult student and engaged in self-directed learning, which was more rigorous and involved a heavier workload than the usual traditional classroom experience entails. Professors piled on the workload and daily deadlines to quash the idea of “more freedom equates to more advantages.” Quite the opposite.

She didn’t know this.

She did know that you had stated during the job interview how you “like and prefer solitary work.”

You are used to it.

And you had said you wanted to learn a new skill.

It’s why you had applied for the job, as low-paying as it was.

Mention this as well, because it’s inconvenient to her goal of rewriting who you are as an autonomous individual to fit her twisted narrative.

You are not another one of her puppets.

You don’t recall signing up to be that.

The team leader at one point hints at her need for attention and ego-stroking from team members.

She mentions how the last new hire “always came to me to ask questions.”

She wants you to beg her to train you and give feedback.

You know the drill with these types. The world must revolve around them.

It could be another reason why she was angry. You didn’t ask her many questions, so she retaliated by delaying or denying feedback and training?

It’s a waste of time, you say, to get up every time you have a quick question, and walk around to where she sits when she’s even in the office, to ask it. It’s why HR had asked you when you first went to talk to them if you had been assigned a “buddy.” A team member who sits near you who helps you out. You said no, you had not been assigned one. 

HR joins in on the gaslighting for most of the session.

The senior executive repeats many of the excuses the team leader has prepared to enforce the idea that you imagined it all, are desperate for hand-holding or had agreed to work here without knowing that the job is fast-moving and involves computers. She also justifies the team leader’s abusive behavior.

Says things that don’t make sense, but they are excuses the team leader has already told her and she just repeats them.

(Your personal favorite) “Everyone is busy here. It’s why you can hear typing all the time,” while making finger-stabbing motions in the air so that you understand what typing is.

Usually people wiggle their fingers to indicate typing, but everyone is different, you think.

“You joined at a busy time. The office is currently upgrading to a new platform, so everyone is busy.”

“Meyna has her own way of doing things. It has always worked for her.”

“Every new hire is treated differently. She takes a different approach with all of them.”

You also note how HR stops taking notes shortly after you start telling your side. You mentally note the irrationality of the statements repeated by HR for the team leader’s sake.

But you nod. Say “sure” a lot.

This is what HR does.

They are just doing their job.

They have to protect the abuser while protecting themselves. They participate in the abuse as well, after preaching to new hires, in courses about workplace conduct, about respect.

At one point, the senior executive HR lady strays from the script and reproaches the team leader for not understanding that there are different types of learners in the world.

The team leader responds with a tiny, “Okay.”

You had suggested that perhaps you were having trouble understanding how certain things like timecoding were explained, when they were haphazardly explained, by different team members.

You think about how like Barisan Nasional — the puppet masters of the reformist Pakatan Harapan coalition government — it responds to internal opposition by suspending or expelling members who dare speak out against the BN leader’s behavior. Other members voluntarily resign in response to shitty leadership.

A leader like Zahid Hamidi denies any wrongdoing or responsibility for the party’s slow ruination, and those lacking in self-respect protect him.

Certain types of Malaysians love manipulative leaders.

Such leaders are a reflection of who they are. Thus, they must be protected and their conduct encouraged.

What a fascinating pattern to observe in Malaysia, you think to yourself.

***

She can’t take criticism.

It’s not news. Just amusing.

The team leader gets a little riled up towards the end of the counseling session.

The resentment in her voice, the glares she gives you as she turns in her seat, after refusing to look at you the entire session. She is emotional.

Contradicts herself some more. Uses another team member who has never been designated to train you to assert that you don’t understand things even with training she provides to you.

“___ has never trained me,” you say. Didn’t you pridefully state in the private discussion a few days prior that you’re the only one who’s allowed to train me? You want to ask, but she cuts you off.

“She did train you,” she snaps, sneering at you.

No, ___ answered quick questions you had because you hadn’t been receiving consistent training.

Explanations that you were given were often disocciated from one another, and you tried to piece them together to form an understanding of the whole editing process.

It’s a disorganized waste of time for everyone.

You’re not even going to chalk any perceived slowness on your end up to poor teaching methods of different team members, because learning is a process. You’re able and willing to own up to any mistakes you make along the way.

It’s something these special snowflakes aren’t able and willing to grasp. It’s like an admission of stupidity to them or something.

She goes on. Says icily, “You shouldn’t call people out or talk about someone’s character.”

You’re not sure if she knows what “calling someone out” means.

Oxford Dictionary defines it as: to draw critical attention to someone's unacceptable actions or behavior.

Or if she’s just that insolent to indirectly admit that she has been behaving inappropriately and abusively those past several weeks and you’re supposed to accept it quietly.

It’s funny to you. This current situation you’re in parallels the trend of bad leadership in this country.

Zahid Hamidi, the manipulator cannot be wrong. Anwar Ibrahim has contradicted himself a lot lately. Gives one bad excuse after another since gaining fake power and abusing that fake power. Everyone is supposed to ignore it. Even if he smears his opponents. Don’t call him out. Najib Razak is completely innocent in the global 1MDB scandal. He still denies any responsibility even with evidence stacked against him.

Mediocre nobodies want badly to be like those VIPs.

It means they can do as they please, regardless of the instability and destruction that results from their actions.

Deny, deny, deny that they are ever wrong.

You also wonder if she’s really unaware that others criticize her behind her back as well, or if she’s only angered that you do it.

She keeps talking about her problems — family problems, health problems.

You know she uses those excuses as a buffer to elicit sympathy and prevent any criticism or disciplinary action from being taken against her.

Like those Malays who produce a doctor’s note when they’re due in court and need to stall the process or get out of doing something.

And other people pick up their slack.

The team leader suddenly starts pontificating about how you should “speak in a neutral tone.”

It’s the first time you’re hearing this as well. You sit there, listening to her.

Is she joking? No. She’s angry.

The person who switches between an intentionally disparaging tone or a condescending one to tear you down and sweetly claims, “This is just how I talk” is now talking about the importance of speaking with a neutral tone.

Is it because you’re straightforward and she doesn’t like it?

You spoke that way during the job interview and in your first week here, you think to yourself.

Surely she had prior knowledge of how you always speak.

You even apologized for how bad your voice sounded at the time. Even explained why you sound the way you do lately, just in case anyone might take offense to it.

Is it because you criticized her typical Malay, Hattan style of speaking to you after her ego was bruised, and she is now trying to make the same criticism against you? 

You only understand what issue she had with how you speak a few days later when it is revealed by HR in a document sent to you.

In it, the team leader is quoted as saying that you speak in an “aggressive” manner.

It occurs to you that the team leader is simply repeating critiques you’ve made about yourself, whether in daily work reports or to her face.

She latches onto any honest information you offer about yourself and uses it as ammunition against you.

You realize that she doesn’t understand self-deprecating comments you’ve made or what it means to be self-deprecating.

Because she is unable to critique herself and be truthful about who she is.

It is another concept she cannot grasp.

She thinks you’ve been confessing to her your inferiority all this while.

You think back to the welcome lunch. She had asked in front of the team what you did in your free time. You said you hung out with your cats or sat at cafes, sometimes with your laptop.

She had asked about friends, from high school or in the US. She was trying to see what she could use to smear you with.

You realize you don’t know much about her, aside from everything you’ve observed about her character.

She’s married. Is younger than you, though you don’t know her exact age. Has been at the company for six years. Goes to the doctor a lot. Has family problems.

Who doesn’t? Everyone is going through something, you think.You’re not special.

Her favorite drink to order at Starbucks is the iced Asian dolce latte.

You had asked her that last one after the welcome lunch. The team had been sitting in a Starbucks.

You don’t know anything else about her.

She mentioned something in the team meeting last week about having an older sister. Also something about Perak.

She, on the other hand, had access to a bevy of information about you. Had decided to hire you based on all of it.

You laugh in your head.

That’s just how I talk, Meyna.

Since the first time she met you, your manner of speaking has not changed. You don’t know what she means by “aggressive.”

Does she all of a sudden have a problem with you speaking to her as her equal, instead of being supine and timid?

Is it because you’re unapologetic about standing up for yourself and criticizing the team leader? Is it because you’re holding a mirror up to her and she doesn’t like the true reflection she’s being forced to see?

Or is it because you’re the only member on the team who she can’t control?

It must be hard knowing there are people who you can’t make into your puppet. You’re used to controlling others your whole life, and this new hire has upended your entire fantasy of dominance and unbridled fake power.

That must be rough, you think.

***

HR wants the two of you to start over.

As though it’s your first day there. You know it’s a lost cause, because you’re a realist, and have known people like the team leader your whole life.

But the senior executive HR lady had said you were very “negative” earlier. Because you said you were exhausted and that has led to indifference at this point.

She tries to negate most of the personal opinions you express throughout the session. She’to be the team leader’s puppet as well.

She has to be. You understand.

So you couldn’t care less what happens.

You say that all of this is a waste of time. The HR lady pauses and then firmly responds, “It’s not a waste of time.”

“I think everyone else in this office would rather be working,” you say.

To your left, in your peripheral, one of the Chinese managers nods her head.

People are here to work. Not to play the games of a wretch, you want to say, but don’t.

This entire situation could have been avoided if the team leader knew how to lead a team and handle things professionally, you say.

But you’re 100% in, you respond to the HR senior executive’s initial request, as you have been since your first day.

The team leader sits in stone silence.

An embittered look is fixed on her face and she wants everyone to see it.

She has revealed to everyone at that moment the obvious — she does, in fact, have a problem with you. Is unhappy with the outcome of the counseling session.

You were not reprimanded or fired.

She has wasted everyone’s time with her lies and games of denial, projection, and gaslighting instead of being truthful.

Being honest would have required her to be secure enough to show vulnerability, acknowledge her weaknesses, and admit to her faults.

She would have been honest and said, “She talked back to me and I didn’t like that. It made me feel stupid. I need to feel special and powerful because I am neither of those things.”

She is one of those Malaysians who associate vulnerability with weakness.

Apologizing, taking responsibility, showing humility, accepting their inadequacies, even joking about them — they are unable to do any of this as it would shatter the fiction they have created in their heads about themselves.

She doesn’t recognize that you are actually willing to help her.

You know she is how she is due to a number of any possible reasons.

She is a product of her environment.

Has mostly or only been around the same, specific types of people her whole life.

Many of them grew up in smaller, conservative states. They move to KL and feel insecure so overcompensate by putting on airs or acting like they run shit in the big city.

Some sort of trauma experienced in her childhood.

Colonial systems of abuse that were adopted and standardized.

Poor guidance.

The nonexistent question of identity and collective values in Malaysia.

If she felt an inclination to do better and asked you anything, you wouldn’t laugh or denigrate her. Nor would you make her feel threatened, as though you wanted her job. You have no interest in dealing directly with clients. You wouldn’t point out her shortcomings but subtly guide her should she ask for any type of knowledge she lacked.

It’s bad enough that the Malays fail their own and are more intent on setting other Malays back.

The ruination of women is insidiously induced by self-serving, unscrupulous women. They enforce stereotypes of the emotionally unstable, malicious female who instigate drama and conflict.

There are thousands more Meyna’s in Malaysia.

You wonder to yourself why being delusional has become a positive cultural trait normalized by Malaysians.

They are the Lost People of the world, ensuring that others live in the escapist’s Neverland — what Malaysia has become.

It is a place where people vigorously resist the endeavours obligated by living in reality.

A place that exists on the fabrications of those who refuse to grow up, where mistakes of the past are forbidden from scrutiny and never corrected, where self-awareness and the act of looking internally to understand and improve the self is scorned, where rejecting the Lost Malaysian’s belief system of eternal childhood, and childishness, is akin to an offense against divine law.

***

The Lost Malaysians are inadequate.

In strength of character, principles, and knowledge.

They project their inadequacies on others. Or try to hide them.

It’s convenient. They don’t need to look within themselves when they do that. They would have to confront all of their flaws and undergo the long, arduous process of improving what is lacking so they can develop as an individual.

But it’s easy to observe what their inadequacies are, ironically.

The Streisand Effect, or something.

When you try to hide something, it becomes more apparent and identifiable. At least to those who’ve gone through the arduous process.

The team leader sees other people as puppets that she controls. Those who she can’t control need to be eliminated.

She creates a sense of indebtedness with certain individuals, as part of the traumatic bonding process.

The Malays who are dependent on those with power, money, or status are meant to remember all the funding, favors, and gifts certain leaders in Barisan Nasional had provided them with over the years. It’s especially useful when those leaders are facing punishment and can’t defend themselves.

Useful people are exploited that way.

Bad leaders, Malaysian or not, love a good ass-kisser. Those who need to be bought will be lovebombed — with gifts, sweet talk, and lofty positions and titles.

You are meant to always remember what they have done for you. It was meant to buy your silence, obedience, or support.

You have just read in the news of the Democratic Action Party reminding Syed Saddiq how they had done Muda a favor when he criticized them for being lapdogs recently. Or RSN Rayer calling the Muda president “ungrateful” for not being loyal to the disastrous Pakatan Harapan unity government, a party teeming with inadequate Malaysians.

***

The Evolved Malaysians are honest. 

The team leader takes off for the rest of the day after the counseling session. On lunch break, a few people from other teams in the office approach when you’re alone to ask if everything is okay. You tell them there are some issues.

“We noticed,” one person says.

You brag to them that the team leader had bestowed upon you the award of “slowest new hire” she’s ever had. You joke about getting yourself an award with that inscribed on it to display at your desk.

They laugh. One of them responds, “It took us one month to time code one file when we first joined.” Another person nods.

“Our team leader at the time kept having to come over to tell us we had to do everything over again. Our probation period even had to be extended for another month.”

They tell you to ask them if you need any help.

It occurs to you that nobody in the counseling session or on the team had mentioned anything about what is considered the standard timeframe for a trainee to complete a file, because everyone is different.

Especially when they’re aware that you have completed three in two weeks and are not receiving proper feedback.

“I take a different approach with all new hires,” the team leader had said brusquely and the HR lady repeated it to you.

You nodded. Said, “Okay.”

You were swiftly assigned two more practice files one after the other following your meeting with the team leader. You completed both in a day and a half.

Before that, she was suddenly mild-mannered and helpfully offered comments on the last file you worked on.

Corrected a specific error you made with an edit.

You tell her your edit is actually based on an updated correction made by both a freelancer and team member as listed in the spreadsheet you referenced while editing.

She was caught off guard and checked the spreadsheet to confirm. “Oh,” she said. Was silent for a moment as she studied the spreadsheet.

She then showed you an example of time coding a scene while the two of you were still alone because you’re slow.

“See? Just press the arrow up key to move forward a few seconds,” she said pleasantly.

You were quiet. You just nodded. Said, “Okay.”

She said to ask her if you had any questions.

You know you won’t ask any more questions. You’re reminded of something you read some years ago:

“Ask a sociopath an honest question and you will get a dishonest answer.”

***

You have told one lie since you met her.

It was even before you were hired.

At the end of the job interview, she suddenly asked if you were an only child.

You said no, rather slowly.

“Oldest?”

You pause, and then just say yes.

Real life is complicated.

You’re actually the middle child, but estranged from an older sibling.

There’s no need to go into details, you had thought. Don’t bring personal matters into the workplace.

Loosely speaking, you are the oldest. In terms of duties performed and sacrifices made, you are.

Reality was distorted by the family unit a long time ago to encourage the eldest sibling’s twisted fantasies. She has a lot of health problems — contrived since her early twenties as a bulwark that vindicates her depravity and ensures sympathy from others — but takes credit for the responsibilities you’ve assumed.

A lot of times, the truth gets lost in the immutable delusions of others.

***

You inform her via team chat that you’ve completed another file and ask for feedback when she has time. She says she is still going over the first file and will come over once she’s done.

“Sure, thanks,” you reply.

***

It’s 5.55 p.m.

You haven’t heard anything from her. She was walking around the office for some time, chatting and laughing, but has been sitting at her desk right across from you for the past hour.

You can’t see each other — your computers block you from one another’s view, fortunately.

You stand up and lean over to speak to her. She is smiling as she uses her phone. Glances up in surprise when you say her name. The surprise changes to one that one wears when caught in the act of doing something of an impish nature.

A smirk then settles across her face.

You ask if she’s still going over your completed files. She says something but you’re not really listening. You hear a “yes” somewhere in her response.

You ask if you should wait for her feedback the next day when she’s done. She says yes. Nods.

Tell her you’re taking off now.

***

Two days later the team leader hasn’t finished reviewing your completed files. She’s on leave again.

You’ve received no feedback.

You say nothing.

***

The flying monkey reveals herself.

It’s the only other light-skinned Malay on the team, and she sits to your right. She is the last new hire the team leader had used to try and belittle you.

Aminatul Zahariyah — the chattiest, youngest, and most charming person on the team. A fresh grad out of USM Penang, it’s generally understood by others that she isn’t very bright.

Her being used as an eager minion makes her feel like she serves an important purpose on the team. Some people aren’t shy about revealing the useful function they serve in a group.

She’s also quite helpful, but shady types usually are. It’s how they gain your trust.

She texts you after you’ve gone downstairs to get an iced coffee. Asks if you’d like to go for a cigarette break.

At the parking lot, she suddenly begins speaking in that kind, motherly, teacher-like tone abusers and mediocre types employ. Like you’re a child that needs to be gently told off.

These types enjoy speaking down to others.

It always amuses you how their tackiness doesn’t make themselvs cringe.

It’s like they have no self-respect.

No doubt, speaking in such a way makes them feel better about themselves, though they’re oblivious to the fact that they sound, and appear, pathetic.

She asks that you not bring her and ___’s name up to HR next time without asking them first.

You remind her that you hadn’t mentioned any names, that HR had guessed and you had given them a heads up about you referencing two innocent observations made and they had said, “Okay.”

She forces a laugh and then is quiet. Brings the yellow toy she vapes from to her mouth.

And then says, in that soft, kind way — almost seductive — looking up at you, doe-eyed, “Anyway, I just want you to know…You can always talk to me.”

You observe her, in all her two-facedness.

Her indignity fascinates you.

A person who talks so much because she knows so little.

You respond casually, “It was revealed in the meeting with HR that things that were said in confidence were shared with Meyna. I don’t think I can trust anyone on this team.”

She laughs awkwardly.

Nervously, she says, “But I want you to know…You can always talk to me.”

Her eyelashes flutter quickly.

She tries to ask about the details of the counseling session. Had asked about your one-to-one discussion with the team leader two days before as well.

You don’t tell her much. You just tell her that you had apologized for any mistakes made on your end, and Meyna had trouble owning up to her own actions.

“Oh, you apologized?” Aminatul says patronizingly, like a teacher role she’s trying to play.

You’re both waiting for the elevator in the lobby by then.

“I did, yeah,” you say, looking down at her.

She nods approvingly. “That’s good. You apologized.”

She reminds you so much of Neve back in Boston.

A little dandiprat. Overconfident but stupid.

“Well…,” Aminatul says slowly and gently, gazing up at you, her eyes shining. She nods patronizingly. “Hopefully this has been a good lesson for you.”

You smile at her.

“The Malays in the US warned me about working with typical Malays here. They said the mentality is still the same. It’s sad that they weren’t joking.” You say it as though you’re not talking about her.

You gaze down at her, studying this specimen who has offered herself up to you.

She smiles shyly and quietly gazes down at her feet for a moment.

The elevator arrives.

***

After work, text her that you appreciate her sharing her thoughts with you at the parking lot and that you can understand her perspective.

And then tell her to please don’t try to make someone feel guilty or wrong for standing up for themselves.

“Because we are not the same, Ami.”

She replies that she’s sorry that my feelings are hurt, and that she’s a new hire, too. So she needs to defend herself as well.

You explain to her that people can have an unemotional reaction to other people’s opinions, and need to be open to different perspectives. You know that response disappoints her.

Also remind her to report everything you’ve just said to her to Meyna, the team leader.

Stupidly, she replies, “...And yes, I will be reporting this to Meyna.”

***

The next day is Friday.

You employ the grey rock method from the moment you sit down at your desk. It’s a great way to draw out the clownish abuser who doesn’t realize what she’s doing.

Even when the person to your left suddenly tries to talk to you again and sweetly says hello, after shunning you for most of the week without trying to understand the facts, you don’t respond. Aminatul had updated her after your text the previous evening.

You glance at this person blankly and sit down.

Wear your headphones for the entire workday, even though you’re not listening to anything. Sit still, as you always do.

Do your work.

The team leader is on leave again.

Observe in your peripheral how Aminatul is giddy and restless all day.

She’s being deprived of a reaction from you that she craves.

She tries to start up a conversation. Ignore her. You’re working intently and can’t hear her. She gets up repeatedly throughout the day. Hovers around you. Watches what you’re doing. Constantly takes her phone out and texts, making sure it’s obvious.

An hour before lunchtime, she even leaves the building, gets on the LRT, and goes to buy Kyo-Chon chicken for herself and ___. Other team members remark in surprise that she had actually gotten on a train for fried chicken.

She is full of energy today. Fidgets in her chair.

When she asks if you want to go have lunch with her and ___, suddenly look at her and reply that you’re not hungry yet, and smile.

Continue ignoring her again afterward. She tries to ask you if you want to go for a cigarette break, but you’re squinting at the screen, typing and don’t hear her, so she says “Okay” and leaves.

Aminatul and ___ leave at around 5 p.m. As she’s walking past behind you, she says bye and asks what you’re working on.

“Self-feedback on a previous file,” you reply.

“Oh, still timecoding?” she quickly says, hovering a moment to look at you. She’s been waiting for a reaction from you all day. You remain quiet, reading the text on your screen. Satisfied, she leaves.

She needs to change your words. It gives her an opportunity to try and insult you. Abusers tend to not understand how words work. Words are for them to control, twist, negate, and redefine.

You had casually told her the previous day, after having a cigarette, the team leader had told you that you were slow.

Aminatul had smiled widely as you told her this, gazing into your eyes as she did. Her mouth had spread happily across her sweet face. She had enjoyed that bit of information you fed her, knowing it would please a pissant.

Around 5.40 p.m., you knock on HR’s door and report her for psychological harassment.

Notify Aminatul only on Sunday night, apologizing for forgetting to let her know sooner about mentioning her name repeatedly to HR.

Even if HR doesn’t give a shit, because they’re annoyed with you by now, you’ve highlighted Aminatul’s propensity for criminal behavior.

Tell her you hope she’s not mad, and that you can’t wait to see more of the real her tomorrow.

Accidentally send the long text to a few others first. Apologize to Aminatul for the error, explaining that you’re slow when it comes to things you’re not used to, like the Line app you had to download for work. Tell her you know she understands.

The next day, she is curiously quiet and still.

***

Stories and statements have changed, as revealed by HR.

The Indian senior executive had been alone in the room when you knocked before the end of the workday. A document detailing the facts of the situation and counseling session had just been sent to your email, she tells you.

“I just need you to sign it,” she says cheerfully, in a sing-song voice. As though her saying it that way was enough to make you sign it without reading it first.

A responsible person would suggest you read something first before signing your name to it, you think to yourself.

As you’re heading toward the door, she stops you. She says, with a sigh, “Off the record, no one had anything bad to say about you.”

It’s not really meant as a compliment and you don’t take it as such.

It’s a subtle insinuation that it’s only you that is causing problems. People know to shut their mouths and not rock the boat. You are supposed to turn a blind eye to an abusive team leader.

Endure her tactics and submit to her. Most people don’t like it when you step out of line and defend yourself. Sometimes it speaks to their own cowardice, and low self-worth. Little girls scurrying to stand by the “powerful” leader who determines whether they get ahead or not in the office.

Is this why suicide is one consequence of workplace abuse? The targets did what HR advised them and endured the psychological torment?

You lose either way.

Life is unfair like that.

You’ve seen worse happen to others.

Genuinely good people who were set up to fail.

They retreat, knowing it’s a lost cause. Realistically, you’re not going to be able to defeat collective toxicity.

Collaborative mediocrity can be a potent force.

It’s an indication of how the existing conditions, which pervades this society overrun with abusers and those who enable them, is to be accepted as normal.

Even if HR know how inappropriate the team leader behaves, they know, she knows, that she will be protected. It’s why she’s brazen about her conduct.

Her sense of entitlement is fueled by the assurance that she will get away with it all.

You wonder how it’s possible to be Asian and devoid of shame.

***

Around 6.50 p.m., you’re still at your computer and are reading through the document.

Stories that have been corroborated on different occasions have suddenly changed.

It is badly written. The English is messy, and words are misspelled, including your name.

“The instructions given were the same,” HR has written, in regard to the written and verbal instructions you had previously detailed.

The team leader had acknowledged this fact and the confusion on your end, both in the conversation the two of you had and in the counseling session with others present.

You had double-checked with her underling about the specific instructions you had asked for, and that she gave you verbally. The underling had nodded.

Meyna, the team leader, is revealing in HR’s report, that other team members are as dishonest as she is and are there to be used as her obedient puppets.

HR states that you have provided no evidence.

Irrational statements are made in the document.

The fact that Meyna is able to know everything, including what other team members are thinking, doing, and feeling reinforces the idea of her seeing others as nonautonomous beings.

She doesn’t, of course.

She simply invents.

As though the people around her who she exploits are inanimate objects.

The document is a stupidly indirect affirmation of what she is.

You know bad leaders are dependent on surrounding themselves with specific types of personalities. It’s the only way they maintain a false sense of power and abuse it.

She controls everything and everyone.

She has access to everyone’s words, thoughts, and feelings, and denies them all for her own advantage. She controls their speech. Manipulates them to tell her what she wants to hear, and help her emerge faultless and untouchable.

At the very bottom of the last page, there are lines and names meant to be signed by six different people who had attended the counseling session.

Two people have already signed their names in the allocated space of the document — the Indian senior executive, and Meyna, the team leader.

You wonder when Meyna had time to sign it so quickly.

The document had just been sent to everyone before the end of the workday and she always has family problems or is on medical leave.

Refuse to sign it.

Forward the document to your personal email.

The document is proof of the degeneracy you are in the midst of.

You’re not allowed to make observations or criticize her, even in private, as verified by her flying monkey, Aminatul. Your speech is monitored and reported to the abuser. Team members have to fear and protect her or face some form of punishment.

You laugh to yourself.

Guys, you want to say. She’s a cog in the machine. Calm the fuck down.

She is the narrator of her fantasy and everyone must comply with her bad fiction.

HR ensures this. Her puppets ensure this.

They want you to agree to live in a wretch’s fantasy.

Nah.

You get up and leave. It’s past 7 p.m.

***

Get out as fast as you can.

You are not in good company.

It’s just your luck that you ended up in a group that prides itself on functioning on mediocrity. The precedent has long been set by the team leader.

Some honest Malays had warned you back in Boston, you think to yourself. You wanted to believe they were half-joking. Surely the mentality has changed or improved over the years, you argued with them. They seemed disgusted at your sympathetic optimism. How is it possible that it’s only gotten worse?

Never underestimate the damage a few bad apples can do to the entire bunch.

Never underestimate the lengths a person who feels very poorly about themselves is willing to go to.

The inchoate Malays can’t get ahead despite being the majority.

If it’s not other forces that impede progress for them, if it’s not other forces that have ensured the Malays remain divided, it’s the saboteurs within the group itself.

The bad individual is put ahead instead of the group.

When did Asians adopt this Western mindset, you wonder. What the fuck is a Malaysian, anyway?

You spend the weekend thinking about everything.

You are disappointed — you liked the job. It was routine, required some problem-solving skills, and was generally of a solitary nature. You didn’t need to talk much.

You understand that it’s not going to work. You’re being dragged backward. You are being used as a receptacle for others’ low self-worth. You’ve already experienced this in Malaysia in your youth.

There hasn’t been much progress.

And frankly, you don’t respect the team leader.

She is hellbent on continually revealing herself to be unworthy of respect. You can’t work, much less associate, with such a person.

There is nothing you can learn from her.

You will only have to unlearn things.

***

Monday morning. 9 a.m.

You are typing your two weeks' notice.

The team leader is not in the office. She notifies you via team chat that she is assigning you a new practice file. And that her two Chinese managers have helped her develop a new lesson plan for you. They will help her review your completed files going forward.

You wonder to yourself if she and HR understand what hand-holding means.

“Let’s start over,” the team leader writes.

She says she has a meeting to attend and will go over things with you later.

“Sure, thanks,” you reply in the private chat.

Your old lesson plan that hadn’t been updated has disappeared from the Excel spreadsheet. In its place, you see, is a new one.

The HR senior executive responds to your rejection of the comical counseling report you read last Friday evening. She asks you to specify other conflicting statements. The English in the email is suddenly good. There are no errors, except for the misspelling of your name.

You laugh to yourself, wondering if using a person’s name to try and insult them is habitual of abusive types who have a poor sense of identity, or if they’re just that unprofessional.

You send your two weeks' notice to HR without informing the team leader. You’re supposed to, but you don’t respect her. She has given you every reason not to.

HR responds immediately, with a speed that almost emits relief through the screen. Perhaps good riddance is more accurate..

They are sorry to hear that you’re resigning and will get back to you once they inform the team leader.

You start working on the new practice file assigned to you that morning.

***

The practice file is a little over two hours long.

It’s a leap from the previous five files you’ve completed, both in terms of length and instructions. They’ve given you two days to complete it.

You’re fine with that. It will keep you busy.

The iMediaTrans platform has been acting up lately. So has your iMac desktop today.

The file you’re now working on starts jumping around. You have to keep starting from the beginning. The edits you’ve made are suddenly not appearing on the screen. You have to keep refreshing the page.

You point this out to one of the team leader’s clique members who’s standing by the person sitting to your left. Both of them stare at your screen and wonder aloud why that’s happening. Later, you inform the team leader’s underling who has suddenly been communicating with you frequently, of the problems with the file and iMac.

You ask if you should contact IT. She hesitantly suggests that it might just be because it’s a large file.

After 3 hours of working on the file, you’ve only managed to edit four minutes of it.

You can’t make progress.

***

The junior Chinese HR lady messages you on Microsoft chat. She asks if you can come by HR’s room. It’s about your resignation.

You walk across the office and knock on HR’s door. The team leader shows up moments later.

The senior executive Indian lady doesn’t say a word to you today. She’s mad. Probably doesn’t like you.

You had called her on her bullshit in your two weeks notice email that morning.

Had mentioned her eagerly nodding at much of what the team leader had said in the counseling session last week, and repeating odd statements that revealed the entire situation was, in fact, a waste of time. It was biased and unprofessional. But she was doing her job.

You understand, you wrote.

The overwhelming evidence, you had written, is in the fact that most if not all changes have had to come from Meyna’s end.

Suddenly she begrudgingly agrees to sit down and talk with you after HR has to get involved.

Suddenly she is coming to work more, and not after lunch.

Suddenly you have been given practice files.

Suddenly her underling whom you never had a problem with is communicating and offering instruction because the team leader is scared of being near you and has communicated entirely with you via team chat since last week.

Suddenly your training plan has been updated and has changed.

Suddenly her two Chinese managers have to help her lead her team.

Everyone from HR to managers to her innocent underling has to help her do her job as team leader and try to mask her incompetence.

You feel deeply embarrassed for her all over again.

You feel deeply embarrassed for everyone who has been coddling her.

It’s not wonder she never improves as a person, or learns right from wrong. She is only ever right. Even when she is wrong, she is right.

You had written to HR’s senior executive lady:

I had deliberated over the weekend following all of the events that occurred since the second week I started my position in ES Team 3 and such events have set the tone for the work environment in EST3.

The counseling session I attended failed to address the disturbing behavioral patterns of the Team Leader that had impeded communication, progress, respect within the team, proper time management, as well as respect for a co-worker.

At no point did anyone raise the question of why even hire someone when teams are busy transitioning to a new platform and the EST3 Team Leader and PCs aren’t able to train a new hire consistently. Neither was the question raised of why the Team Leader did not bother communicating about her perceived “slowness” of the new hire or assigning more practice files, which would’ve been the logical thing to do until I asked her to meet with me privately.

Things that were obvious and already known when I applied for the job were explained to me (“It’s why you can hear people typing all the time”) or what I didn’t know (“You joined at a busy time, so everyone is busy). This last point is very disingenuous as it places blame on a new hire.

On Friday (Aug 19), I went to HR before the end of working hours to talk to Ms. ____ about an existing issue of psychological harassment exhibited by another team member who openly communicated that she reports what I say to the EST3 Team Leader. Ms. ____ cut me off at one point and repeated what Meyna had told her about a team member being busy with a _____ project, despite the irrationality of the reasoning as Meyna was not in the office that day, left after the counseling session the previous day, and was on leave on Monday and is a different person than I am, thus does not experience what I experience, and is not omniscient.

The outcome of this entire situation is telling, as most if not all of the changes and improvements have had to come from the Team Leader’s side, which is an admission of wrongdoing, even if it is not openly acknowledged and no apology was offered. I’m also unable to sign the counseling forms sent on Friday by Ms. ____ as there were several inaccuracies or indications leaning in favor of the Team Leader despite the problems coming from her end and projected onto me.

You don’t expect anyone to acknowledge the obvious. 

One would need to be ethically motivated to do so.

***

The junior HR lady awkwardly suggests that today can be your last day.

She isn’t sure. It’s mostly you and her who are speaking in the room.

The other two, sitting on the other side of the desk, are silent. The team leader sits as stiff as an inanimate object.

You haven’t acknowledged her once today, but you can see her to your left. Even when she does utter a word to the junior HR lady’s question, it comes out sounding like a timid squeak.

The junior says since you’re still being assigned practice files, it would be strange if you had to continue sticking around for two weeks. You agree.

“It would be pointless,” you say, laughing slightly.

She thinks tomorrow would be better. She’s not sure if your termination letter can be ready by today. You say it’s not a problem.

She looks at your two weeks notice e-mail on her computer screen. Awkwardly asks if you would have any other issues regarding the situation.

You’re not sure if she’s asking in a roundabout manner if you would take the matter further, perhaps legally.

To your left, you notice the senior executive finally lean a little from behind her computer to look at you.

You could waste more of your time and breath attempting to point out the absurdity of the whole situation, and Meyna, but it would be no different than trying to reason with a dumpster.

You say you’ll just leave it at that. There’s nothing more for you to say.

You don’t say, Here, anyway.

You think it would make things even more awkward to tell them that you write about abusers and certain personality types, or the root causes plaguing Malaysian society on social media. You have been doing so since 2019 ever since the Thinking Cup incident in Boston.

You don’t want to sound vengeful.

There is a calmness in your heart.

It flutters like a bluebird wanting to escape. The poem resonates through you.

You lean your left elbow on the armrest of your chair. Wait, it’s almost over.

You speak deferentially with the junior HR lady.

The meeting is brief.

It ends on an amicable note between you and her.

The two of you get up.

She opens the door for you.

You are free.

***

Don’t stick around to find out if you’re in a new coordinated game of sabotage.

As you had said to the team leader during the one-to-one meeting, and in the counseling session, you don’t lose anything if you end up having to leave.

Not your dignity, your principles, or your mind.

Just a job you had genuinely wanted to do.

The ball is in your court, you said.

You were extending to her the little bit of false power that she craved, knowing she would abuse it still.

Knowing that inadequacy will protect inadequacy.

That is the only distorted collectivist practice exhibited here.

The Malays in Boston have proved you wrong.

***

The team leader giggles, satisfied at the outcome of her game.

She believes in her own greatness, and a false sense of winning.

The typical Malay, the Lost Malaysian, gets ahead that way — by playing the game of innocence and entrapment Satan is known for.

The team leader had gone through all that trouble just to enforce the dominance she wanted over you.

It is a strange tribute to have demonstrated.

It has only empowered you more, but she doesn’t know this.

It is a wretched life, to be ignorant of the fact that everything you think you know is laughably wrong. It is a wretched life to live in self-imposed blindness based on misconceptions. To exist without a soul, or the most basic consciousness of one’s defective self.

It is the flawed mindset of having false ideas of what power entails.

You are struck by the conceit and unabashedness you had observed.

Pity the Lost Malays who have to spend their entire lives desperately trying to enforce those false notions of power and worthiness through deceit, manipulation, denial, and exploitation and believing that distorting the truth, or destroying all meaning makes them winners.

That is not power, you think on your quiet drive home.

Knowledge is power.