Dealing With Grown-Up ‘Mean Girls’

That's why my "friends" are of the four-legged variety and I refuse to work for or with females ever again. The nastiest, most toxic workplace of my life was run by females. I avoid all contact with other females if I can help it.

Anyone have a book they recommend that discusses this mean spirit in women more? The comments were really therapeutic for me.

Please don't say "help me understand." I once had a male supervisor who used the phrase to demean the person he was talking to and to imply that they could not express themselves well. There are times when it might be helpful, but it is easily mistaken for a patronizing, superior attitude.

What about "Mean Christian Women?" I knew one who contrived to get her old mother moved into her home, even though she was happy with assisted living, so that she could divert her social security and pension. Then her mother developed Alzheimer's disease. The Mean Christian Woman didn't want to take care of her mother, she just wanted her mother's money. She was not working either. Instead of taking care of her mother herself, she bullied her daughter, then in her 20's, to staying home, not working outside, and not going to school outside, to take care of grandma. Daughter got to be 27 -28 and wanted to move out, marry her boyfriend and start her own family but grandma still needed constant care. So Mean Christian Mom said that her daughter's boyfriend wasn't good enough and tried to break them up. (Fortunately daughter married him anyway and is happy.) As soon as daughter moved out, grandma died. Then, Mean Christian Mom kept 95% of her mother's money despite the will and only gave her brother a tiny tiny check after their mother died.

Growing up, my parents, called out divisive behavior and stressed the importance of the golden rule when it came to the dynamics of my sisters and I. They were kind and didn't foster competition between us. I have a lot of gratitude for them. They created a sort of force field for us, when through the years as situations arose where manipulative behavior would be present, I could sidestep gracefully or come up with a fair solution in work situations. Thoughtful parenting really makes a difference when it comes to raising kind children. Mean girls and boys need extra guidance when it comes to doing the right thing. In the long run, that and being kind will help you get a good nights sleep. There has always been a great swamp of mundane behavior a lot of people think is normal. You can choose to rise above it and still be down to earth. Move and breathe in loving kindness. And remember, you can't make everybody happy, so start with yourself.

This article really resonated with me. Due to low self-esteem and shyness growing up, I avoided socializing with cliques in school. I had a few good friendships with girls but enjoyed my friendships with males much more. To this day, I find the company of men less stressful. I am married for 47 years, a mother and grandmother. I have participated in women’s organizations and it takes every ounce of effort to show up for a large event. I enjoy casual one on one lunches and coffees with a few ladies and invest very little emotional cost into these relationships. I simply will not trust my heart to these women. I have a lifetime of wisdom and experience to know better.

Dealt with this in the workplace until I left a job I loved because the environment had become toxic. Having never encountered mean girls behavior in school, I had no idea what was happening until a colleague who was managing to work effectively with the clique in question while avoiding their behaviors shared an apology and explanation over a lunch invitation. This didn’t solve the problem - I moved on to another position- but it was really helpful in understanding and processing my experience and recognizing mean girls behavior in other situations. The approach of the supervisor or team leader makes a huge difference in the extent to which this is tolerated in the workplace.

Having read through most of the comments, I can see a pattern, and have experienced it myself - workplaces, and other organizations, do not reward the behaviors they say they want (teamwork, patience, problem-solving, etc.). And they do not discourage the behaviors they say do not want (gossip, me-first attitudes, getting by with doing the least, keeping commitments, etc.). Those in authority need to reward, and actively teach how to engage in, desired behaviors. Problem-solving and conflict resolution and the others are learned skills. Likewise, those who refuse to learn or demonstrate those behaviors must feel the consequences. This seems obvious, I’m sure, but clearly it’s not, since people continue to turn a blind eye to “mean people.” The million-dollar questions: Why must it be either-or? Why can’t one perform AND be kind and fair?

I've had my share of grown-up mean girls' treatment in the workplace. As a result, I never want to work for a woman again. I was 21 when I experienced it for the first time- my supervisor treated me so poorly (yelled and called me stupid in front of other office staff) that I cried every day in the bathroom at work until I got a new job. Fast forward many years and many other mean girls' experiences later... my most recent mean girls' treatment happened with a woman who was my supervisor at one point, then eventually my peer, and constantly needed attention. When I was busy, and didn't drop what I was doing every time she needed help with something as simple as a Google search, she complained about me to the CEO and any other top-level executive who would listen. She also tried to sabotage me on many occasions, enlisting the help of another woman who worked in the office. It was a miserable existence. I'm not perfect, I tend to withdraw when I feel attacked. I'm always civil in the workplace- because we're in the workplace- but I'm not overly friendly if I'm being mean girls' attacked, which potentially perpetuates the cycle. In any event, I didn't deserve any of that treatment. No one does. I work for a man now, thankfully.

....and think about every time I wished I had the advice “dignity over politeness”. This is the message we all need to be an ally, or to set our own healthy boundaries when someone else is improperly defining our place in a pecking order.

My sister is a mean girl. Sad to say I walked away from my relationship with her. She said some nasty stuff to me that I cannot forgive and after 64 years decided life is too short to have someone like that in my life.

I remember when I was a teenager my Mom saying if you have one or two really good friends you are very lucky. I remember thinking oh geez, that's so pathetic! Fast forward to me age 64 and I think of this often. My friend group has drastically shrunk in recent years, previously composed of competitive woman, condescending woman, transactional relationships, along with the superficial chit chat and gossip. I befriended many and worked with many. Until I didn't. Many dropped me and I also thinned the herd. Sometimes I wonder if women have a default setting of mean girl-just look at all the skirmishes on TV shows like THE VIEW and the Real Housewives franchise and their popularity. Am I lonely? Occasionally. But the peace of mind due to lack of drama more than makes up for it.

More articles like this please! Very helpful to get this information into the jet stream of knowledge.

My mother was a mean girl, mostly I think, from herself having had an abusive mother. Trying to deal with her, even when I was older and more sure of myself, was always like walking through a minefield. A friend gave me what is probably the best advice ever about how to deal with my mother’s passive aggressiveness ( and everyone else’s too): “Respond to the words rather than to the tone.” When my mother wouldn’t decide on a restaurant, for example, and insisted that I choose, she invariably would respond to my choice: “Really, you want to go to THAT place.” I would simply and neutrally reply that, yes, I did want to go there. It’s a powerful strategy because it throws the responsibility for the aggression back to the aggressor. She has to then either suck it up and go with the choice or state her own preference. And isn’t that the point to begin with - losing the drama!

Another "me too" opportunity here with respect to mean grown-up girls. As a nurse of many years, I've learned that many women are very confused about how to express anger and cope with conflict. As a result, these sequestered emotions ooze out in passive-aggressive manipulations of those who could otherwise be allies. Dr. Bob Sutton has helped me learn how to deal with workplace challenges more than any course in my graduate and post graduate education. As a nursing educator, I have suggested curriculum changes to nursing programs so that nurses are taught how to cope with conflict. After 10 years of teaching very little change has occurred and if considered at all, my ideas were adopted by another faculty member who took the credit. Rather than embracing this real problem in nursing, we embrace "mindfulness" and "spirituality" for cures against conflict. While these are delightfully gentle ideas, they are not the right tools for the really tough job of helping ill and injured humans. Nor do these ideas build conflict coping strategies. They are like putting a bandaid on an aneurysm. Stop sugarcoating harsh realities and teach women of all ages ways to cope with real emotions that produce dignity, logic, and commerarderie. Conflict management should be taught at all levels of education beyond the "sharing and caring" we learn in kindergarten.

Men do the same thing. Instead of avoiding anger by being manipulative, they avoid sadness. Angry temper tantrums, bravado attitudes etc. are often just avoidance tactics to escape feelings that their gender deems unfit to have. Feelings are uncomfortable to confront whether you're a man or woman. Those that are most uncomfortable tend to be the bullies.

My mean girl experience still has me baffled. A jogging group formed comprised of mostly middle aged women. We would meet pretty much every Saturday morning and it was transformative for me as it really helped my chronic depression. We ran together for years. Then, I started to notice that I was being excluded from group communication. Out of town races were planned and finalized before I even knew about them. When I asked if there was something I did, I'd get the gaslighting routine like "What do you mean?" I remained assertive and still showed up but it was clear that something had changed. The feeling of being an interloper became painful. The group ended up falling apart but it still stings when I think about it.

I am almost 60 and have worked my whole life. I have mostly had women bosses- and a lot of them were terrible- awful! I think it's because Older women- at that time- were forging ahead, moving up in big companies or owning their own businesses - and they had NO role models. It was frightening and horrible for them too- although a lot of behavior cannot be excused. I see it in my own family too- I have an older sister who is so passive, timid and suffers from such incredible suppressed anger- that she blows up over the slightest things. She will just lose it in a restaurant if they have Diet Pepsi rather than Diet Coke. Very sad.

Behaviours of a mean spirited and disruptive kind do a great deal of damage to the lives of others, in similar ways to the saying: "one rotten apple spoils the bunch." Often the female or male who engages in behaviours of this kind seems to be addicted to acting in these ways. If a person is addicted to alcohol or drugs they might be confronted with an intervention. The person might be given feedback about how their behaviours are hurting themselves and others. But we are still waiting for group interventions for people who are addicted to behaviours of a mean-spirited kind, even though these behaviours do tremendous damage to the lives of others. Often people addicted in these ways, are free to continue their negative behaviours, until either they move on or the people who are hurt move on. Due to the countless people who are hurt, addictions to alcohol and smoking are treated as a public health issue. If society treated the issue of mean-spirited behaviours in groups and organizations, as a public health issue, more organizations might take issues of this kind more seriously. Listing examples of these types of behaviours in public settings is an important step in bringing behaviours of this kind and their impacts out in the open.

Thanks for this column. It is hard to change from a turn the other cheek attitude to standing up for oneself. It took a traumatic event for me to seek a therapist and learn that it was OK to protect myself and express anger.

I am an attorney working in an office led by women. I had a mean girl boss my first seven years at my job. I couldn't advance or "get anything right" because she was so vindictive and didn't want me to succeed. Upper management turned a blind eye to her behavior because she had the most seniority of any non-management staff. Eventually, she got in a petty disagreement with our big boss and left in a huff never to return. It was at that point that my career trajectory took off. We had another mean girl who fancied herself to be the queen bee. She controlled who got invited to lunch and other activities. If you didn't kiss up to her, she excluded you like you had the plague. She had a nasty disciple. Both left our office a couple years ago. Since their departure, our office has been a pleasant, congenial, and collaborative workplace. I now genuinely enjoy socializing with my colleagues. Our conversations are great and everybody is welcome at the table. A few rotten apples can spoil the whole orchard.

As a teen - so many mean girls. It was dreadful. As a mom and professional woman - virtually none. 90 percent of the women I interact with want to support each other. Are there insecurities? Sure. But the social apparatus that is there in high school for mean girls to thrive - it doesn’t exist in the adult world.

I always think the the "Mean Girls" phenomenon is interesting. However, I really haven't experienced it. I went to an all women's college we were all about sisterhood and supporting other women. It is amazing what that sort of environment will do for you. The women at my college really looked after each other and we still have the "old girl's network" many years later. I went into engineering which is mostly male-dominated. I've seen plenty of vindictive and petty behavior displayed by men in both gradate school and in industry and would not say that women have stood out as being more "mean" in this regard. I often wondering if this "mean girls" thing really exists or if it is just another way of society stereotyping women.

Wait until you move into assisted living. IT doesn't even end in your golden years. Those mean girls now have all the time in the world to gossip and create alliances. Dementia doesn't always make things better. It can result in other residents being unable to see the lies from the truth due to their dementia. And there is nothing anyone can do. The administration can't tell an 86 year-old to be nice.

When mean girls grow into mothers they use the social lives of their kids like the high school hallway. It’s pretty brutal.

I had the distinct displeasure of working for women who were ragingly addicted to alcohol, and another addicted to firing staff and ruining lives after being tossed aside by the married boss following years of being his “office wife.” Their anger, unrelenting and potent, and unexpressed in a constructive and honest way - ate them alive and damaged the competent women around them (they reserved their rage for other women) in the process. Women lose all of their power when they become furious and hopeless, and bury their feelings in drugs and alcohol and other destructive behaviors. They also ruin the lives of so many people around them. I work now with a woman who owns her emotions, and is beloved and respected beyond measure. She is a rare soul. Thank God for her goodness and maturity.

I found working with women for 30 years that it was a minefield, a viper’s nest, a nightmare. Women, contrary to popular belief, can be incredibly vindictive, backstabbing and cruel. I’d be friends with a man over a woman any day. My work life was a combo of Mean Girls Meets Groundhog Day. Ironically, men are meaner to women on social media than are women. So it’s a new and uncharted day in social media. Time for research. Until then, I block freely and generously.

Not long ago, my friend invited me and a mutual friend to meet up with three of her other longtime travel buddies for a beach vacation. I tend to get along with most people pretty well, and everybody accepted me except one woman. She turned out to be the first 65-year-old mean girl I've ever met. I recognized her behavior from my childhood girls' school, and she really got to me. She was the only shadow on the trip. When the opportunity to repeat the trip arose and I heard she'd be there, I decided to go and determined not to let her bother me. I looked forward to enjoying everyone else's company and didn't worry about her. Well, she wasn't having it. She did not want me in the group and amped up her hostility and pranks, always out of sight or earshot of everyone else. Our mutual friend could see I was distressed but what could I say? This other person has been her friend longer and they've logged a lot of miles together. It's not my friend's responsibility if everyone doesn't get on, and I didn't want her to regret including me in the first place. But I was miserable. The mean girl won; I won't be on a trip that includes her again. Unless we're scattering her ashes.

I attended girls’ schools all through to graduate school. As a result, ALL my friends are male. No exception whatever.

Article is good, but author doesn't address the psychological aspects of some "mean adult girls". Some people have psychological aspects of their personalities where they overwhelmingly feel they "must be right" at all costs. Some have Borderline personality disorders, narcissism, and/or feel they are simply Superior to everyone else, and are compelled to make this known. As for myself, I have found, time and time again, that these people simply cannot take even the tiniest bit of criticism, no matter how you say it. You can coat your issues with them in the sweetess way, but they will lash out at you worse than a rattlesnake with the most poisonous venom. Many do believe that they would psychologically die if they did otherwise. My solution is to simply drop these people like a hot potato. I have gone to Codependents Anonymous meetings and have learned NOT to let these people into my life any further. I agree with the author that we Must acknowledge our anger. However, if telling this to someone who has hurt you will only cause them to respond with MORE meanness towards you, then don't tell them. You don't deserve any more pain from these people. Their personalities thrive on finding 'nice' people to dump on, and none of us deserve that.

This is incredibly valuable advice. I am currently working on this very issue with my therapist. I was taught to always be polite, regardless of how you felt. Manners were primary. That is a deadly way to live because it murders your soul. It also makes it hard to even recognize angry feelings. So after decades of swallowing mistreatment, suffering from mean-girl colleagues, downright cruelty and abuse from men I am learning how to identify my anger. That is step number one. Since I have been working on this my uptight physical symptoms have been alleviated....ibs greatly diminished, backache gone, headaches gone. I strongly encourage women to get a good therapist so they can learn how to not be a doormat, to not be afraid of anger and to learn how to express it safely. It’s liberating. Thank you for this column.

It is much agreed how communication is key, and as a woman we should never be stepped over as a floor mat by any friend, family member, or colleague. For me the way of communicating my indifferences and feelings is being calm, cool and collected when expressing any anger to that individual. It is the approach that is a key factor. Disappearing on a person, subliminal posts on social media, or "venting" to another friend doesn't resolve anything it just may exacerbate the issue and the fillings being built up inside of us. Take a deep breath, then go for it with calmness and respect.You got this !

I found this piece oddly put together because the author opens with a quote from a woman about the woman's desire to avoid conflict and then the rest of the piece focuses on anger - how women express anger ineffectual ways and how we can express anger more effectively. Is the quote from the woman angry? How did we get to the anger piece? I'm genuinely confused.

Part of the problem with lack of support from other women at work is that we are pitted against each other, we are all vying for the same token spot. There are fewer women executives, partners, leaders in every area of the work force & because we are conditioned to be polite from a young age, we are also trained to accept less: not just pay, we accept less respect, we assume the women who are at the top got there by being mean and are secretly happy that they might be successful, but no one really likes them. We accept less from the men we work with, from those who mansplain that we are too emotional or are not invested iin the job because we also want a family and we are afraid of threatening our relationships by focusing too much on our careers or god forbid earn more than our partners. We apologize for being! All in pursuit of being liked by the right people because that’s supposed to be the dream, not professional success, we are supposed to be popular. We don’t train our sons to be followers, we train them to bury their emotions. No one cares if Mark Zuckerberg has friends but we sure care if Martha Stewart does. Amy Klobuchar has to be nice, Hillary Clinton had to bake cookies when her husband ran for President, but can Mayor Pete bake? What about Uncle Joe? The man can no longer string 2 coherent sentences together is still in the race. We have to quit sitting on our hands, life is not junior high & there are real repercussions to pretending it’s 1950 again.

About that first time I stood my ground with a friend of 25 years who was becoming mean, critical and unreliable with me: I expressed concern at the turn our relationship had taken - using only two short, carefully chosen I-statements. She ghosted me. This wasn’t the outcome I’d hoped for, but my speaking up likely saved me from more drama and its attendant angst. As people say, I miss the friendship that was, but not the way it had become.