Perhaps stood there, open mouthed, wondering if you’d really been treated like that?

If you have, then you may well resonate with this story.

After I returned from my last rotation on Nauru, I spent some time adjusting back into Sydney life, resting and resetting. A new appointment with The Salvation Army came my way, only about 20 minutes’ drive from where I was living in the inner west. I was to have an associate role with the couple who ran a Salvo centre with lots of programs and activities and I was sure I would find a place for myself there.

Within in a couple of days of being in the office, I inadvertently overstepped an invisible line about how things were done in the centre. I can’t even remember what it was it was so trivial. But what does stick in my memory are the words of one of the office staff who apologised to me for neglecting to tell me about this particular procedure, saying, “I’m sorry I got you into trouble with…” filling in the name of the officer in charge.

Got me into trouble!?!

Those were words out of my childhood and teen years, at school or at home. They were not words I expected to hear in a workplace full of mature adults. But it wasn’t long before I saw that “getting into trouble” was an everyday reality for the staff who worked under this person – and they walked on eggshells trying hard not to overstep the mark.

While I didn’t feel confident enough yet to confront the officer about her management style (passive-aggressive micromanager) it wasn’t long before my idea of how an adult operates clashed with hers, we came to verbal blows, and I told her to not treat me as a child.

Apart from the couple in leadership, my relationships with most of the people at the centre were great and I even caught up with some of the refugees who had been on Nauru and were now living in the inner west of Sydney.  However, my time in that appointment was short. and I moved to Melbourne to work in the Salvos editorial department.

Like most people, I don’t like conflict or confrontation, but I’ve learnt that I cannot just accept the norms of a workplace just because they are the ones put in place or supported by leadership. Especially when those norms keep others “in their place” and allow leaders to operate with little or no accountability for their actions and attitudes.

It takes courage to challenge accepted norms at work.

But, for me, this is about justice. Justice that treats people fairly, that doesn’t continue to privilege one person over another just because “that’s the way it’s always been done!”