I agree with all of the above, and would add: keep notes, at home, of every negative exchange w/ the Evil One. Write down dates, times, and places, with as much detail as possible. Also list names of people who witnessed said behavior. Don't tell anyone you have said record until/unless you do decide to file a lawsuit. Having such info. will add greatly to your credibility AND allow for some therapeutic actitity.
Good luck...and do get out asap.
Thanks, Illuminata. This is extremely important (and nobody else has said it, at least not on this thread, or the other Onion thread). If you are in a bad professional situation that has even the remotest chance of leading to a lawsuit--or even an internal hearing of some sort--TAKE NOTES on every such encounter.
Onion, I was in a similar situation two years ago, while on a VAP. It was a nightmare--literally (I mean I still have occasional nightmares that I'm back there). I sympathize. In the end, I decided it was more to my professional advantage to simply leave--once I had an offer--rather than to pursue redress.
I did challenge my chair once, publicly, over hus treatment of a colleague. This eventually cost me a letter of recommendation from the school. Luckily, I was able to find another job without that.
A teaching supervisor once suggested that in any potententially hazardous situation I not only keep a log of such events but also e-mail my versions to myself so that I would have a dated file with each entry written up at the time of the event in question (rather than recollected later). My teaching supervisor actually made this suggestion in reference to problem students--I had an aggressive student in one class who had threatened other students in the past and seemed on the verge of threatening me--but I think it's fairly good advice for any problem situation in academia. As Illuminata says, never mention to any other soul that you are keeping such a file--this would be perceived as a threat--just do it quietly, hoping that you'll never have to produce it.
With apologies again to the OP for hijacking this thread.
