It had all the earmarks of the bs clique shiat of grade school and junior high. I'd see my coworkers all gathered around one person's desk, chatting, and as soon as I'd approach, the boss would stop everything, give me the stink-eye and say: "Can I help you?" or "Do you need something?" in that disdainful, disgusted tone that says she really wouldn't hep or care what I need, and that I was intruding on something private... when it wasn't private at all, it was a freaking informal staff meeting/discussion. She wouldn't let the conversation continue until I left.  If I persisted, and stood around, the meeting would suddenly break up. And after a few minutes, just enough time for her to get back to her desk and log into email - I'd get snarky emails, with cc's to her bosses, requesting updates on all my tasks, plus a veiled comment about me slacking of with a list of new make-work chores to do.

If she saw me talking to others, she'd find ways to bust that up, and discourage the other person by questioning them about their own task progress or calling them away to a private talk in her office.

She'd make it a point to never discuss any official business if I was in earshot. Workers co-located next to me were always asked to accompany her to her private office, even for the simplest, shortest conversations. It was systemic ostracizing.

If people were brought thru the offices on tours, she would try like hell not to introduce me or even let me be seen, much less let people speak to me. She'd actually arrange the path of the facility tour to avoid my area. She hated it when I defeated that by just walking thru wherever the tour was anyway, as if on my way to something else.

There was the passive-aggressive withholding of scheduling and task information. I'd be told when to be somewhere for an assignment, but nothing about if it was indoors or outdoors, if there were additional needs to plan or equip for, oh, and no actual address or parking information, until the very last moment. So I'd have to needlessly over-pack and prepare for anything, often hauling an extra 200 pounds of sensitive, awkward and expensive gear in and out, just in case it was needed.  Most times, it wasn't.  That's a morning load-out, an arrival load-in and load-out to parking, a load-into the venue, a load-out to parking, and a return load-out at the shop. Most times, it wasn't. But she made sure I got the exercise, hauling it in and out, every day. I got to weigh my full cart full of gear once on one of those fancy truck scales and it was close to 300 pounds of crap to haul. Others in the shop were allowed to take the truck home the night before, from work, fully loaded with thousands of dollars' worth of gear, park it in their driveway overnight, and drive direct to the venues, on the clock; and go straight home end of day, returning the gear the next morning... these were all serious rule violations that were never enforced, except on me.

There was the blatant over-controlling: she'd send an email with a cc up the chain to her bosses, telling me in excruciating detail, when to arrive to the office, how long it should take to load that 200-odd pounds worth of gear, when to depart, when I should be arriving at the venue, when I should take a lunch break, when I should be done, when I should arrive back at the shop, when I should be clocked out. The calculations were always designed to make the drive time impossibly short for a 200-mile one-way trip in any season, weather, construction zone and traffic conditions, into Chicago morning commuter traffic, both mornings and evenings. If you didn't break the speed limit (a fireable offense, but everyone in the shop but me did it, including her), you would be late. So to make my assignments on time, without speeding, and have enough time to park, unload, load-in and set up plus have a margin to deal with inevitable surprises... I had to come into the office earlier than the paperwork specified, and not report that time, meaning she had me giving away an hour every time I went out, unpaid, or risk firing for cause for lateness on the job. Coming back home out of Chicago, at five PM on a work day or God forbid, a Friday, it was an easy 90 minutes to 2 hours, just to get from the Chicago downtown Loop to Bolingbrook, ( maps says it's only an hour )  then I had another 3 hours or so driving down the expressway to go, racking up OT the entire way... and inevitably, I'd get a complaint email that I must be dogging it, because of course I'd rather be in 5 mph bumper-to-bumper traffic near Cicero Avenue than home banging my wife or getting some sleep after an 18 hour work day. I had to take time-stamped photos with my phone of my every stop and start, in case I had to defend myself against goldbricking claims. I had a LOT of pictures from being stopped in traffic, due to construction or road accidents. I even had to log pee breaks.

There was moving my office to worse and worse locations, a la "Office Space".

There was piling-on of extra work on my return from every doctor appointment, illness or vacation day or personal day, never gave anybody else my load to shoulder for even a day. Every absence required massive documentation, no trust. Other staff could do as they liked, never an issue.

There was scheduling of assignments designed to deliberately fark up important events in my personal life, so I had to keep my personal life as secret as possible, and apply months ahead for time off for life events.

There was assigning me broken or worn equipment when everyone else got new, and if I bought my own tools and devices to make my job easier, she'd ban my use of them... only after I'd bought them, of course.

There was trying to sabotage me by giving me all the shiat tier little clients with low-status jobs. Joke's on her: I'm into that shiat - giving them my very best efforts and exceeding their expectations, every shiat tier client wound up with award-winning level stuff and went bragging to everyone how great I was, and giving referrals to other clients who then came by, asking for me by name for new jobs. So she started re-assigning the former shiat-tier clients to other staff with instructions to those staff to do a minimal effort and discourage repeat business. I saw it again and again; the clients would call or email me direct to ask why they couldn't have me again, and I couldn't really tell them on a possibly monitored conversation what was really happening, just that I didn't control what assignments she gave me. I never talked smack about the other staff to clients; I always said they were all as good as me and would give the same great care and attention.  But that was a lie; I saw some of the jobs I formerly did for those clients, after they were re-assigned, and it was like looking at the before-and-after of the "Monkey Christ" painting fiasco, from the lighting, to the photography, to the talent direction, editing, and script, to the graphics. It ticked the boxes as work that had been completed, but it was done in as low-care and ineffective a way as possible, consistent with the boss' desires to give good service to only one favored client and chase off or ignore all others as much as possible. I saw clients literally turned away with "we're all busy" messages from my boss, when for a fact we weren't busy at all; just waiting for the most favored client to need something.  When annual employee reviews came up, she'd find ways to make my work sound poor. Too bad I had all these glowing letters of commendation from the clients to prove otherwise.

So yeah, I felt bullied at work.   It was always just on the edge of what was legally allowable or passed off with excuses and alternate interpretations. But yeah, it was a systematic campaign to fark with me enough to get me fired or make me quit, and I put up with it for about six years. Every Sunday afternoon I'd start getting  more and more cranky and anxious, having a hard time going to sleep, as my body would start to gird itself for the oncoming battles and stress waiting for me every Monday thru Friday morning.  Walking up to the office doors was like the opening scenes to "Joe Vs. The Volcano". Every day.  Or like how you felt in grade school, having to go in the school doors but knowing the bully was there waiting to fark you up, and nobody was going to save you.