Super weird situation- I am a hospital administrator and I am partnered with a physician to run my department and there have been a lot of personality conflicts. The first physician in the role (let’s say Dr. Z) tried to have me fired and bullied and harassed me relentlessly- the physicians are not hospital employees FYI, they are contractors. She stepped down when her bosses sided with me and I haven’t had to deal with her much. Her replacement (Dr. A) was much easier to work with, initially.
The project I was managing was a regulatory visit to maintain one of our designations and it was a very big deal. The department was in shambles when I took the job and the role had been vacant for almost 2 years so it was a lot of work to get ready and as the survey got closer, tensions got very high. Dr Z was mentoring Dr. A so our personality conflicts came to the surface.
The morning of the survey, the surveyors noted a missing document that was essential to maintaining our credential so it was very stressful trying to get it on the fly. While trying to track down why we didn’t have it, there was a lot of finger pointing and blame that was unnecessary as well as negative behavior (telling the team we are screwed, going to fail, etc.)
At the end of the first day as we are still working on the document, I get a call from Dr. Z saying I am incompetent and a terrible leader and that she threw away her career because of me- the story she tells everyone else is that she stepped down to spend k more time with her kids. whatever, she had done that before and i was used to it.
the next morning i encounter her and she dresses me down on front of a bunch of people- pointing her finger in my face and saying that she is going to drag me into the CEOs office and force me to take all the blame for the document (we finished it the night before so the issue was solved). it was awful energy for the team to deal with. i just walked away when she was done yelling.
fast forward to the exit interview and we passed with flying colors. Dr. Z thanks and identifies every team member except for me and then gives all the credit to a secretary who is her pet. the application alone was 90 pages and completed almost entirely by me.
She then takes off her shoes (she is Muslim so this matters). She had been wearing 4 inch stilettos with metal spike heels. And proceeds to throw them at me. We were across the room from each other so she had to really throw them to get them to land behind me. I didn’t even notice she had done that until I felt the shoe wiz by my face. I was stunned and went to my office and then just left because I was scared.
I called my boss who was horrified. He asked me to file a workplace violence report. HR met with me today and shared the results of their investigation. They found they couldn’t substantiate that the interactions were hostile or that she intended to hurt me. So they weren’t going to do anything about it.
I’m stunned. I have told this story to multiple people and they are always stunned that a professional person would behave that way. And if one of those shoes had hit my face I would have been badly injured. I am feeling so sad and angry that I have to keep working with this person and that there will be no consequences for their actions.
I consulted an attorney and he said what she did was assault. And he immediately recognized the cultural significance of a Muslim person throwing their shoes at someone (remember George bush?)
TL:DR- I got metal stilettos thrown at me during a meeting at work and HR says it’s not workplace violence.
What should I do? I feel embarrassed but I also feel like I am not being protected and they are unwilling to control bad behavior.