Real life isn't a fairy tale. Bullies win these fights more often than their victims. When we are talking about the work place, losing such a fight can end in

Real life isn't a fairy tale. Bullies win these fights more often than their victims. When we are talking about the work place, losing such a fight can end in unemployment. Its not as easy for non-developers to find new jobs. Personally, I evaluate the chances of winning in the event that I choose to fight against the consequences of losing. When I was in the military, my entire section had the privilege of having a steroid-laden megalomaniac as a first-line supervisor for close to three years. He was a couple of ranks higher than us, which as far as the military is concerned pretty much makes him God. He would show up to work every day at our remote site (away from anyone that outranked him) and immediately start screaming and throwing things. The worst part is that he was careful to never act inappropriately when we were around anyone who could have actually done anything about it. On paper, he was an excellent Soldier, and so no one ever believed anyone that complained about him. As stupid the phenomenon known as bullying seems, bullies can be clever in their own way. A few of us tried to stand up to him, but when you join the military, your right to freedom of speech is waived. No matter how politely anyone would try to address the issue, he would immediately threaten them with non-judicial punishment (They can take salary and rank from you simply because your supervisor claims that you did something he didn't like. You can ask for a trial instead, but then you could end up in prison.) if they didn't go away. So, in our situation, we just put up with him as best we could. Innocence in the military means fuck-all when your opponent is higher ranking, so we didn't have much recourse. As shift-leaders, we fought to protect the younger Soldiers from this guy as much as we could, which of course meant that we had to put up with more of his shit than anyone. If I had been a civilian, I would have had a better chance of doing something about his misconduct, but even still, there would have been a risk of termination should those efforts fail. Ideologically, taking action against a bully is always the right thing to do, but for those of us who live in the real world, failure brings consequences.