An anxious teenager was struggling to handle a busy dinner rush. Instead of being patient, a man in line treated her stress like a personal insult, loudly mocking and belittling her because he knew no one would intervene.
We’ve all seen this. Maybe not that exact scene, but something close enough. And most of us did what everyone in that pizza shop did, we waited for it to stop on its own.
Bullying has evolved. It doesn’t just wear the face of a schoolyard predator anymore. Today it arrives as entitlement, performative outrage and self-righteous anger directed at whoever is most convenient. It’s become a first language for a particular kind of person who has confused cruelty with strength. Not a last resort, not a response to genuine injustice, just the default setting. Minor inconveniences have become acceptable targets.
There’s a word for that. Several, actually. But the one that fits best is cowardice. Because it is always, without exception, directed downward. Never at an equal. Always at whoever is most vulnerable.
That’s not strength. That’s just a cruel coward with an audience.
And society has let it go unchallenged long enough that it’s become normalized. We’ve told the bully they’re right. We’ve told the victim to just move on. We’ve told everyone watching that silence is the appropriate response.
She wasn’t incompetent; she was a teenager learning under pressure while being humiliated by a man who should have known better. What she needed wasn’t rescuing, she needed to be treated like a human being. That’s all.
All I could see was my daughter in her place, and I saw red.
Something in me, whether it was parental instinct or the ghost of every bully who ever stood over me at that age, wouldn’t let me stay quiet. When I looked at that girl, I didn’t just see a nervous kid. I saw every victim that stood there powerless, including myself.
Unfortunately for the man performing this injustice for his unsuspecting audience, I erupted in a response that shocked the room.
Every bit of my 6-foot-3-inch, 240-pound self loomed over him. It’s not really a choice, it’s a reflex. And reflexes don’t ask permission. What I gave him wasn’t a fight. It was a verbal evisceration. Bullies rarely expect that. They never see the vocabulary coming. He backed down. They usually do.
Then another voice. A different patron, disgusted not with the bully but with me. “You’re defending someone who shouldn’t have that job. She can’t even count change.” A bully needs an audience. The sadists who provide it are sicker than the bully. He got it much worse.
After they left, people leaned into me and whispered, “good for you,” as if it was a secret. Decency had become something you said under your breath.
I didn’t handle it with grace. I met contempt and intimidation with size and a decade’s worth of sharpened disdain. I became, for about 30 seconds, exactly what I despise.
I am the thing that bullies made. I know that act because I performed for it, not as the aggressor, but as the target. One bully in particular made sure of that for an entire decade. Long enough to leave a wound that never fully heals.
What bullying produces isn’t simple. Some go quiet. Some become the very thing that hurt them. And some become something the bully never intended, something that learned to punch back without ever punching down.
That’s the line I held. It’s the only one I’m certain of.
I bullied bullies. I’m not proud of any of it. It wasn’t righteous, it was just familiar. Just the weapon finding a use for itself. That day in the pizza shop was reflex. A byproduct of the bully’s programming. Somewhere along the way I became an involuntary participant in that ecosystem, unintentional checks and balances, if it has any.
I’m not looking for absolution. But I know the difference between punching down and hunting monsters. Bullies aren’t born, they’re made. The virus destroys some people, transforms others, and spreads through every silence we allow.
To quote comedian Marc Maron, “the monster I built to protect the kid inside has become difficult to manage.” I’m still working on that.
Same wound. Different scars.
The girl behind the counter deserved better than what those men gave her. We all did, everyone in that line who walked out carrying the quiet weight of having witnessed something ugly and done nothing.
That’s how it spreads.
The next time you’re standing in line and someone directs their anger at the person least able to fight back, don’t stand there in silence. You don’t have to be 6 foot 3 inches, loud, confrontational or righteous. You just have to be brave enough to say that’s enough.
Because silence has a cost.
And someone else is always paying it.
Corey Bergeron is a classically trained chef based in Weare with his wife and daughter.