TESTS: How Systems Decide Who Stays and Who Goes

Why We Wrote This

Most people who experience workplace harm are told the same thing:

“Nothing has happened yet.”
“Give it time.”
“Try harder.”
“Don’t take it personally.”

By the time harm is visible, the damage is already done.

We wrote TESTS because across documented cases of workplace mobbing, the same pattern appears long before formal action, complaints, or exits. Systems under strain begin to test people.

These tests are not evaluations of competence or performance. They are measurements of compliance, silence, and expendability.

• A phrase repeated until it lands as humiliation.
• A procedure applied early or unevenly.
• A shift from conversation to documentation.
• Public “help” that creates obligation.
• Authority that withdraws instead of clarifying.

Individually, these moments are easy to dismiss.
Together, they form a sequence.

By the time removal is visible, the decision has already been made.

TESTS exists to name that sequence while there is still time to act.

This book does not ask readers to fix broken systems, practice resilience, or reinterpret harm as growth. It does not offer advice on how to endure or appease.

It offers situational literacy.

Inside TESTS, we document how informal authority activates under strain, how testing escalates, and why trying harder or staying quieter often accelerates harm rather than stopping it.

We show how systems move from evaluation to containment, and why early exit is often the safest option.

We wrote this for people who feel destabilized but cannot yet explain why.
For leaders and HR practitioners who need pattern recognition, not personality theory.
For anyone who was later told “nothing really happened” and knew that wasn’t true.

Something did happen.

TESTS gives you a way to see it.