That makes a lot more sense. According to the original post in which I was responding:

“I’m talking about like, service workers and store employees who are miserable and take their anger out on completely innocent people.”

It was from that framework that I made my post. In those settings as an customer/bystander (which would be completely innocent people) it would be very strange to get bullying comments from many of them. Most wouldn’t/don’t care enough about people they literally don’t need to interact with to even bother putting the effort in to bully.

Office work/hierarchy bullying are super common and happen in almost any workplace I’ve ever seen. I wasn’t aware that was the topic. As for how to avoid being bullied in those types of situations… it’s a lot of work. Some of the common ways people handle it are to ignore, confront, joke, or play dumb. I personally mix it up.

But the single best way to deal with bullying is/has/will always be: group up. Bullies generally ‘punch down’, going for people who appear in some way weaker than they are. It falls apart very quickly when there are others around who are willing and able to support you.