Employee is a bully, but is also going through trauma.

What would you do?

Edit: So I gave my employer the letter, the employee is now on S**cide watch. I’m not any less conflicted about the situation but now there are even higher risks at stake. I’ve told my employer I’ll consider the matter resolved for the immediate future until we can work out how to proceed.
End edit.

Original post: I’m in a situation where I don’t know what to do. It’s a long one but both halves of the story are needed for a decision, please don’t just read the first half and reply.

There’s an employee at my workplace and when they started a few years ago it caused a lot of hell. They were a bully whenever the supervisors weren’t around, they openly mocked a staff members accent, allegedly smacked utensils out of a different staff members hands, and just in general created a really toxic environment. They stopped doing those things to me when I became a supervisor and instead changed to putting in false complaints about me, which could have been proven wrong easily if management ever asked witnesses or checked cameras (which never happened).

It got to the point where I was having to organise my shifts so that other staff weren’t working with this person because they hated it, one staff member was taking anxiety meds to work shifts with them, and I would break down in my office if I saw I would be working a shift with them alone because I was so worried about what they were going to make up this time with no witnesses to contest.

After Lockdown tragedy struck this employee. I’m not going to detail it but it was really bad, I honestly don’t know that I could survive it the way they have.

They took a lot of time off, but came back and to us, the old staff, they were like a brand new but broken person. None of us, members of staff who were here before lockdown, have had a single negative experience with them. We have all loved having them on our shifts, and separately we’ve each supported them at different times because they are still very broken and having to come back to work has not been easy on them. In the view of customers they are the model employee, but in the office they are a person who has suffered tremendous loss and there’s not enough time in the world to process it.

My dilemma comes with the new employees, those who came after the lockdown. They haven’t been graced with the changed person we have. I’ve received complaints, as has my manager, about how the staff member has treated all the new employees. To the point my manager warned me that it appeared the staff member was back to their old tricks and thought I may start getting targeted again. I haven’t, but it appears they have two different targets in their sights. One who we all have trouble with and does need help, but not to the extent that this staff member takes it, and another who doesn’t do anything wrong, just does things differently with the same end result.

We’ve had a lot of trouble in the supervisor area, one was promoted to another area, one retired, one is on mental health leave, one is soon to retire and being eased out, so this staff member has been made supervisor for certain shifts. This has given the staff member more confidence in how they treat these two staff members. It got to the point where they yelled at one of them repeatedly for doing something that I had told them to do the day before. After this I wrote a page long complaint to management listing their historical behaviour and what has been happening to the new staff, saying that I know staffing is tight but I feel the decision to give them supervisor shifts needs to be revisited.

I hadn’t handed it to the manager yet because I was waiting for the right time, but once again I learned the staff member is dealing with more grief around the previous trauma and I am stuck on what I should do.

On one hand when I was their coworker there was no one protecting the staff so I feel that now I’m in this position I need to be the one to say enough, people shouldn’t be treated like this at work and stand up for my staff.

On the other hand, this person is dealing with so much grief and I know it’s not okay to take it out on the employees but I also feel like if I give my complaint to management I’ll be kicking this person while they are down. I feel like they are changing and becoming better but there are still employees who are getting mistreated and they need to be my priority but at what cost.

I don’t know what to do, I know what I should do but morally it doesn’t feel right.