A documented story of workplace fairness, institutional trust and the hidden cost of silence
By Dr. Sonia Toumia
A few months ago, a friend told me something that stayed with me.
He is a long-serving public-sector employee. For more than two decades, he had built his professional life around responsibility, communication, initiative and public service. He had learned to work under pressure, accept criticism and carry responsibilities that often extended beyond the narrow boundaries of his job description.
He was not tired of working.
He was tired of trying to understand whether the rules were still being applied by the same standards to everyone.
That distinction matters.
Because an institution does not necessarily lose a committed employee on the day he resigns. Sometimes, it loses something much earlier: enthusiasm, initiative and, eventually, trust.
A career built on commitment
My friend’s story did not begin with a dramatic confrontation.
It began quietly, as many professional stories do: with years of work, responsibility and accumulated experience.
For more than two decades, he continued to perform his duties while developing a strong sense of professional responsibility. He wrote, communicated, proposed, followed up on projects and tried to contribute beyond the minimum expected of him.
He believed that professional initiative was part of public service.
He also believed that raising questions, drawing attention to problems and proposing solutions were legitimate parts of a responsible career.
For years, this seemed self-evident.
Then the atmosphere began to change.
What had once been understood as initiative could now be questioned as excessive correspondence, inappropriate communication or activity extending beyond professional boundaries.
The change was gradual.
That is precisely what made it difficult.
There was no single moment when everything suddenly collapsed.
There were successive episodes.
A letter.
Then a response.
A question.
Then another question.
A decision.
Then a request for clarification.
A disciplinary procedure.
Then another exchange.
And, eventually, a growing feeling that the professional relationship had changed.
When the paperwork becomes a memory
My friend kept the documents.
Letters.
Administrative correspondence.
Decisions.
Requests.
Responses.
Medical certificates.
Notifications.
Each one carried a date and a reference.
At first, these papers were simply part of his professional life.
Later, they became a chronology.
And a chronology can reveal something that memory alone cannot.
A workplace conflict is rarely born from a single document. It develops through accumulation.
One unanswered question can be tolerated.
One misunderstanding can be corrected.
One disagreement can be resolved.
But when unresolved episodes accumulate, each new event begins to carry the weight of those that preceded it.
A new letter is no longer simply a letter.
A new instruction is interpreted through previous experiences.
A new disciplinary measure is no longer considered in isolation.
The past enters the present.
That is when an administrative file can become a human story.
The moment the question changed
At the beginning, my friend was asking:
“How can I solve this?”
Later, he began asking:
“Why am I being treated this way?”
That change marked a turning point.
A committed employee can endure pressure.
He can accept criticism.
He can accept that an idea may be rejected.
He can accept a difficult assignment.
He can even accept a decision with which he disagrees.
What becomes much harder to endure is uncertainty about the rules themselves.
Are the standards clear?
Are they applied consistently?
Can an employee ask a question without being perceived as difficult?
Can professional disagreement remain professional?
And when a decision affects a person’s career or reputation, can that person understand the reasons behind it?
These are not questions of personal sensitivity alone.
They are questions of institutional justice.
Research on organizational justice distinguishes several dimensions of fairness, including distributive justice, procedural justice, interpersonal justice and informational justice. Recent research has linked perceptions of organizational justice with work engagement and organizational commitment.
This matters because employees do not judge an institution only by its final decisions.
They judge it by the path taken to reach those decisions.
The human cost behind the documents
There is something that official documents rarely record.
They record dates.
They record decisions.
They record procedures.
They rarely record what happens to a person between one document and the next.
They do not record the nights spent rereading a letter.
They do not record the anxiety of waiting for an answer.
They do not record the hesitation before sending another professional correspondence.
They do not record the question that keeps returning:
“If I do what I believe is right, will it be understood as an act of responsibility or as a problem?”
My friend did not become indifferent overnight.
On the contrary.
The more difficult the situation became, the more carefully he documented it.
He continued responding.
He continued explaining.
He continued trying to understand.
That is perhaps one of the most painful contradictions in professional conflict: the person who still cares the most may be the person who becomes exhausted by having to prove that he cares.
When initiative becomes a risk
One of the most revealing elements of his experience is that the conflict did not begin with an unwillingness to work.
It began with initiative.
He communicated.
He proposed.
He followed up.
He raised issues that he considered relevant to his responsibilities.
Yet initiative becomes fragile when employees begin to believe that every additional action may expose them to criticism.
The natural response is caution.
Then silence.
Then withdrawal.
This is how organizations can unintentionally train their most committed employees to stop taking initiative.
Not because the employees have become less capable.
Because they have learned that remaining silent may feel safer than being proactive.
The invisible withdrawal
The most dangerous consequence of workplace injustice may not be resignation.
It may be psychological withdrawal.
An employee can remain physically present while becoming emotionally distant.
He continues to arrive.
He completes formal duties.
He attends meetings.
He answers requests.
But he stops volunteering.
Stops proposing.
Stops taking risks.
Stops believing that additional effort will make a meaningful difference.
Research has associated organizational justice with work engagement, organizational commitment and job satisfaction.
The result is an invisible form of resignation.
The employee has not left the institution.
But part of the employee has already left the relationship with it.
When procedures become part of the conflict
My friend’s experience eventually involved disciplinary and administrative procedures.
Here, precision is essential.
An allegation is not proof of misconduct.
A disciplinary procedure is not, by itself, evidence that an employee is guilty.
And disagreement with an administrative decision does not automatically establish that the institution acted unlawfully.
The documents therefore have to be examined chronologically and in their legal context.
Tunisian administrative jurisprudence has addressed disciplinary matters and the rights of defence. Administrative Court decision No. 28401 of 3 June 2011, for example, is classified under public-service disciplinary matters and rights of defence.
These principles matter beyond one individual.
Administrative authority is not simply the power to issue decisions.
It also carries the responsibility to exercise that power through established procedures and safeguards.
When health enters the story
Then came another layer of vulnerability: illness.
In September 2026, my friend submitted medical documentation and followed the procedures required by his administration. Medical certification was followed by administrative communications, medical control and a subsequent decision concerning his sick leave.
At that point, the professional dispute acquired a deeply human dimension.
A person who is already under pressure is suddenly required to navigate another institutional process — one involving health, employment and uncertainty at the same time.
Again, precision matters.
The employee may disagree with the conclusion.
The administration may have its own assessment.
The important question is whether the decision, the procedure and its basis can be established clearly from the official record.
For someone whose livelihood and professional standing are involved, knowing the outcome is not always enough.
People also need to understand the process that produced it.
The danger of being reduced to a label
There is another danger in prolonged workplace conflict.
A person who repeatedly asks questions can eventually be seen as “difficult”.
A person who sends repeated correspondence can be described as “excessive”.
A person who challenges a decision can be perceived as “confrontational”.
Sometimes such descriptions may contain elements of truth.
But they can also obscure the original question.
What is the substance of the employee’s concern?
Is there a legitimate issue beneath the repeated correspondence?
Has the employee received an answer?
Has the answer addressed the actual question?
And has the institution distinguished between disagreement with an employee and misconduct by an employee?
That distinction is essential.
Otherwise, the personality of the employee can begin to overshadow the substance of the issue.
Loyalty is not silence
My friend’s experience also raises a broader question about professional loyalty.
Public employees have legitimate obligations. Confidential information must be protected. Professional secrecy must be respected. Information obtained through public office cannot simply be treated as personal property.
But professional loyalty should not automatically be equated with unlimited silence.
Confidentiality, professional secrecy, protection of official information, conflicts of interest and restrictions that may apply after leaving public service are distinct legal concepts.
They must therefore be examined according to the specific legal rules that govern them.
This distinction matters because a person’s professional experience is part of their life story.
Protecting legitimate confidentiality should not mean erasing the person’s right to speak about that experience within the limits of the law.
What an institution can lose without noticing
A highly experienced employee is more than a salary line.
He carries institutional memory.
He knows the history of projects.
He remembers decisions that are no longer documented in detail.
He understands procedures.
He knows colleagues, partners and networks.
He knows what has worked — and what has failed.
When such an employee loses motivation, the cost may not appear immediately in a financial statement.
It may appear as an idea that was never proposed.
A problem that was never reported.
A project that was never pursued.
A younger colleague who no longer benefits from accumulated experience.
This is why organizational trust is not a soft issue.
It is part of institutional capacity.
The employee who stays
My friend has not simply walked away.
Like many long-serving employees, he has professional memories, responsibilities and an attachment to the work itself.
People sometimes assume that remaining means accepting everything.
It does not.
People stay for many reasons.
They stay because they believe in public service.
They stay because colleagues depend on them.
They stay because decades of professional life cannot be erased by a difficult period.
And sometimes, they stay because they still hope that the institution can correct what needs to be corrected.
That hope should not be mistaken for weakness.
It may be one of the last forms of institutional trust.
What happens next
The documents in this story have dates.
They have references.
They record correspondence, decisions, responses and procedures.
For now, they speak for themselves.
The purpose of telling this story is not to replace an administrative investigation or judicial process with journalism.
Nor is it to declare one side right and the other wrong before the competent authorities have completed their work.
Some questions remain open.
Some procedures are still unfolding.
And some facts are better left to the competent authorities to establish.
When the legal process has run its course, and the relevant procedures have reached their conclusion, the full story can be told — with the documents, dates and decisions placed in their proper context.
For now, one lesson is already clear.
A good employee does not necessarily stop caring because the work becomes difficult.
Sometimes he stops believing because he no longer understands whether his effort, his voice and his commitment are being treated fairly.
And when that happens, an institution may lose something long before it loses the employee himself.
It may lose his initiative.
His confidence.
His willingness to go the extra mile.
And ultimately, his trust.
Trust is difficult to measure when it is present.
But once it begins to disappear, its absence can be felt everywhere.
***
Dr. Sonia Toumia is a Tunisian researcher and journalist holding a PhD in Islamic Studies from Ez-Zitouna University. She is the Coordinator of the Information and Communication Unit at Gifruit and Editor-in-Chief of “Fruits de Tunisie” magazine.
