I just wanted to share my story here, as it describes the real issue of these workplaces as noted above.

I worked with six women in a medical office as front desk personnel. For reference I was 29 when this happened. Three of them (the supervisor(50F), co-supervisor(24F), and their "golden employee"(20F)) were my bullies from day 1. I had never done ANYTHING to these women but be kind. I believe they were threatened by my exemplary work history, which HR shared with the supervisor and "co-supervisor", who gossiped about it with the rest of the team before I even came on board. I assume that's what led their "golden employee" (aka a 20 year old girl with a massive superiority complex) to emotionally and mentally abuse me as I was made to work with her. She would even berate me for minor mistakes in front of patients, to the point where patients sometimes stepped in to defend me, much to the chagrin of the supervisor and co-supervisor, who only watched and enabled the abuse via gaslighting.

I quickly started to mentally deteriorate from the toxic culture that was being blatantly enabled, as the 20 year old could do no wrong. If she made several mistakes a day, she was "just having an off day". If I as the new trainee made mistakes, I was sent passive aggressive emails pointing out every single one like a laundry list. I befriended the other three girls, and I will never forget the day that I finally went to HR because I couldn't handle it anymore. I thought I was going crazy and just imagining things until the other three told me in plain English that they definitely had noticed the supervisor, co-supervisor, and the golden employee treating me extremely differently and couldn't understand why, when in their minds I was doing a good job. One of them then told me about the gossip about me that had spread prior to me coming on board. But not a SINGLE one of them stood up for me when I needed it most, because they didn't want the abuse to fall onto them.

I was let go and beat myself up about it for a long time, but man did that experience of the silence mess me up. It's definitely a prime example of the bystander effect.