Bullying is, to date, one of the problems of every society. Many people believe that only children bully one another and that is why most contents on bullying have to do with parenting. But judging from what is happening around us, you will agree with me that most bullies are adults. You find these people in the office, market, bus stations, neighbourhood, your village, and even your home. Many of our political, religious, and academic leaders are also bullies. That is why many persons are afraid to challenge or disagree with the opinions of their leaders irrespective of how wrong those leaders are.

Bullying has been identified as the major cause of mental, psychological, and physical health problems. People that were bullied are never happy. They are constantly on their guard because they are unsure of what they will do or say that will land them the next pain. Victims of bullying develop low self-esteem, become depressed, go into substance abuse, and can even harm themselves. Academically, most victims of bullying perform below standard because they don’t believe in their capabilities. Emotionally, victims of bullying are stressed up. In offices, bullied colleagues try as much as possible to shy away from responsibilities that will bring them to the limelight because they believe they will expose them to more bullying and possible harm. The consequences of bullying are so enormous that they all can’t be discussed here. But it is pertinent for you to understand that bullying has grave effects on its victims.

One thing people continue to ask concerning bullying is why people do it. As mentioned earlier, bullying is supposed to stop when people grow up but it doesn’t. More adults are becoming bullies, even though they know the adverse effects their actions have on others. The fact that these adult bullies continue with their wicked acts despite knowing their effects will tell you that they do them deliberately. They use bullying as their objects of control and manipulation. They believe that by hurting others, they can instil fears into them and turn them into their puppets. Unfortunately, they are right because they succeed.

Some people also resort to bullying because they see it as the only way they can attract the desired attention. These are the unsecured persons that feel no one wants to relate with them. If they bully someone and notice that it attracted the attention of the people they wanted, they continue with that modus operandi despite how damaging their actions are. In the cyber world, this is the usual method many social media ‘influencers’ use to attract followers and businesses.

Some bullies use their actions to cover up their offenses or crimes. Growing up, we witnessed this type of bullying (many of us were guilty of this). Remember the time you promised your younger siblings and cousins of a “beating they will receive” if they tell your parents what you did? You actually bullied them into silence. Many children do and still do this, but they stop as they grow older and realize their parents won’t punish them for every ‘crime’ they commit. But, unfortunately, many people grew up with this attitude. Criminals use this approach to silence witnesses. Politicians use it to quell opposition. Religious leaders promise people of imminent death and ‘generational curses’ if they expose their atrocities. All these and more are instances of bullying done to cover crimes and offenses.

Some people bully others because they want to destroy them. This may sound outrageous but it is true. Some people bully their targets because they are jealous of their progress and, hence, want to bring them down. The problem here is that the bullies can go to any length to destroy their targets because they are motivated by a negative emotion – jealousy – which can burn the soul of the bearer so long as he entertains it. So, as long as this bully continues to envy his target, he will continue to bully him. The downfall of his target may not even satiate his jealousy-induced appetite.

People also bully those they see as threats. It does not matter if the target is aware of his threatening status or not; so long as the bully believes he (the target) will stand in his way of achieving the desired goal, he will devise means of tormenting him. This is commonly found in offices, where senior colleagues think the junior ones may become managers before them because of their vast knowledge and expertise. This, here, is one of the major reasons bright employees are targets of their immediate superiors and other colleagues that were in the office before them. This is also why people’s files disappear in some offices.

“Who is a bully?” some of you may ask because you don’t believe adults are capable of doing all that was mentioned above. Well, if you say hurtful words, even as a tease, to people because you want to manipulate and/or control them, you are a bully. If you promise a person that you will “deal with him” for challenging you or your stance, you are a bully. If you hit people to force them into doing what you instructed (dear parents), you are a bully. If you force your colleagues, be it junior, peer, or senior, to adhere to your rules or face losing their promotion (or having low appraisal), you are a bully. So long as there is intimidation, coercion, aggression, threat, or hurt, to make people act as you desired, you are a bully.

Intel Corp.’s troubles are deepening, the biggest chipmaker, who has been battling to quell steady decline in its market growth, reported significant loss in three months following a drop in data center revenue and a steep decline in gross profit margin.

The latest quarter report drops signal that moves by Intel rivals are cutting its market share, compounding the woes created by its customers who have shifted to designing their own chip components.

Bloomberg reported that the PC business performed better on continued demand for laptops that run Intel processors. But the company’s Data Center Group generated first-quarter sales that fell 20% from a year earlier and missed Wall Street estimates. The unit is Intel’s most profitable businesses, so the lower revenue dented overall margins.

The shares fell as much as 7.5% to $57.90 as trading opened Friday in New York. It was the biggest drop since Jan. 22.

Investors had been optimistic about the new CEO’s recovery plan, pushing the stock up 26% this year through Thursday, after it declined 17% in 2020 and lagged far behind its rivals.

Last month, Intel’s CEO Pat Gelsinger announced plans to greatly expand its advanced chip manufacturing capacity. The new chief executive said the plans involve spending as much as $20 billion to build two factories in Arizona and to open up its factories to outside customers. The move aims to restore Intel’s reputation after manufacturing delays sent shares plunging last year. But the strategy, which was designed to directly challenge the two other companies in the world that can make the most advanced chips, Taiwan’s Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC) and Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, it’s a longshot..

Gelsinger inherited a mammoth task of revamping Intel’s declining dominance in the semiconductor industry, and has been making bold moves to reclaim the company’s dwindling market shares.

It is taking long and many trials for Intel to figure a way out of its ordeal. Major part of the challenge is building what the market really wants, and the company is struggling to catch up on that. Delays have allowed other chip companies to catch up and pushed customers to design their own components. Intel argued the server business is going through a temporary slump caused by too much inventory. The first quarter was the bottom and growth has returned, executives said.

The question remains whether Intel is losing market share and when profitability will start to expand. Gelsinger said Intel is now in “investment mode” during a critical period for its return to leadership, and promised he’ll deliver products that are again the best in the industry.

“The days of Intel having a stranglehold on this business have gone,” said Logan Purk, an analyst at Edward D Jones & Co. “The competitive landscape has shifted and it’s shifted quickly. That is going to weigh on this business.”

Intel said its gross margin, the percentage of revenue remaining after deducting the cost of production, was 55.2%, down more than five percentage points from the same period in 2020.

“This is a key indicator of the strength of its manufacturing and product pricing. Intel has historically delivered margins above 60%,” Bloomberg said.

The Santa Clara, California-based company raised its full-year sales forecast slightly to $72.5 billion. While that’s down from last year’s record $77.87 billion, the company still gets multiple billions of dollars more in sales than faster-growing Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samsung Electronics Co., Bloomberg said in the report.

But Purk of Edward D Jones said the Intel will have to fight close the growing gap that other players in the chip industry are working hard to keep.

“Those companies though, have passed Intel in manufacturing technology and are spending heavily to maintain the gap with budgets the U.S. company will struggle to match,” he said.

In April, TSMC announced plans to invest $100 billion in the next three years to expand its manufacturing capacity and support research and development.

The world’s biggest contract producer of semiconductors, said it anticipates faster growth thanks to long-term trends like the introduction of next-generation telecommunications and high-performance computing.

Intel’s major customers like Apple are building their own chips. Amazon.com Inc. and other big cloud providers are designing more chips in-house for their data centers. Intel has been the major supplier to these businesses for years, so the trend is a concern for the company and investors. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has also rolled out more competitive data center processors recently.

Intel said sales of chips to cloud service providers fell 29% from the same period a year earlier. That huge drop, according to Intel, was caused by “digestion” — customers pausing orders while they work through unused stockpiles of chips.

“While this has happened before and rebounds have followed, investors are increasingly concerned that delays in new Intel products have led this crucial group of customers to shop elsewhere and they won’t come back,” Bloomberg said.

Gelsinger’s revival plan is getting a boost from the PC market, though. The Covid-19 pandemic forced millions of people to work and study from home, revving up demand for electronic devices as the world relies increasingly on digitalization. There has been a surge in purchases of laptops and other computer gear which is expected to drive growth in Intel if it doesn’t dip.

Gelsinger said there’s no sign of a slowdown in PC demand. The company’s 2021 forecast is constrained by supply shortages, while profitability is being squeezed as costs increase and the company competes aggressively to win market share, he added.

“We are here to win and we’re going to be very competitive in our approach to gain market share,” he said.

Intel’s PC chip division had first-quarter revenue of $10.6 billion, up 8% from a year earlier. Analysts projected $10 billion.