January 6, 2006
HARD-WON AND EASILY LOST
Academics to study workplace rudeness (Richard Foot, National Post, January 6th, 2006)
A team of psychologists at Saint Mary's University in Halifax believe rudeness in the workplace is not only on the rise in Canada, but is a big part of everyday occupational stress.This month, Saint Mary's psychologists, led by professors Lori Francis and Camilla Holmvall, begin a series of studies and tests to examine -- for the first time in the academic world, they say -- how people react to incivility from fellow workers, and whether people return bad manners with more rudeness of their own.[...]
The erosion of common courtesy in society is a well-known phenomenon. Road-rage, air-rage, angry shoppers, irate retail clerks and lousy telephone manners have all been documented in the media and academic literature.
What hasn't been carefully studied and explained, Prof. Francis says, is the casual, low-level incivility that haunts our workplaces: the office colleague who won't refill the paper tray in the photocopier, who takes the last drop from the water cooler without replacing the empty bottle, who whispers private conversations during company meetings.
"Where I notice incivility the most is in my e-mail," Prof. Francis says. "My students will send me e-mails that begin with, 'Hey wassup? I was wonderin ...' Shouldn't e-mails between professors and students -- or between co-workers -- be a little more formal? There's a level of familiarity that's just not appropriate, so I always have to give my students a mini-lecture on e-mail etiquette in class.
"And that's the thing with incivility -- it's not always meant in a negative way, it's not always meant to be rude, but that's the way it's often taken."
How workers react is the intriguing question. Prof. Francis and her colleagues believe people on the receiving end of rude behaviour may up the ante by escalating the incivility, in the belief that the rudeness they felt was deliberate and personal.
"The little things day-to-day probably don't bother us," Prof. Francis says, "but they're cumulative. The same infraction over and over again by the same person -- that's where more serious conflicts develop from, and that's where the danger is. It could impact both people and productivity."
The researchers aren't certain whether rudeness at work fuels workplace stress or vice versa.
"It's hard to say which comes first," says Laura Black, a graduate student working with Prof. Francis. "It's a chicken-and-egg thing. Hopefully we'll be able to crack it."
Not bloody likely, you twit. Oops, sorry. The decline in public civility is a wonderful example of how hopeless modern rationalism can be as a tool for analyzing and regulating human behaviour. Everyone knows viscerally and experientially that public life is becoming increasingly mean and selfish, even threatening, but you can probably safely bet the mortgage a study like this will conclude: A) there were a lot of rude people in the past and no one can really say for sure it’s getting worse; B) those people who are rude are being mistreated in some way and are largely unconscious of their offensive behaviours. They will become paragons of politeness when they get their due or are counseled and educated; C) punishment and sanctions are “inappropriate” because there are no objective standards of what is or isn’t rude, and, besides, there are really no victims, and; D) Those promoting civility must take great care not to trample on important political freedoms like the right to be menacing and vulgar or socially desirable goals like having every employee express himself with total, unhypocritical honesty.
But not even Las Vegas would offer long odds it will conclude civilized behaviour rests on the sublimation of natural instincts for the good of others and that a society guided by a libertarian, secular ethos will gradually work its way back to inchoate resentments, tribal suspicion and hair-trigger defensiveness.
What other outcome is possible once the concepts of "shame" and "shunning" are rejected?
Posted by: b at January 6, 2006 12:01 PMMore than a little incivility is justifiably directed at self-important twits demanding respect that hasn't been earned.
Posted by: Chris B at January 6, 2006 12:11 PMthese kind of articles are filler for slow news day. i believe the first such article was written in latin.
Posted by: toe at January 6, 2006 12:14 PMi believe the first such article was written in latin.
See? Rudeness precipitates a fall!!
Posted by: Twn at January 6, 2006 12:41 PMBeing deliberately rude, alas sometimes necessary, is a far cry from the casual rudeness born of ignorance. I believe people, whether in the workplace or elsewhere, don't know how to behave with civility, never having even heard of it.
Are you sure the first of these types of articles were written in Latin? I seem to remember the Code of Hammurabi had something to say about the rudeness of the rabble.
Incivility, first of all, demeans he who practices it. Respectful discourse honors oneself more that than the one addressed.
May we suggest that if another may provoke us to churlishness we have placed our equanimity as his disposal.
Posted by: Lou Gots at January 6, 2006 2:21 PMthere were a lot of rude people in the past and no one can really say for sure its getting worse
Peter, I'd really like to hear your reasoning on why this statement is false. Which past periods have you lived through?
I really don't see this as a worsening problem, at least not in the US. Even New York City is becoming bearable. If you are going to consider "wassup" an insult, then your sensitivity setting is about 50% past "ridiculously high".
Posted by: Robert Duquette at January 6, 2006 5:55 PManyone think this sort of thing doesn't follow a sine wave pattern ?
Posted by: toe at January 6, 2006 6:49 PMRobert:
I'd really like to hear your reasoning on why this statement is false. Which past periods have you lived through?
Of course you must be right. I didn't live back then, so I can't possibly have any credible opinions as to whether it was better. I trust you will remember that principle whenever anyone tries to suggest that anything at all about modern times is better than in the past.
Peter,
What's the rudest act that you have witnessed in the last year?
Maybe my powers of observation have atrophied, but asking myself this question, nothing sticks out.
I mean in real life, not something you saw in the media.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at January 6, 2006 9:14 PMThe one time I ever went to New York City I remember getting out of a cab on 42nd or 43rd Street. I get out, a woman gets in so I say something to her like, hey, I got you a cab. She looks at me and says yeah, and you're ten minutes late, and the cab drives off. That one left a welt.
Posted by: joe shropshire at January 7, 2006 1:51 AMRobert:
When I spoke to an agent from National Revenue and told him I couldn't pay my taxes on time. He told me he couldn't care less, which I thought was unspeakably rude.
Seriously, c'mon now. I'm in one of the safest, ordered neighbourhoods of the safest, ordered cities in the safest, ordered country and even I see:
A)widespread aggressive, dangerous driving;
B)frequent unrestrained bad language;
C)constant disciplinary problems in public schools that never seem to get resolved.
D)menacing youth group behaviour in parks and shopping malls (no, not every day, but often enough to keep a much tighter watch on your kids than we had.)
E)the widespread refusal of parents to discipline and cooperate with the police with their wayward kids.
F)splenetic, ad hominem postings by leftist trolls.
And that is just during the day. However, there is also rudeness by omission.
Before you come back to tell me all about the incivilities and dangers of the bad old days, a big difference is in common ideals and the legal ability (and willingness) of private citizens, especially men,to enforce rules of civility against youth, mainly boys. The instances I've listed above seem to occur largely unsanctioned, which would not have occurred in the past. Would you extend the same freedom from surveillance to young kids today as you had?
Posted by: Peter B at January 7, 2006 6:52 AMOkay, one event popped to mind. While riding the bus recently, I sat near two high-school age girls who carried on a personal conversation about their boyfriends with no concern for keeping any of it private from people nearby. That's not rudeness from an intent to be offensive, but it does show that the confessional culture of reality TV and salacious talk shows has affected the wider culture.
There are areas of improvement as well as slippage. The workplace use to be an anything goes environment for bosses and men vis-a-vis women. Managers could use extroadinary levels of verbal and physical intimidation on their employees. I read of a Wall St trader from the "good old days" who would throw phones at employees when he was pissed off. Henry Ford hired goons to rough up workers.
And what about sexual harassment? Construction workers hooting at women in the street? My sister got a job at a diner in RI in the 70s, and the owner of the diner thought nothing of propositioning her for sex on her very first day of work. She quit on the spot, but this is the kind of thing that was common and unremarkable 30 or more years ago.
Retail workers are much more polite now than they have ever been in the past, because of competition and because noone will put up with rude service anymore. In the "good old days" when mom or pop had a neighborhood monopoly on whatever he/she were selling, the red carpet was not always forthcoming. Growing up, my dad would take the car to the neighborhood garage for work. The owner was a rude jerk. When I went down to it to inquire on the status of our car once, I waited at the counter in full view of the owner for 10 minutes as he gabbed with the guy in back, totally ignoring me.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at January 7, 2006 11:26 AM"when you're a jet you're a jet to the end"
joe, was she hot ?
Posted by: toe at January 7, 2006 11:56 AM