Posted on 07/10/2008 11:18:45 AM PDT by decimon
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Get out of the way, road rage. Here comes desk rage. ADVERTISEMENT
Anger in the workplace -- employees and employers who are grumpy, insulting, short-tempered or worse -- is shockingly common and likely growing as Americans cope with woes of rising costs, job uncertainty or overwhelming debt, experts say.
"It runs gamut from just rudeness up to pretty extreme abusive behaviors," said Paul Spector, professor of industrial and organizational psychology at the University of South Florida. "The severe cases of fatal violence get a lot of press but in some ways this is more insidious because it affects millions of people."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
After spending years in cubicle farms, with various and sundry annoyances from bosses, supervisors and fellow employees, I don’t know how I managed to keep my sweet disposition. /sarcasm.
I could share my horror stories of my last supervisor, but nobody would believe me if I did! She was a raving nutjob.
I have been working at home since May, and I wish I had done so years ago. It’s definitely the way to go.
Yes, I am sure.
We would laugh about it all the time. I always wondered how much you hated me. But I was top dog, and if people wanted to steal my business I sure as heck was going to make them work for it.
Not me...LOL! My customers didn't get to go to the strip clubs either; my male competitors took them there...it must have infuriated them that I still ended up getting most of the business.
I had a really fun bunch of customers, they definitely were the best part of that business.
BTW, did you ever quote Gov't contracts? That was always just a trip; it was my first exposure to massive Government waste.
In addition to selling large structural components, we also had slitting and other fabricating capabilities. So, we'd get these ridiculous bid requests...hundreds of pages of this or something similar:
1,000 pcs. of 2" square tube, cut into 5-9/16" lengths; packaged into boxes of 20, with all certifications attached in triplicate to each box....etc., etc., etc...
We often did not WANT to do these; so would bid some absolutely asinine amount to "make sure we didn't get the job." Sometimes, we didn't bid high enough...LOL. Some of these orders were going to Gov't machinists; it seemed they didn't want to do the simplest things.
Yes, it’s sarcasm.
In my younger days, I was a roofer in Louisiana. After a few years of that I decided to go to college.
Now that I am cubicle bound, I have days when the stress, etc starts to get to me. Then, I look out the window at the 95 degree, 80% humidity summer day and think, "Well, I could be toting shingles right now."
That always makes the stress go away.
Throw a bunch of people together every day and there's bound to be some conflict.
The difference seems to be that people used to be able to compartmentalize their work life and their personal life to provide a mental escape from one or the other when necessary.
Now everything seems to have collapsed into a mish mash of psychobabble and child-like expectations that bliss is an entitlement.
I like that.
OK, if you vouch for him, I believe he’s ok. :) I’m paranoid these days.
OK. My apologies then.
>>compartmentalize their work life and their personal life
Increasingly, social life has become an adjunct of the worklife. I found this particularly so in the hitech dotcom companies. The wall seperating the two wasn’t.
Also, people used to have tolerance for each other; paradoxically, in the age of coerced tolerance( yes, Herbert Marcuse!), some long established norms have been deepsixed with no one seeming to acknowledge the old norms worked very well, and somehow we all survived our neuroses and hangups gracefully without exhibiting the modern Taliban behavior so widespread today.
I simply cannot imagine that today our boss taking our whole crew out for burgers and pitchers every second Friday at a local dive would be kosher.
Anyone remember Mama Newman’s(IIRC) in Billerica? And there was another great joint by the river near ConcordRd and Rt3.
It was fun when the boss got a bigger buzz than us!
Isn’t the state of modern conservatism somewhat messed up, Ghost, when you need a program to figure out who’s who, LOL!
Pingeroo! to above
Not familiar with Mama Newman's, but Lawrence (back in the day) was dotted with great little gin mill/restaurants, probably similar.
Also, people used to have tolerance for each other
Years ago my mother worked in the plant at Western Electric in North Andover. She had a co-worker with a hooked hand who would run from Haverhill to work every day (before jogging became a sacrament). He was fixated on punching in every day at exactly the same time, so he'd hit the door running and charge for the time clock, hook extended, forcing everyone in line to jump aside. On payday, he'd attach his paycheck to his carrier pigeon to deliver to his house.
My point being that no one complained and his eccentric behavior was just accepted. Imagine that happening today without cadres of counselors descending on him and his "victims?"
Noontimes on Wednesdays and Fridays old man Cory bought lunch and drinks at the local lunch shack.
People today would need to change their underwear just watching us come down 8 flights on the wrecking ball, can you imagine watching us going back up with a couple of barkers and three boilermakers under our belts.
16 oz. Nasty Narry and a shot of bar whiskey = $.45.
I still remember when our wonderful putz of a governor Dukakis decided to ban 2for1 Happy Hours and Ladies Night in MA!
I guarantee it was pure unadulterated sarcasm.
"Hey, I'm a narcissist! Because my wife's an alcoholic, the rest of you have to be on double-secret probation. It was those damnable 2 for 1 Happy Hours and Ladies Nights that caused it! I swear, it had nothing to do with her being dysfunctional enough to marry me and the nightmare snowballing!"
LOL!
As we used to joke, Dukie comes home and asks his wife why she’s cleaning the kitchen floor with a toothbrush.
But you have hit one something that I felt way back then, then Dukakis’ jihad against any enjoyment and Quality of life issues was a very personal one.
Who would’ve guessed that he was a harbinger of the future.
When my husband has had a particularly odious day at work, he likes to repeat this quote from Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) in “The Bridge on the River Kwai”:
“Be happy in your work.”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.