Anger at Work: People, Places, and Pulse Pushers

This is a second in a series of articles by ADI highlighting the high cost of
workplace stress to both employees and employer

The Abusive Boss "The Queen of Mean," Leona Helmsley, spent an entire career cruelly abusing the employees of her hotel empire. She yelled, screamed, and fired her quaking employees for the smallest errors or failure to meet her unreasonable levels of perfection. Donald Trump, entrepreneur, called Leona Helmsley "the meanest woman in history" which may be an exaggeration, but after her death in 2007, she was labeled as not only the wealthiest, but the meanest woman in America. One biographer wrote that even after an attempt on Leona's life, suspected to be by an ex-employee, "she never seemed to grasp the consequences of her behavior and continued to treat people in the dreadful way that she was accustomed."

Almost everyone can relate a horror story of a bad boss, even though no one should have to tolerate the excesses of a Jekyll-Hyde management style like Leona's. While most managers do not exhibit such consistent extremes, much workplace stress is caused by people in management who misread their roles and misuse their power. In Leona Hemsley's world, success was never defined as the success of the employees, but success was to be had in spite of the employees. Leona defined success as profits to be had at all costs, though she probably compromised profits by indulging her own pleasure at demeaning others. She did not understand the power of positive reinforcement to engage her employees in ways that created accelerated performance.

All too many companies accept a manager's negative methods, if those methods appear to bring bottom-line profits and other favorable business metrics. In other words, clients need to be happy, but workers do not. Many companies fear that replacing an "effective" strategy of intimidation and fear with a deliberately positive management approach may hobble their top producers' results. Few companies really make managers accountable for living a management life of ethical decision-making if those managers are bringing in the bucks for the company. Therefore, being an abusive boss in America, and probably in many other countries, is still not a source of shame, but more often, a sign of strength.

The stories of abusive bosses are legendary, but much of the anger and loud voices at work occur between and among workers. Angry behavior at work is often caused by longer work hours and more work than the current workforce can handle. Many workers report more than 12-hour days to get the basics done. Many skip lunch. Sleep deprivation, often due to stress and worry, is a problem for many. Even more disturbing is the fact that one in 10 survey respondents said they work in an atmosphere where physical violence has occurred. Attacks on inanimate objects are more common. Of the respondents, 14 percent said they work where machinery or equipment has been damaged by an angry worker, a reality depicted comically in the beating death of a copy machine by disgruntled employees in the movie "The Office."

The Cold Cubicle

When the economy is booming, the common wisdom is that organizations are busier and thus more stressful. Maybe people are doing more work and the companies are keeping a light workforce to make higher profits. When the economy is slow and jobs are very difficult to find, the same logic applies. Workers are asked to do more with less, including leave time, medical care, and even workspaces to call their own. Some employees aren't even allowed the right to customize their spaces with pictures of family and friends and so on. In fact, the open floor plans that employers have designed are full of more stressed-out workers. The cubicles of American work life might be great for saving building costs and keeping all workers within earshot, but they are not so good for giving people some relief from the stress of work. Noise is another factor under such conditions and is among the greatest stressors for everyone. Nothing is worse than trying to think and perform in a noisy space with constant interruptions.

From Road Rage to Desk Rage

In America, the distance continues to grow between work and home. For many Americans, the city is where you work and the suburbs are where you live. In major cities, the commute to and from work can be up to two hours or more one way. Families with several children must add economic stress to their lives just to be able to travel together in bigger cars that consume large quantities of gas. In addition to the ongoing threat of road rage, by the time people working in cities arrive at work, they are often already fully stressed by traffic, construction, rude drivers, and difficulty finding a parking spot. Surviving traffic only to have the additional stresses of work piled at the office helps explain another troubling statistic in the United States: desk rage. Desk rage describes angry behavior and emotionally troubling interactions between peer employees. Rachelle Canter, researcher, surveyed 506 American workers on the issue of desk rage and discovered the following:

• 4% report desk rage incidents occurring at their workplace
• 22% report being driven to tears as a result of workplace stress
• 16% report company property damage as a result of workplace stress
• 9% report physical violence at their workplace due to stress
• 10% fear their workplace environments might not be safe

In another study, 42 percent of the American workers surveyed said yelling and verbal abuse took place where they worked, and 29 percent admitted that they themselves had yelled at co-workers. These kinds of behavior patterns are very difficult for people. The fear that arises when you work in an intimidating workplace causes full-time stress. You cannot get away by leaving work since you must worry about returning. Much like being bullied in school as a child, such continuous concern leaves many workers unable to do their jobs well. In the same survey regarding desk rage, 34 percent of respondents said they had suffered insomnia because of a stress-filled or anger-charged workplace. Eleven percent of those surveyed said they'd consumed excessive alcohol; 16 percent said they smoked too much. (And a surprising 26 percent of survey respondents -- 40 percent of the 561 women surveyed -- said workplace stress and an angry work environment had "caused me to eat chocolate.") The Center for Aggression Management says, "Anger is contagious. If someone acts against you in anger, you're more likely to snap at someone else." The Center also warns, "When people explode in a work setting and smash valuable objects or threaten others, that's serious. This is not a trivial problem." Whatever name you might attach to it, anger in the workplace runs the gamut from rudeness to downright abuse. What causes such anger? Looking for the genesis is a difficult thing. Everything from traffic and rudeness on the road, to economic pressures, to personal insult, to personality types can be seen as a reason. While all that might be true, some people who drive in traffic never get angry and some people who have economic pressures or are the targets of insults never get angry. To blame bad behavior on personality type"Type A's, for example, are said to set high standards with an overinvestment in being right or successful" tends to excuse such behavior and view it as inalterable. Labeling may let others feel like they know why Joe yells. But in fact, it may be that Joe yells, not because he is a Type A, but more probably because he has learned that yelling works and gets him what he wants. In fact, Joe and other people like him can learn to be effective without relying on angry and abusive behavior. With self-feedback and recognition of behavioral cues, individuals can learn how to better deal with frustration and anger. Self-management coaching coupled with appropriate workplace consequences for inappropriate angry behavior can go a long way in reducing workplace stress for everyone. The culture and management practices of a company can be designed with the idea that the employees can do much better in an environment of respect and concern for their well-being while recognizing that every job has stressful elements. Stay tuned for future articles and methods for dealing with stress at work as a management culture and as individuals learning new skills to handle anger that is addressed toward them and their own anger with calm and positive impact.