Rudeness in the Workplace

What are your thoughts on this Inc. Magazine article? Do you encounter rudeness in the workplace; if so, what effects have you observed?

The High-Cost of Rudeness in the Workplace

Nastiness causes employee error -- and we're not just talking about the customer service department.

A lot more than workplace harmony is at stake when employees or bosses are rude, according to new research. Heated discussions, arguments, and snide comments cause people to lose concentration – and make mistakes, whether they are on the receiving end of the rudeness or just witnesses to it.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, Rhona Flin, a University of Aberdeen professor of applied psychology, reported that students who were insulted by a professor en route to a test performed worse on a series of memory tasks than students who hadn't received similar treatment.

"This reaction is probably caused by the emotional arousal caused by the rudeness, which resulted in a switchover of cognitive capacity to deal with the required emotional processing, or it may, more simply, be caused by distraction," Flin writes.

In another study, a student who was late for a group experiment apologized, but the person running the group responded: "What is it with you? You arrive late, you are irresponsible. Look at you, how do you expect to hold down a job in the real world?" The comment was made at normal volume, in a mild tone. But students who saw the exchange went on to perform worse on memory tests than a control group that hadn't seen it. Read more...