Fwd: Overworked, overwrought: 'Desk rage' at work

[Danielle Ni Dhighe <morrigan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Overworked, overwrought: 'Desk rage' at work
November 15, 2000
Web posted at: 8:40 a.m. EST (1340 GMT)

By Beth Nissen
CNN.com Senior Correspondent

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Do you have co-workers who lose their temper and yell at
work? Or get angry enough to throw something -- a handful of paper clips? a
sheaf of papers? a bare-knuckle punch?

Call it "desk rage" -- anger at work that takes the form of yelling, verbal
abuse, attacks on office equipment (usually computers), and fistfights with
office-mates.

While the evidence so far is mostly anecdotal, the number of these kinds of
workplace outbursts appears to be rising. In a new national survey of more
than 1,300 American workers, 42 percent said yelling and verbal abuse took
place where they worked -- and 29 percent admitted that they themselves had
yelled at co-workers.

More disturbing, one in 10 respondents said they work in an atmosphere
where physical violence has occurred. Attacks on inanimate objects were
more common: 14 percent of respondents said they work where machinery or
equipment has been damaged by an angry worker.

"This is something we should take seriously," says Sean Hutchinson,
president of Integra Realty Resources, a national real estate valuation
firm that commissioned the survey. "It suggests that stress in the
workplace, and the pressure to produce, is uncommonly high. More people are
being asked to do more than they can handle."

In fact, 50 percent of those surveyed said they commonly skip lunch to
complete their workload. Fifty-two percent said they've had to work more
than 12 hours in a day to get their job done.

Wages of success

"All these different rages -- road rage, air rage, whatever rage -- are all
symptoms of the same thing: We all have too many commitments and too little
time," says Lynne McClure of McClure Associates, which has advised Fortune
500 companies such as TRW and Motorola on how to prevent workplace rage and
violence.

McClure and other business consultants blame the robust economy -- and
resulting shortage of employees -- for increased workloads and increased
workplace stress.

"With the booming economy, organizations are busier," says Steve Kaufer,
co-founder of the Workplace Violence Research Institute in Palm Springs,
California. "They're not necessarily hiring more people, but the people
they do hire are doing more work."

More work in less time -- and often in a smaller space. It has been termed
the "Dilbertization" of the workplace: the corralling of thousands of
American office workers into cubicles barely bigger than a desk, like the
cubicle that pens in the cartoon character Dilbert.

Handwriting on the cubicle wall

"One of every eight workers works in a cubicle -- and they show higher
stress levels," says Hutchinson.

Cubicle workers complain most often about noise -- trying to hear
themselves think over the sound of co-workers working, conversing, and
talking on the phone.

"It is frustrating to try to put in an honest day's work when you have
co-workers chatting on the phone at levels where the next three cubicles
can hear the conversation," writes Deirdre Lawson on a CNN.com message
board about anger in the workplace. "We should call it 'cubicle rage'
instead of 'desk rage.'"

A growing number of employers -- especially those in high-occupancy urban
areas -- are assigning two or three workers to share cubicles designed for
one. "We've noticed that there's a trend toward overcrowding people," says
real estate analyst Hutchinson. "As companies realize they have to pay more
for each square foot of real estate, they're saying, 'Well, we'll just put
100 people into that space instead of 50.'"

Many people may arrive at work already seething: More and more workers are
seeking cheaper housing that is often further from job centers. They have
longer commutes -- often in bumper-to-bumper rush-hour traffic. "Desk rage"
can be "road rage," carried in from the parking lot.

"The worker with the bad commute comes to the place of employment with his
temperature already up," says Kaufer of the Workplace Violence Research
Institute. "Something small is more likely to push them over the edge."

Caustic contagion

And what happens to the work environment when someone is "pushed over the
edge," and explodes in anger? Think of it as a bomb explosion that pollutes
the surrounding atmosphere with a kind of emotional toxin.

"It can have a profoundly negative impact on those who have to work around
the explosive person," says Dr. Eric Hollander, a professor of psychiatry
at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York who is in the middle of a large
study of those who intermittently explode in anger. "It can add to
hypertension, stress-related illness. It can put them at risk of drug abuse."

In the survey on "desk rage" released today, 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.")

Ticked off .... and ticking

A growing industry of consulting companies is trying to persuade employers
to become more aware of the causes of "desk rage" -- and work to prevent it.

"Aggression in the workplace has a business cost," says John Byrnes,
president of the Center for Aggression Management, a consulting company in
Winter Park, Florida. "When you have aggressors in the workplace, other
workers don't want to be there. It starts with employee tardiness, then
absenteeism, then turnover."

The Center for Aggression Management runs employee workshops on how to
recognize and defuse the small irritations that can escalate into an office
temper tantrum -- even into an all-office brawl.

"Anger is contagious," says Kaufer. "If someone acts against you in anger,
you're more likely to snap at someone else."

Not everyone is convinced that "desk rage" is a problem. "What's next --
'life rage?'" writes Jason Leder on the CNN.com message board. "'Desk rage'
is a throwaway term that does nothing but sound important on television
special reports."

But others warn against dismissing "desk rage" as just another American
pop-syndrome with a catchy label. "When people explode in a work setting,
and smash valuable objects or threaten others, that's serious," says Dr.
Hollander. "This is not a trivial problem."