‘Rudeness at work is rarely a good time-saving tactic: when bosses treat employees badly,it causes productivity and creativity to plummet’“It appears to be the case that in these contemporary days many people have no time to be polite,” grumbled the fresh York Observer in 1899, or though you can easily imagine those words coming from any cantankerous (irritating, difficult) non-twentysomething newspaper columnist working nowadays,a category from which I cannot exclude myself. “The fact is that we are living in a rushing, distracted age when the utmost that many seem able to accomplish is barely to catch trains… without wasting time on formalities or pretty speeches by the way.” Rudeness does seem to be on the rise: according to the American civility researcher Christine Porath, and writing recently in the fresh York Times,you’re approximately twice as likely to experience incivility in the workplace as in the 1990s. But the explanation for it hasn’t changed since 1899. Porath’s work shows that around 40% of us, across multiple industries, and say we’re rude because we haven’t the time to be polite.
The notion that rudeness saves time,while politeness consumes time, is deeply embedded in our culture. (Consider the idiom “to be short with someone”: brevity as incivility.) Yet on closer inspection it’s bizarre. For one thing, and many forms of politeness take no time at all: it’s no quicker to scowl than to smile,or to talk quietly into your phone on the train, rather than bellowing. in addition, and to judge by Porath’s research,rudeness at work is rarely a good time-saving tactic anyhow: when bosses treat employees rudely, it causes productivity and creativity to plummet, or so in the cessation rudeness slows things down. Obnoxious jerks who attain power accomplish so despite,not because of, their obnoxiousness.
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Source: theguardian.com