Drama At The Office

I used to work as a medical assistant for a cardiology practice. The job was stressful. Working with cardiac patients would leave me drained at the end of the day. However, there wasn’t anything more stressful than working with difficult co-workers. And by saying difficult I mean bullies, melodramatics, and just plain crazies. I worked there for eight years, so I had seen many employees come and go. With every new hire, we would have to present our subculture and help them assimilate into our work family. Most new would observe the work environment and how we interacted with each other and try to imitate those behaviors. But there were some who didn’t adapt to the work environment and as a result, caused conflict in the office.

We spend most of our waking hours at work. Imagine if we have to work with co-workers who are unfriendly, or the boss is a jerk. Although it is not the only factor, if the work environment is unpleasant, our job satisfaction tends to go down (Schneider, 2012). The social influence model of job satisfaction suggests that people adapt attitudes and behaviors from their immediate work environment. In supportive and friendly work environments, employees tend to adjust to similar attitudes and behaviors (Schnedier, 2012). And yet, there will always be employees who cause conflict no matter how supportive the work environment is. This will have its negative effects to the organization, especially if it’s a small group business.

So even if there is one employee with a bad attitude in the office, chances are the work environment will be negatively affected. This can be explained by the “eye for an eye” exchange observed by Greco and colleagues (2019). In this meta-analysis, they suggest that work behavior is reciprocated. Negative behavior in one party is associated with negative behavior of the other, which eventually reciprocates and escalates to greater levels (Greco, et al., 2019). So yes, it takes one nutcase to knock out the equilibrium at the office.

 

References

Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., Counts, L. M. (2012). Applied Social Psychology. New Dehli: SAGE Publications

Greco, L.M., Whitson, J.A., O’Boyle, E.H., Wang, C.S., Kim, J. (2019). An eye for an eye? A meta-analysis of negative reciprocity in organizations. Journal of Applied Psychology

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