girl geek in training

I am currently reading an article on workplace incivility for school and I can’t help, but directly match everything I am reading to my first 6 months at my current job.

What is workplace incivility?

Low intensity deviant behavior that violates workplace norms for mutual respect and may or may not be intended to harm the target.

The key here is the low intensity deviant behavior. It’s something that isn’t overt and thus can be explained away.

One experience with incivility

There was an incident where a co-worker that was unhappy about a proposal I created for them, declined to introduce me on a conference call. I was in a room with other co-workers when this happened and, in fact, the co-worker in question looked directly at me as if he was deciding then and there that I was not important enough to introduce. It was a tad embarrassing, but also downright mean. However, I had become accustomed to rude behavior at my place of work at that time and realized that nothing was likely to happen.

As for attempting to confront these types of circumstances, some employees have told us that they would be laughed out of the office.

I actually did tell my boss about this incident and his response was to go talk to the co-worker who had just treated me in a malicious manner and tell him that he hurt my feelings…Yeah, that didn’t happen.

But what did happen were the following noted results of workplace incivility

• decline in job satisfaction
• fading of organizational loyalty
• loss of leadership impact

It’s so true. My boyfriend actually works at my office and he is quite loyal to our place of work and he doesn’t understand why I’m not. Incidents like those above have taught me that the place that I work doesn’t actually care about maintaining a civil workplace and that if I don’t like it, well that’s my problem.

I will close with this as a prelude to what is likely an eventuality for me.

It is important to note that departures driven by incivility may follow an incident immediately or they may come after some time has elapsed. This finding is critical to managers because, in regard to organizational memory, a delayed reaction will tend to disassociate the exit from the uncivil event.

(Later on I will talk about some of the reasons I don’t leave including the things I like about where I’m at right now.)

I was at the boyfriend’s house talking about some management issues: namely, that some of the managers at our place of work are not terribly mature or respectful in their dealings with their subordinates. His mother countered that people at work will be jerks and that’s life and you just have to deal with it. I didn’t say anything, but I feel pretty confident in saying that the U.S. in general is no longer immersed in that type of culture. People are important. The ability to deal with people is key to being the leader that many of us would hope to be.

I don’t believe that I mentioned this before, but I am back in school. Currently, I am taking a course in organizational behavior and management. The text has this really great quote from Ricardo Semler, CEO of Semco (a Brazilian company):

The purpose of work is not to make money. The purpose of work is to make the employees, whether working stiffs or top executives, feel good about life.

Many would say this is wrong, but I don’t how being completely profit-driven is at all moral. This is a big world and we only get to do this once, so make it better than when you arrived and give everyone else the same opportunity.