As of late there has been an abundance of focused discussion, along with outright finger pointing-fault finding, on the topic of collective well being; in effect our economic well-being, and specifically, what can be done. This cloaked in a seething need to assign blame for interrupting our blissful comfort. I’ll decline the bait for the latter, since retribution is neither constructive nor helpful in the long run. Regardless, I dove into the topic for a while to wrestle out the practical merits on who should pay the bill for everyone? Where the idea of equality and equity is balanced on the razor’s edge of ‘fair share’ versus ‘earned portion’. To me, the clash of ideals rests not on ‘best policy’ but in administration. Clearly, on the merits of best for society; ending drunkenness would be a lofty goal, but then we saw what happened with Probation. Plus, I wanted to depart from the usual compare and contrast competing dogma with their passionate appeals to be convincingly the only true path. I’ve found what has been spawned from this disagreement and struggle to be ‘right’, is an underlying contempt that has grown to outright-unabashed-public-hostility. It matters little where it came from, only that it is spreading and taking on a pandemic affect on social norms of behavior and interaction. I am talking about incivility, and where more meaningful than in the place where most of us spend the greatest part of our lives; at work.
A 2011 report in USA TODAY defined workplace incivility as "a form of organizational deviance… characterized by low-intensity behaviors that violate respectful workplace norms, appearing vague as to intent to harm." The article asserts further that researchers had announced at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association that "Workplace incivility is on the rise." I suspect this can be attributed to a growing perception of limited resources with dwindling access to them, thus stripping away our otherwise well constructed polite social veneer. Uncivil behaviors are characteristically rude and discourteous, displaying a lack of regard for others. Incivility is distinct from violence since it is oblique and subtle so easier to deflect as only joking, or, deflected as misconstrued by the recipient being too sensitive and wrongly assigning intent. As well as scoffed as minor then excused away as unintentional or consequences of irrelevant influences. Examples of workplace incivility include insulting comments, denigration of the target's work, spreading false rumors, and social isolation. I checked into this a little deeper, if anyone wants to challenge the veracity of this post I will be glad to provide my sources; as if I have to convince anyone that incivility exist? A summary of research conducted in Europe suggests that workplace incivility is common there. In research on more than 1000 U.S. civil service workers, Cortina, Magley, Williams, and Langhout (2001) found that more than 70% of their sample experienced workplace incivility in the past five years. Similarly, Laschinger, Leiter, Day, and Gilin found that among 612 staff nurses, 67.5% had experienced incivility from their supervisors and 77.6% had experienced incivility from their coworkers. In addition, they found that low levels of incivility along with low levels of burnout with an empowering work environment were significant predictors of nurses’ experiences of job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Additionally, it seems that compared to men, women were more exposed to incivility.
Incivility was associated with psychological distress and reduced job satisfaction. After conducing more than six hundred interviews with "employees, mangers, and professionals in varying industries across the United States" and collecting "survey data from an additional sample of more than 1,200 employees, managers, and professionals representing all industrial categories in the United States and Canada", researchers Christine M. Pearson and Chiristine L. Porath wrote in 2004 that "The grand conclusion: incivility does matter. Whether its costs are borne by targets, their colleagues, their organizations, their families, their friends outside work, their customers, witnesses to the interactions, or even the instigators themselves, there is a price to be paid for uncivil encounters among coworkers." Citing previous research (2000) Pearson writes that "more than half the targets waste work time worrying about the incident or planning how to deal with or avert future interactions with the instigator. Nearly 40 percent reduced their commitment to the organization; 20 percent told us that they reduced their work effort intentionally as a result of the incivility, and 10 percent of targets said that they deliberately cut back the amount of time they spent at work."
My concern is not that incivility is practiced, disparagingly enough, but that it’s accepted as necessary. I say no. Forty years ago blatant discrimination at work went unchallenged under the same filter of ‘what can anyone do? It’s everywhere.’ But enough people of strong conviction DID openly object to denigrating practices and eventually we now have laws to protect individuals from those abuses. When will that happen with incivility? Never, if left unchecked.
I have a friend who is being persecuted under that mask of innocent joking. My counsel is to make as big of a fuss as possible about it. Will she win the battle of the moment? Maybe ~ maybe not, but incivility is cowardly and like all bullies their abuse only get worse and bolder when left unchallenged. Never mind all of the touchie-feelie notions that a bully is just an insecure arrested child crying out for attention. No one has the right, or even the tacit permission, to punish others for their internal delusional misgivings.
I say oppose incivility head on and loudly, and yes; Heroically . It’s the only decent thing any of us can, no, MUST, do in order to stop this wholesale violation of personal dignity. Quietly accepting it only promotes more of the same. As my son would say, "And it only ends in tears"
