‘Desk rage’ becoming more prevalent


When work-life balance is off-kilter, problems escalate, according to Kenneth Kraft, Ph.D., an organizational psychologist and management consultant based in Boston, Mass. (photo by Tom Croke)

By Ami Albernaz

With people spending so many of their waking hours at work, it's no surprise that the office can be a breeding ground for irritation and stress. In recent years, long hours, tight deadlines and blurred boundaries between work and free time have ratcheted up stress levels and led to what has been termed "desk rage" - yelling, slamming, verbal abuse, or, the opposite - passive behavior such as putting on headphones and drowning everything out.

It may be tempting to dismiss "desk rage" as a not-quite real syndrome cooked up by a few psychologists, a convenient counterpart to "road rage" and "air rage." Anger in the office is certainly nothing new. "We tend to get angry at people we have a good deal of contact with, so work colleagues would fit the bill," says Raymond Tafrate, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Central Connecticut State University and co-author of the book "Understanding Anger Disorders." But with the global economy lengthening business hours and the salience of mobile technology, increased expectations of availability have made achieving a reasonable work-life balance more difficult.

"The limits that people historically have been able to have - in the past, bosses couldn't have access to their employees because there was no way to - have been eroded," says Kenneth Kraft, Ph.D., an organizational psychologist and management consultant based in Boston. "Nowadays, you have to assert the boundary rather than it being given to you. This can present problems for people saying no." Once work-life balance is off-kilter, stressors at work can compound stressors at home and vice-versa. Identifying the source of stress - no less coping with it - can be tricky, he adds.

In a study released earlier this year, 14 percent of respondents reported witnessing "desk rage" or experiencing it themselves. Some reported destruction of office property or physical violence, while others said that stress had driven them to tears. Indeed, rage seems to be "the outcome of feelings of helplessness - when a person is frustrated by an inability to perform adequately, which triggers fear of failure and low self-esteem," Kraft says. And as many companies have cracked down on public outbursts, the rage has become internal, with people experiencing depression, anxiety and somatic symptoms.

There is a glimmer of hope in that younger workers are less tolerant of punishing working hours, Kraft adds. "Generation Y workers have more of a sense of trying to protect their personal lives of having a better work-life balance. There's more of a pushback; the value system is a little different."

Another workplace hazard to have received psychologists' scrutiny over the last few years is workplace bullying. A study published in the Journal of Management Studies in June found that 30 percent of respondents met the criteria for having witnessed or been a victim of workplace bullying, which refers to things such as intimidation, ridicule or exclusion, over an extended period of time. Yet many of those in the study who experienced these behaviors did not identify themselves as bullying targets, in part because bullying is often thought of as a childhood, schoolyard phenomenon.

A number of countries take workplace bullying seriously enough to have enacted laws against it, notes Rickie Banning, LICSW, president and CEO of Advanced Organizational Development, Inc., a training and consulting firm in Nahant, Mass. In July, the consulting group Challenger, Gray & Christmas said workplace bullying is more prevalent than sexual harassment, workplace violence or racial discrimination. Like other forms of abuse, Banning says, it "starts slowly, then builds." Over time, workplace bullying can result in depression and chronic anxiety. Banning describes the case of a woman who was being harassed by a group of male coworkers. The men would "turn up Rush Limbaugh on the radio, and then make comments about [the woman's] religion and features. They'd pretend to be talking among themselves, when really it was about her." In other instances, Banning adds, "women have told me they were stalked or stared at repeatedly by male coworkers when the boss wasn't around."

Banning emphasizes that isolated incidences of these behaviors do not constitute workplace bullying. When they occur repeatedly, they can be difficult to report because they are so subtle. In some cases, the bully is the boss. In these cases, she sometimes advises the worker to leave the job.

"If you've got a toxic organization that's not going to push for change, it's better to jump ship than get pushed against a wall," she says. While anti-bullying laws are being pushed in some states, there are formidable obstacles to passing a nationwide law; chief among them, she notes, is that large companies might balk at having "yet another law to comply with."

Some U.S. companies, though, have taken matters into their own hands, setting no-tolerance standards and providing coaching for employees who have been outed as workplace bullies. "If managers are trained properly, there will be mechanisms to intervene in problems and set things right," Banning says. "Really, it's preventive medicine. Companies need to let their employees know they're valued and that they need to bring bullying to someone's attention."

‘Desk rage’ becoming more prevalent (August/September 2007 Issue)

‘Desk rage’ becoming more prevalent
(August/September 2007 Issue)