Is it me? Or is the gentle art of bullying getting a lot of (negative) press lately?
Why, yes. Yes it is.
Unsurprising, giving Saturn's ingress into the genteel and harmony-lovin' sign of the Scales.
This morning, while I was joyously perusing a promising-sounding job ad in the pages of the very newspaper I currently proofread for, my eyes fell on a syndicated article from the London Evening Standard, titled: "Does your office have bad manners?"
The choicest paragraphs include the following:
Pearson and Porath began their research looking at incidents of employees killing their colleagues. From this extreme, they worked back to examine every kind of workplace slight to understand why some forms of incivility are taken seriously, such as sexual harassment, while others are not.
Common examples of incivility, they found, included taking credit for other people's work, passing blame, checking emails during meetings, talking down to or not listening to others, making derogatory remarks and avoiding people.
What may seem trivial examples of bad office manners, they found, had a serious effect on morale and staff retention. Serious enough to get the attention of the companies with whom they shared their findings.
Before becoming an academic, Porath worked for a sports management and marketing company and had observed first-hand how people were affected by the constant belittlements, insults and verbal digs that were considered part of the firm's culture. Her research confirmed her fears.
After a single incident of incivility, not including anything sexual or physical, 48 per cent of the hundreds surveyed decreased their effort at work, 38 per cent intentionally decreased the quality of their work, 80 per cent wasted time worrying about the incident, 66 per cent said their performance declined and 78 per cent said their commitment to the firm declined.
Twelve per cent said they had left a company because of uncivil treatment. For firms already struggling with motivating and retaining staff, the figures were staggering. Behaviour which was regarded as everyday was actually deeply damaging.
“A lot of people don't realise what they're doing at the time,” says Porath. “And as people move up in an organisation, they are treated less and less honestly by their staff, so they have no idea how bad they are.”
You'd think this kind of observation would not warrant a formal study. And yet. The ingress of Saturn into a sign seems, invariably, to bring to light that which has always been obvious, but barely observed.
Rude people suck. They are uncool. They hurt others.
Those who know me well, know one of my pet hates - and I do mean HATES - is incivility.
Politeness, courtesy, graciousness... in a word, CIVILITY, costs absolutely nothing. Yet with the frequency with which it's so often tossed to the side, you'd think it was the rarest, most ridiculously dear and arduous skill to acquire or cultivate.
Personally, my money's on Saturn in Libra making it very, very important to practice social graces, including gentility, over the next two-and-a-half years.
Or else.
Especially with that long-term square to ambitious Pluto in Capricorn. Want to harm your chances of getting ahead? Then continue to be an uncouth, ill-mannered boor.
The choice is yours.
The image above was taken from this site.
