Emotional Abuse at the Office
Even those workplaces, which are secure (i.e. there is no risk to be shot down or beaten down by a colleague or boss), can still be very nasty places to work. Emotional abuse is a common problem and it is very serious.
Every now and then there are some striking news of an employee, who shot colleagues and bosses, or who committed other serious crime. Tension at work and hurt ego can lead to very serious drama. Fortunately, such cases of shocking violence are not the norm.
However, as bad physical violence is, emotional abuse isn’t better. It is true that emotional abuse doesn’t claim lives, or at least not directly but since it is much more widespread than physical violence, the problem is not to be underestimated.
Emotional abuse can take many forms – from groundless sarcastic remarks, to sabotaging one’s work, to back stabbing of all kinds. Many people might consider these normal practices for career advancement and see nothing wrong with it but actually these manifestations of emotional abuse at the office are everything but innocent.
When a team is torn by emotional abuse, the atmosphere gets everything but friendly. Everybody is trying to protect themselves and to strike the enemy. Nothing is offlimits. It is a war!
The most common reason why emotional abusers at the office are so “brave” is the belief that the victims will turn the other cheek and not strike back. Lack of interference from management, or outright support for the offender are also making the abuser feel above the law.
If there are rules for what is an acceptable behavior at work and what is considered emotional abuse, then it would have been different. Very often managers themselves encourage emotional abuse because they feel this way they show their employees who the boss is.
This assumption is very wrong because unless all the team members are really stupid to stand all this and not strike back (or even quit the job), the result of tolerating emotional abuse at the workplace is a serious decrease of productivity. No manager, who is a pro, will go that road.
However, unfortunately there are many managers, who are everything but pros and for them emotional abuse at the work place is not a problem. Or at least not a problem till the moment they themselves become victims of it! 
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Post CommentGods Child
On June 8, 2009 at 1:02 am
It got so bad I just stopped working. I love to work. but I hated the clicks. I live in San Antonio and I worked mostly with hispanics. All they know how to do is back stab and gossip. I am so sick of it. I would like to work some where and just do my job…