You Are Sooooo Rude

I wonder if the City of Windsor human relations approach and one of the City's Departments were the source of this story. The timing is so interesting as well

• "Rudeness may cause toxic workplace
  
  Study finds its damage spreads 'like fire'
  
  Rudeness aimed at just one person can spread its damage "like fire" through a workplace, causing large numbers of workers to do a lousy job and even to harbour dark, murderous thoughts.
  
  Psychologists knew a blast of rudeness would distract the immediate victim.
  
  But second-hand rudeness...
  
  "Managers should be very concerned because the negative consequences of rudeness on the job are not limited to the person who happens to be the victim," he said. "If five other people are watching, the effects are going to spill over into the rest of the organization."

Here is what is most interesting

• "All this stunned Erez, though now that he has published the results, everyone he talks to says: "Sure, I've seen that happen at work."
  
  "Everybody recognizes that it happens all the time," he said."

So the real world is away ahead of the psychologists who are now trying to explain the phenomenon.

Here is some food for thought for them. The City and its workers have just finished a very nasty, and for the workers, a financially distressing 101-day strike. Have we seen an approach to try and build bridges between staff and management? Consider this:

• the line in the pay cheque stub to show amounts lost during the strike to rub it in the workers' faces
  
  
• Brister's outsourcing comment re garbage right after the strike ended
  
  
• making outsourcing of garbage a possible election issue
  
  
• keep the public mad at CUPE with streets still not cleaned up with garbage and red and blue boxes and the parks still a mess
  
  
• now we are going to talk about outsourcing parking enforcement
  
  
• continued demonization of CUPE and boosting CAW
  
  
• City worker being fired right after the strike.

Mere rudeness or something more? Building respect back or psychological warfare attacks in preparation for the next strike! Time will tell.