They bad-mouth you to work colleagues behind your back; they angrily demand the impossible from everyone but themselves; they make unwanted comments about your attire.
At some point in our careers, most of us have come across someone known as a "toxic worker," a colleague or boss whose abrasive style or devious actions can make the workday utterly miserable. Such people hurt morale, stoke conflict in the office, and harm a company's reputation.
But toxic workers aren't just annoying or unpleasant to be around; they cost firms significantly more money than most of them even realize. According to a new Harvard Business School (HBS) paper, toxic workers are so damaging to the bottom line that avoiding them or rooting them out delivers twice the value to a company that hiring a superstar performer does.
While a top 1 percent worker might return $5,303 in cost savings to a company through increased output, avoiding a toxic hire will net an estimated $12,489, the study said. That figure does not include savings from sidestepping litigation, regulatory penalties, or decreased productivity as a result of low morale.
On the other hand, toxic co-workers are useful as foils come bonus time: "Hey, at least I'm not as bad as that guy..."
(Score: 4, Informative) by frojack on Thursday December 03 2015, @07:47PM
Word of advice:
Do not give shit to a woman or minority, (especially a new hire) because even though you thought everyone knew you were kidding, it WILL come back to bite you sooner or later. And you will pay dearly.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2015, @08:30AM
because even though you thought everyone knew you were kidding, it WILL come back to bite you sooner or later. And you will pay dearly.
hmm that sounds like a toxic working environment... ;)
(Score: 2) by Nr_9 on Friday December 04 2015, @08:47AM
Also, people that are bullied will often pretend not to take offense. That doesn't mean the bullier isn't being a dick... Women and minorities gets these kind of attitudes thrown at them all the time. Of course they will be more offended than some brogrammer.
I've been in the opposite position right after high school, the only man and a new hire working under a bunch of middle aged women. I quit after a month of swallowing shit and being treated like garbage. Not all of them were bad, but some where. All of them closed ranks on me when I complained, however, because my way of solving problems were completely different from theirs. All because of the social dynamics, where I was on the bottom of the totem pole and a different gender.
What I'm trying to say is that you should try to have some empathy with "women and minorities" when it comes to communicating, especially if you are in a male-dominated work space.