When Rudeness at Work is Deadly

We’ve all encountered rude people at work, and most of us can just brush it off-understanding that we’re not at fault; the rude person is. However, a new study found out that rudeness can literally be deadly.

A new study, “The Impact of Rudeness on Medical Team Performance: A Randomized Trial” found that rudeness damages the ability to think and make decisions. In a medical setting, that can be absolutely deadly. NY Magazine explained that the researchers set up 24 medical teams with the job of diagnosing and treating a potentially fatal case of necrotizing enterocolitis, in a premature infant.

When the researchers told the participants that they were “not impressed with the quality of medicine in Israel” (where the study occurred) among other insults, they performed at a much lower level than the control group. Overall, there was a 52 percent difference in performance between the teams that heard the rude comments and the control groups.

To keep reading, click here: When Rudeness at Work is Deadly

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4 thoughts on “When Rudeness at Work is Deadly

  1. Rumor at my employer has the HR Mgr telling a supervisor her subordinate is a crybaby because the subordinate began crying because HR Mgr yelled at her for placing paper over a window to prevent light from hurting her eyes for which she had previously filed for ADA compliance six months, ago. EEOC now has the complaint from the subordinate so I guess we will see who the real crybaby winds up being…

  2. Yep, rudeness doesn’t help and can actually hurt. This isn’t really news.

    Once I was told by one of the decision makers that I wasn’t her first choice for the job. She claimed she was “out voted.”

    She told me this on my first day on the new job. Such a nice “welcome aboard”!

    “Okay”, I said. I didn’t say anything else. After all, what else should I have said? “You’re a squid lips jerk for telling me”? Being rude back doesn’t help.

    While it didn’t kill me; it certainly gave me a heads up as to what kind of person she was. I certainly didn’t bend over backwards to help her. And, why should I? She had it in for me from the get go.

    Rather than seeing that the work I did for her was lesser quality than others because of her attitude; she figured that she was right about me from the start.

  3. On one job, I was hired by the president over a dinner conversation. He was talking about engineering analysis software and marketing with his wife. As this was my exact job description, I chirped in and did a full interview during dinner, interrupted by his 3 YO boy who could not sit still. The only problem was that the board of directors was actively trying to fire the poor guy. When he was fired, no one at the company wanted me there, so I was soon shown the exit door. I did last longer than I expected.

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