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Don’t Give In to Desk Rage
Bob Weinstein is a journalist who covers technology, project management, the workplace and career development.
You’ve heard the term “road rage,” which describes irrational, often violent outbursts targeted at other drivers while driving. But “desk rage” (or “cubicle rage”) is a mounting problem in the workplace that is getting a lot of attention these days. Desk rage is a sign of stress: on-the-job anger that increasingly is triggered by the pressures and tensions of the workplace. And they’re not going away.
The Urban Dictionary defines desk rage as the “peak of office employee stress levels which ultimately starts with the screaming of vulgar language within the workplace.” The American Psychological Association notes that “Work stress is leading more people to engage in counterproductive workplace behaviors.”
Kerry Sulkowicz, a New York City psychiatrist, told an MSNBC reporter that laptops, PDAs, cell phones, e-mail and pagers have created an ever-widening gap between the amount of information people are expected to keep up with and the amount they can reasonably process. “The technology is outstripping our capacity to use it,” he says.
Additionally, mergers, acquisitions, frequent dowsizings and outsourcings trigger feelings of anxiety and anger because job security went out in the 1950s. High-stress jobs that involve impossible deadlines and a great deal of …
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