Read This Story on Rudeness! Now!

OK, so the guy sitting next to you conducts every phone conversation as if he were in a hurricane. So the boss doesn’t even nod back when you wish her a good morning. So all the folks in your department dip into the Kleenex box on your desk when they have the sniffles and not one of them has ever bought you a new box.

So what? These are just petty workplace grievances, and everybody has to endure a certain amount of rudeness, right?

Wrong.

It’s true that a lot of rudeness fills the hours between starting time and quitting time. Rudeness is as embedded in the workplace culture as time cards, fluorescent lighting and computers, and it goes a lot deeper than bellowing and filching. In fact, all of society is a lot ruder these days, and what goes on at work is a reflection of that. Ask anybody.

But that doesn’t mean you should put up with it. Although rudeness may be difficult to exorcise from the workplace, to let it continue is costly, say experts in workplace behavior.

Rude treatment, by bosses or colleagues, can make workers miserable on the job, cause high turnover and result in lower productivity and lost customers.

Mostly, the experts say, rudeness reflects a lack of respect for other individuals or a lack of understanding of proper workplace behavior. It’s generally a top-down kind of thing. The executives and managers set a company’s code of behavior--largely unwritten--and either enforce the rules or permit rudeness through failure to correct it.

“People imitate what their superiors do, and so managers and senior managers are models,” said Bill Buck, manager of clinical services for the employee assistance program of LifeLink, a Laguna Hills managed mental health benefits company.

Today’s business climate has introduced even more opportunities for rudeness in the workplace. With new forms of communication such as electronic mail and faxes have come new pitfalls. Greater diversity in the work force means courteous behavior has more nuances. The recession and its aftermath of re-engineering and massive layoffs have brought a particularly debilitating form of disregard for the individual.

Hard times seem to embolden some impolite managers, as if they feel that with so many people looking for work, employees are a dime a dozen. The employees, in turn, become more insecure and thus less apt to challenge rude behavior when confronted with it.

“People who are typically tough managers . . . tend to get worse when an organization is downsizing or re-engineering,” said Joseph R. Weintraub, an organizational psychologist and a professor at Babson College in Massachusetts who studies rudeness in the workplace.

Andrew J. DuBrin, a professor of management at New York’s Rochester Institute of Technology who specializes in organizational behavior, said companies have taken a “rude approach to laying off employees and downsizing. It’s not handled with gentility.”

DuBrin tells of employees who helped formulate a company’s downsizing plans and then, when the task was finished, were told they would be gone too.

Think that’s rude? Consider his tale of the worker who was assigned to type up a list of names of people to be laid off at his company. When the worker thought he had completed the task, his manager walked by and casually said, “Now put your name on the list.”

Really. It happened.

As you might expect, not everybody agrees on what is rude behavior and what is poor management or unintentional messages born of poor communication skills.

Still, there are some behaviors that will make most everybody’s list of workplace rudeness. Here are a few:

Accepting full credit for a project to which subordinates or colleagues contributed significantly. Standing uninvited but impatiently over the desk of someone engaged in another conversation or on the phone. Jabbering at 200 words a minute in a phone-mail message, then berating the recipient for not returning your call. Tying up people’s faxes with information they would have told you they didn’t want had you asked. Leaving a teaspoonful of coffee behind so you won’t have to brew the next pot.

On what’s rude and what’s not, Laree Kiely is of a different school of thought. She’s an assistant professor of business communications at USC’s Business School who says it’s best to sidestep the question altogether.

“Rudeness is a value judgment,” said Kiely, who is also director of the school’s Teaching Center. “It means different things to different people. It’s a generalized term and yet culture-specific. One culture says something is rude and another says it is not.”

Calling one another rude or labeling actions as rude or polite “doesn’t get us anywhere” in attempting to smooth workplace relationships, Kiely said. Instead, she thinks folks should learn new ways of interacting.

“The problem is,” Kiely said, “people have never really learned how to communicate with each other in straight ways without doing damage to their relationships, or negotiating their relationships so both have some room to change and some room to stay exactly the way they are.”

Now, Judith Martin, who as Miss Manners writes books and a syndicated column on etiquette, is much too mannerly to call anyone rude. But she is most certain about what is proper workplace decorum and what is not.

Miss Manners (we call her that to avoid the impolite behavior of referring to her as “Martin” rather than “Mrs. Martin,” as she would prefer) says diversity or no, there are certain standards of behavior that apply in professional circumstances in this country.

“People understand this,” she said. “”People who are in the work force and society, even if they have separate manners privately, learn, if they are to be at all successful, general American standards.”

Miss Manners attributes a lot of workplace breaches of etiquette to “this peculiar attempt to pretend that the workplace is not a workplace, that it is a social place where you go and celebrate birthdays, have parties, do things of that nature, call everybody by their first names, talk in a personal way and so on, which all sounds charming and lovely.”

But it is not so pretty, Miss Manners maintains, because although colleagues may be friends, in the workplace they must be co-workers first and foremost. Otherwise, she maintains, productivity suffers.

Miss Manners would prefer that co-workers address one another by last name and courtesy title, such as “Mr. Smith” or “Mrs. Jones.”

Professional demeanor, she said, demands some “formality, some distance, so that you behave in a respectful and decent manner to people whether you like them or not.”

Most business behavior experts say the first-name habit in many segments of the workplace is far too entrenched for a return to the etiquette of the past. In fact, one consultant advises workers to join in the very kind of workplace socializing Miss Manners disdains.

John R. Brinkerhoff, in his book “101 Commonsense Rules for the Office,” advises readers to use an honorific such as “Sir” or “Mrs.” when addressing the boss. But with colleagues he counsels the trappings of friendship: learning and using first names, participating in celebrations and collections for gifts, joining the coffee club, listening to (but not spreading) gossip and attending office parties (but not getting drunk in front of the boss).

There is one area of general agreement, however. Experts say business must take a stern view of discrimination and sexual harassment, behaviors that take rudeness a giant step forward into the zone of the contemptible--and illegal.

“Lack of diversity was an incredible crime against civilization,” Miss Manners said. “People were devalued because of race or gender--that was a longstanding rudeness I hope we’re coming out of. . . . It’s part of the widespread problem of people not understanding you’re there in the business role and the business role is what they should be looking at, not gender, not race or any other irrelevant factors. . . . It’s professionally rude to notice these things even in a positive way.”

Surprisingly, perhaps, the group 9to5, National Assn. of Working Women, takes a somewhat lenient position on the issue of compliments.

“The people out there who think that sexual harassment is nothing more than pitching woo in the workplace would say women’s groups like ours would have women running to attorneys when men compliment women on how they look. That’s not true,” said Maripat Blankenheim, 9to5 public relations director. “It is rude to comment on a part of the body. That’s rude--not to say, ‘You look nice.’ And if they persist, it’s sexual harassment.”

For most workers, though, workplace rudeness stops well short of illegal behavior. Blankenheim says it’s mostly a case of lack of common courtesy or sense.

So how is rudeness to be rooted out? From the experts, the first word is for managers and executives, who must establish a general code of conduct, set the example and carefully and with sensitivity enforce it. Allowing--or worse, encouraging--sniping, gossiping, backbiting, favoritism and other workplace sins is detrimental to the department’s work and eventually to the manager’s reputation.

For workers confronted with rudeness (or, as Kiely of USC might put it, poor communication), the most often recommended approach is the straightforward one: Go directly to the person involved and privately and gently state what is bothering you. (“It’s really difficult for me to get my work done while you’re on the phone. I wonder if you could speak more softly from now on.”)

Phrasing your concern in terms of how it affects work or productivity is always the high road, the experts say. Remember: The offender may not realize he or she is being rude. Never say things such as, “Everybody is bored by hearing about your engagement for the gazillionth time.”

But there are times when that approach will fail, or when the problem is so sensitive (a pungent body odor, for instance) that you can’t bear to discuss it with the person in question.

That’s when it’s OK to turn elsewhere for help--sometimes the boss or, if your company has one, a counseling service. If there is no such in-house service, consider speaking to an outside counselor.

If the offender is your boss or the boss’s best buddy, you have fewer choices. Consider first whether you can put up with it (assuming it isn’t illegal). If not, you can go to a counselor, seek out one of your boss’s peers who is approachable and friendly with your boss, or quit.

Babson’s Weintraub, who also operates a consulting group called Organization Dimensions, said that when consulting and leading seminars, he asks how many companies have had the problem of a worker with an offensive body odor. “More than 50% say they have had the problem,” he said. “The most common response is avoidance, especially if it’s a mixed-gender situation.”

Avoidance is not the solution, because the employees may then take action, such as “leaving a bar of soap or Right Guard for the person, which is not how you want your employees treating each other,” Weintraub said. “You (managers) have got to bring it up, got to sniff around on your own.”

The supervisor should address the issue privately and as tactfully as possible, but without being so tactful as to be vague. Most people don’t intend rudeness or don’t know they are being rude, and that seems especially true of those whose breath or body odor is offensive to others.

Miss Manners reminds us that another person’s body odor is, for the most part, an “unmentionable.” “The mere mention of it is an affront,” she said. She advises workers with vexed nostrils to ignore the problem unless “you really can’t stand it.” Then, she said, it could be handled by the boss or a disinterested third party.

Whether it’s smells or noises or general insensitivities, the workplace behavior experts warn it can spell trouble with a capital T. If left unchecked, “bit by bit, rudeness creates an attitude of ill will,” DuBrin said. “People will have less loyalty and feel less compunction to leave the company on short notice . . . .”

“If the company is rude enough, it won’t be able to retain the caliber of employees it wants,” DuBrin said. “A lot of employees don’t want to work around rude, insensitive people. The better trained, more talented will move on. . . . And if employees are too rude to customers, people stop shopping at the store. Rudeness can have a negative payout all around.”

In short, workplace rudeness stinks.

How RU-UDE!

It’s ugly, but somebody had to round up this list of typical instances of workplace rudeness--and how to deal with them.

Somebody takes public credit for work you’ve done. Speak up, confronting the person right there, or “let the comment pass and then follow through, perhaps approaching a supervisor with a memo and in person, asking that (the) contribution be recognized in public.” Maripat Blankenheim, 9to5

You make a suggestion or comment and the leader of the meeting ignores you. “The person might raise his or her hand again, and say something like, ‘Perhaps I didn’t frame my suggestion correctly; I’d like to clarify.’ Then continue.” Andrew J. DuBrin, Rochester Institute of Technology

A group of workers has formed a clique, often speaking to each other in a language the rest of the workers don’t know. “If the manager orders ‘only English’ be spoken, it is just a Band-Aid. The supervisor needs to learn why there is the division, try to figure out the dynamics and form goals that will get the entire group working together.” Laree Kiely, USC

Co-workers are having a loud discussion nearby while you’re trying to work. “People aren’t . . . intentionally trying to be noisy and rambunctious. If you went to them and said, ‘I’m trying to get this report out,’ most likely they’d feel bad and not do it again.” Blankenheim

The “office pest” won’t take hints to leave you alone. Simply say, “I’m sorry but I have work to do.” If that doesn’t do the trick, “you must tell the boss that you really can’t get any work done under those circumstances.” Miss Manners

Co-workers treat the candy dish on your desk as the departmental feeding trough. Remove the dish from sight. “An occasional offer . . . would perhaps alert the beneficiary to the fact that the treat did not merely grow wild on your desk.” Miss Manners