Office Rage - Psychologist Lucy Beresford analyses the ‘office rage’ phenomenon

for Canon Europe, by Lucy Beresford

Pointless meetings, rudeness, and equipment malfunctions: working in an office is incredibly stressful. Psychotherapist Lucy Beresford analyses what’s happening to the psyche of the average office employee.

Office life is increasingly frustrating; only 5% of people say that nothing at work makes them angry. We hate: wasting time in pointless or long meetings; the photocopier jamming; people being rude to us; and feeling unsupported. No wonder we lose our rag. 83% of us have seen a colleague lose their temper at work; 63% have lost our temper; and more than 50% have lost our tempers more than once. Without question, the office is a place of High Expressed Emotion (characterised by negativity, over-involvement, and criticism).

The trends and psychological causes

Out of Control!
Human beings prefer to be in control. As children, we grow up believing that we are the centre of the world, that we control it, and that everyone or everything else (our ‘objects’) dance to our tune. Over time we learn that this belief is a delusion, and we have to learn to accept not being in control. But the older we get, the more we like to pretend to ourselves that we could still be in control, as a way of returning to those idyllic days of childhood when we (wrongly) thought we were omnipotent.

Most stressful situations are doubly so for us because subconsciously they reinforce something we don’t want to acknowledge: that we are not in control. This frustration is humiliating for us, and our rage is our inner child stamping its foot when life doesn’t go our way. Significantly, of the 1,857 people who responded to the research, 88% were middle management and below. These people do not feel in control of their work lives.

One problem with office life is that we are part of a group, and therefore we must cope with competing and conflicting demands. The group is united in working for the same company, but at the same time we are individuals competing for time, resources, and possibly promotion and/or bonuses. Another is that we are reliant on other members of the group, on equipment, or on information coming from outside, influencing whether or not we have a stressful day.

Not another meeting…
Lengthy or pointless meetings (50%) make us angry because they remind us subconsciously that we are not in control of our time, something employees value very highly; the only person happy with such a meeting will be the person who called it. We dislike meetings which are either autocratic, or those with no structure. Human beings like clarity, and we possess an innate sense of fairness. It annoys us when one or both of these is tampered with.

Tension v. contentment
Freud said that we spend our lives trying to eliminate tension or discomfort and restore a feeling of contentment/stasis: when we feel hungry, we will focus all our energy on eliminating that nasty feeling of hunger. Babies cry when they are in discomfort (hunger, soiled nappy, cold). Adult office workers are no different. In an office, we become to some extent infantalised (we give over certain aspects of our decision making processes to ‘the boss,’ or ‘the company’) and yet we remain highly sensitive to things which disturb our equilibrium. This could be the overuse of emails (14%), colleagues not switching their mobile to silent (22%), a messy kitchen (16%), or having the wrong office temperature (37%).

Significantly, whilst pointless/long meetings was the most common grievance, we get more angry when people are uncivil or talk down to us (21%). Deep down we all have unspoken boundaries about what constitutes acceptable behaviour. In groups, people want individual needs to be suppressed for the good of the group, and for everyone in a group to get along. Unfortunately, this conflicts with our instinct for survival, which means getting our needs met or our views heard over the needs or views of others.

Man v. machine
Linked to our need to eliminate tension or discomfort is our reaction to equipment malfunctions. When the IT system crashes (28%), when we can’t find documents on the system (20%), when the photocopier has broken or the printer has crashed (30%), we feel helpless and attacked. If these equipment malfunctions occur on a regular basis, we can actually feel persecuted. This is partly because of a process called projective identification: the angry part of us wanting to attack the photocopier/printer projects this fantasy on to the photocopier/printer, and then imagines the photocopier/printer turning back to bite us.

Man v. man!
We also become angry at management for not taking care of our needs, because on some level our infantilised part regards management as our surrogate parent. Deep down there is a sense of the ‘trade bargain’ of employment: ‘I am working for you, so in turn you will take care of my needs (as I see them).’ Any perceived discrepancy in this ‘bargain’ leads to grievance. Over-zealous managers, for example, annoy 23% of us, people turning up for meetings unprepared annoy 30%, whilst 36% are angered by a lack of support.

Stress outlet
We do not keep this angst to ourselves. 50% of us have lost our temper at work on between one and five occasions, most often with our boss (43%), a colleague (over 33%), or a supplier or client (27%). Some of us resort to physical violence (9%). We feel helpless, so kicking or breaking an inanimate object makes us feel for that moment powerful and in control. Office equipment (printer, desk, keyboard, phone) is the most common recipient of our Office Rage.

Office environment
60% of people in part or fully open-plan offices think the office layout contributes to stress. This is because we like to have a space to call our own; we like to personalise this space, and control access to it. In open-plan offices we often feel that our ‘safe space’ is too easily invaded by others, and this can make us highly anxious or even defensive. 21% of us believe that having our own office would lower stress levels. This ‘nesting’ instinct can also be seen in the 7% of people who are angered by other people parking in their parking space.

Sanity under stress
We believe that if our office environment was ‘nicer’, our stress levels would be reduced. We bemoan the lack of air-conditioning (43%), good storage (37%), and natural light (26%), and would like to see access to fresh air (48%), free drinks or fruit (45%), and chill out zones (37%). This reflects our attempts to deny to ourselves that we are in an office environment; subconsciously, ‘office’ = ‘being controlled’, so anything that makes the office less like an office is welcomed. This in turn is why 38% believe that working from home would lower stress levels. For some, our inner anger at other things gets projected onto external objects: the boss, the office, colleague, the printer. 24% imagine a new boss would make office life better.

Lucy Beresford, a psychotherapist who is used to working with clients grappling with executive stress says:

“For people to feel less stressed in the office, they need to feel more in control of their working life and working environment.”

However, she adds that there can be remedies for this:

“Office Rage is on the increase, but a range of initiatives such as crisper meetings or interpersonal kindness could in turn both reduce stress levels, and extend the life expectancy of office equipment!”

Top 5 Tips for coping with stress
1. Keep a sense of your own boundaries. Know what you can achieve, and what might over-load you.
2. Don’t be afraid to say No.
3. Relax. Being able to take time out of the day to maybe go for a brisk walk, look around some shops, listen to your iPod, or read a novel, helps your mind to switch off from everyday concerns. Some people make a point of going to the gym or a yoga class; exercise releases the body’s endorphins (good mood substances).
4. Don’t skip lunch. And don’t make lunch a five minute sandwich at your desk. A break in the middle of the working day (see above) helps you to switch off mentally and physically from work. And eat sensibly. Too much sugar in the diet causes mood swings, and can trigger further craving for unhealthy food.
5. Make sure you get enough sleep.

© Lucy Beresford, August 2007
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