Approaching the meeting room, Jim feels the all-too-familiar twinge of anxiety in his stomach. Will he be blamed again for the low productivity numbers? Will he have to fight off yet another rumor about his management of the department? Or will he be ignored yet again when he tries to speak? Life at work has become dismal for Jim since Mike arrived and took a dislike to him. No matter what he tries to do, it is never good enough. Others see Mike picking on Jim but are reluctant to do anything, as they fear becoming a target of such abuse.Bullying, harassment, emotional abuse—these are some of the names for the phenomenon of persistent hostility that is part of many workers’ experiences. Approximately one third of employees report being exposed to frequent, enduring, aggressive, and hostile behavior from someone with whom they work.1 In contrast to the occasional hostile acts that increasingly seem to occur in the contemporary American workplace, these persistent forms of hostility have more devastating effects, both individually and organizationally. In this article, we share research findings demonstrating that persistent hostile mistreatment within work settings is a very real and costly phenomenon.
