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(79 votes) Published: Mar 14, 2002 12:00 a.m. Viewed 1027 times
There have probably been times when you’ve wanted to strap on your six-shooter and call some varmint into the hallway for a showdown, but you didn’t do it because that really wouldn’t be good business etiquette.
Maybe instead you forgot to deliver a message, or you let colleagues know what a jerk the offending person was. You got even.
And you know what? Revenge is righteous. Sometimes, anyway, according to Bob Bies. Bies, a professor of management at Georgetown University’s School of Business, is working with two other professors on a book about revenge.
Bies doesn’t sound like the kind of guy who would stick a knife in someone’s back. Heck, he’s a Seattle native, and we know Seattle natives are always nice. When I asked him about this revenge thing, he said people always get the wrong idea.
"Part of the problem when you’re speaking about revenge," he said, "is that people think about someone going postal. If we say, `Do you get even?’ they say yes. But revenge calls up extreme images."
Maintaining balance
Whatever a person calls it, Bies said it is the same behavior. It’s a response to being provoked or slighted and nature’s way of keeping social relationships in balance.
Sometimes it changes the behavior of the person against whom we are taking revenge, and sometimes it allows us to feel better, to be able to tolerate an irritating situation.
Did I ever tell you about the time my older brother had a really nasty chief when he was a young sailor? The guy would verbally demean his men and have them doing menial chores for him all day. This guy wasn’t too bright, because one of the things he’d have these young fellows do is fetch coffee for him.
Sometimes my brother would spit into the coffee, stir it up real well and then set it in front of the chief and smile while he drank it up. Other times he or one of the other sailors would add a little . . . well, we don’t need to get too gross, but you get the idea.
The chief didn’t know what they were doing, so it never changed his behavior, but it did help them cope. They didn’t feel so helpless.
Revenge is useful to people in subordinate positions, because they don’t have authority over the person who has wronged them.
Of course, that disparity in power means a lot of people don’t do anything when they feel mistreated because they are afraid of retaliation, and some people will suffer under abusive bosses because want a promotion or bonus.
But even people who don’t take action can get a sort of revenge with no risk of being caught. "People have revenge fantasies, and they have very rich, detailed fantasies. So that in your mind you have dealt with it, but to the outside world it seems like you are toeing the line."
Workplace injustices
Bies discovered how important revenge was when he was studying injustice in the workplace. Revenge is informal justice, he said. "The formal mechanism can’t solve all the problems, so sometimes the peers have to take care of stuff." I asked Bies if he takes revenge on his colleagues. He took the Fifth, but said people don’t tend to mess with him because they know that "I’m essentially creating a recipe book for getting even."
Bies said there is a rich underground in many organizations where colleagues find support for their sense of grievance.
He did some consulting work for a newspaper in the Northeast once, and some of the employees told him about a voodoo doll that represented a particularly tyrannical editor. They took pleasure in sticking needles in the doll.
A lot of times people talk themselves out of acting, but some events really make turning the other cheek difficult, Bies said.
Anything that causes a loss of face with peers is deeply harmful.
People also react strongly if they feel there has been a violation of civic order, their gut feeling about what’s right and wrong between people, particularly if people break the rules for their own self-interest.
Moral justification
If taking revenge stops the behavior from happening, then it has been constructive, he said.
"When you ask why, people will always tell you I did it for justice because it was the right thing. There is always a moral justification.
"One of the criticisms I get is that I’m just condoning revenge. My response is taken from `Mutiny on The Bounty.’ " He quoted one of the characters in the original movie: "I do not condone the mutiny, but I condemn the tyranny that gave rise to it." If you want to prevent revenge, Bies said, you have to focus on the practices that motivate or provoke it.
The No. 1 factor in those cases in which postal workers went berserk, said Bies, was "the arbitrary and bureaucratic practices of the U.S. Postal Service."
"The actions you take impact people. The words you say impact people. The things you do impact people, and if they are perceived as unfair and unwarranted, they will provoke a response.
"It’s part of the human condition. When people are harmed, they fight back."
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DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME : Our text files and message bases are for INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. DO NOT undertake any project based upon any information obtained from this or any other web site.We are not responsible for, nor do we assume any liability for, damages resulting from the use of any information on this site.
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Published: Mar 14, 2002 12:00 a.m.
Viewed 598 times
There have probably been times when you’ve wanted to strap on your six-shooter and call some varmint into the hallway for a showdown, but you didn’t do it because that really wouldn’t be good business etiquette.
Maybe instead you forgot to deliver a message, or you let colleagues know what a jerk the offending person was. You got even.
And you know what? Revenge is righteous. Sometimes, anyway, according to Bob Bies. Bies, a professor of management at Georgetown University’s School of Business, is working with two other professors on a book about revenge.
Bies doesn’t sound like the kind of guy who would stick a knife in someone’s back. Heck, he’s a Seattle native, and we know Seattle natives are always nice. When I asked him about this revenge thing, he said people always get the wrong idea.
"Part of the problem when you’re speaking about revenge," he said, "is that people think about someone going postal. If we say, `Do you get even?’ they say yes. But revenge calls up extreme images."
Maintaining balance
Whatever a person calls it, Bies said it is the same behavior. It’s a response to being provoked or slighted and nature’s way of keeping social relationships in balance.
Sometimes it changes the behavior of the person against whom we are taking revenge, and sometimes it allows us to feel better, to be able to tolerate an irritating situation.
Did I ever tell you about the time my older brother had a really nasty chief when he was a young sailor? The guy would verbally demean his men and have them doing menial chores for him all day. This guy wasn’t too bright, because one of the things he’d have these young fellows do is fetch coffee for him.
Sometimes my brother would spit into the coffee, stir it up real well and then set it in front of the chief and smile while he drank it up. Other times he or one of the other sailors would add a little . . . well, we don’t need to get too gross, but you get the idea.
The chief didn’t know what they were doing, so it never changed his behavior, but it did help them cope. They didn’t feel so helpless.
Revenge is useful to people in subordinate positions, because they don’t have authority over the person who has wronged them.
Of course, that disparity in power means a lot of people don’t do anything when they feel mistreated because they are afraid of retaliation, and some people will suffer under abusive bosses because want a promotion or bonus.
But even people who don’t take action can get a sort of revenge with no risk of being caught. "People have revenge fantasies, and they have very rich, detailed fantasies. So that in your mind you have dealt with it, but to the outside world it seems like you are toeing the line."
Workplace injustices
Bies discovered how important revenge was when he was studying injustice in the workplace. Revenge is informal justice, he said. "The formal mechanism can’t solve all the problems, so sometimes the peers have to take care of stuff." I asked Bies if he takes revenge on his colleagues. He took the Fifth, but said people don’t tend to mess with him because they know that "I’m essentially creating a recipe book for getting even."
Bies said there is a rich underground in many organizations where colleagues find support for their sense of grievance.
He did some consulting work for a newspaper in the Northeast once, and some of the employees told him about a voodoo doll that represented a particularly tyrannical editor. They took pleasure in sticking needles in the doll.
A lot of times people talk themselves out of acting, but some events really make turning the other cheek difficult, Bies said.
Anything that causes a loss of face with peers is deeply harmful.
People also react strongly if they feel there has been a violation of civic order, their gut feeling about what’s right and wrong between people, particularly if people break the rules for their own self-interest.
Moral justification
If taking revenge stops the behavior from happening, then it has been constructive, he said.
"When you ask why, people will always tell you I did it for justice because it was the right thing. There is always a moral justification.
"One of the criticisms I get is that I’m just condoning revenge. My response is taken from `Mutiny on The Bounty.’ " He quoted one of the characters in the original movie: "I do not condone the mutiny, but I condemn the tyranny that gave rise to it." If you want to prevent revenge, Bies said, you have to focus on the practices that motivate or provoke it.
The No. 1 factor in those cases in which postal workers went berserk, said Bies, was "the arbitrary and bureaucratic practices of the U.S. Postal Service."
"The actions you take impact people. The words you say impact people. The things you do impact people, and if they are perceived as unfair and unwarranted, they will provoke a response.
"It’s part of the human condition. When people are harmed, they fight back."
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Nov 24, 2007 6:35 pm - Dude. I bet you ANY money this is c/p. Look at his other eggs. The radiation one for example. "throw that ^$@# at your friend hahah" Then this has perfect grammar and much more vocabulary.