Getting Even, by Thomas Tripp and Robert Bies, Jossey-Bass, 230 pages, $33.95
Revenge in the workplace conjures up images of embittered, delusional ex-workers storming into warehouses or offices with a grudge and a gun. Most people would consider such actions a pretty rare occurrence – and revenge something they'd never carry out: Other people are vengeful, not good folks like us.
If that's the way you figure it, figure again. Getting Even: The Truth About Workplace Revenge – And How To Stop It by management professors Thomas Tripp and Robert Bies will disabuse you of many of the ways you think of revenge.
Such drastic actions as gun-toting avengers may be rare, but acts of revenge come in many other forms, too. They probably are an everyday occurrence in your workplace. And you could be the avenger just as easily as the guy in the next cubicle.
Most of us, according to the authors, seek revenge in more subtle ways for injustices that occur to us in the workplace. If you haven't taken revenge yourself, you might well have been the victim of a colleague's retaliatory actions. And those retributive moves might well have been deserved.
The book is filled with stories of revenge, and many readers will find themselves feeling more sympathy for the person seeking revenge than the person on the receiving end – in fact, you might, like me, unexpectedly find yourself sometimes cheering the revenge-seekers on.
Take the case of a guy identified as Jack. His engineering firm hired a new fellow, Seth, who was to take over Jack's duties and office space while Jack moved on to better projects. Jack was supposed to clean up his cubicle on his return from a business trip.
But when he got back, he found that Seth had already taken over, stashing all of Jack's stuff in a corner. “What had been my personal space for the last three years had been completely violated by some newbie,” Jack told the authors. Seth was unsympathetic when Jack approached him. “Sorry, guess you didn't move fast enough.”
So Jack took revenge. When he moved out, he took not only his stuff stashed in a corner but also three-quarters of the random access memory from Seth's computer to put in his own, even though he really didn't need it.
There are also stories of employees who take revenge on customers. The book tells of one Starbucks barista who replaced all the caffeinated java orders from rude customers with decaffeinated coffee instead. Then there was the airline ticket agent who was on the receiving end of a tirade from an angry passenger. The agent's move: The passenger was sent to his destination of Kansas City, but the passenger's luggage went to Tokyo.
Yes, revenge can be sweet. It's sweet because it is about justice. Employees need to see their workplaces as fair. When they perceive acts as being unfair, they want justice restored, the authors say.
“Victims want to see offenders punished, and possibly to get back whatever the offenders took away from them, whether it be their money, their sense of ‘law and order' in the organization, or even their reputation,” the authors write. Either the organization acts to restore justice, or the aggrieved party takes vigilante action.
And revenge is like the canary in the coal mine. If there are many incidents of revenge in your workplace, consider it a sign that the organization and its members are perceived as unjust, and without adequate channels for redressing perceived wrongs, the authors contend.
“In that sense, you can view revenge as a sometimes positive phenomenon. It's a way of restoring justice where justice has broken down, and it can be a potent motivator for constructive change,” they observe.
