How to deal with the office jerk

Don’t let obnoxious cretins ruin your workday and take years off your life. Try this approach.

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How is it that office jerks are inescapable, insufferable, and even injurious?

Just when we thought dealing with Michael—our chauvinistic 40-something colleague who still lives in his mother’s basement—couldn’t get any worse, researchers had to go and prove that dealing with office jerks (let’s call them “difficult personalities”) can actually shorten our lives.

Gee, thanks, researchers.

I’ll try not to shoot the messenger, but let me summarize the findings for you.

Basically, a team of researchers followed 820 Israeli employees for about 20 years, evaluating their working environments and their general lives. This somewhat-intrusive research revealed an alarming statistic: Of this population of Israeli employees, those who experienced consistently negative interactions with colleagues were 2.4 times more likely to die during the study.

Bad days at work can affect our personal lives

No longer can we feel relief when we leave the office after a hellish day; now we have to worry about how each bad work day can be shaving months—maybe even years—off our lives.

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