Earlier this week, Ellen Wulfhorst, writing for Reuters reported on a supposed new trend  threatening the workplace. It's called Desk Rage.

Nearly half of U.S. workers in America report yelling and verbal abuse on the job,with roughly a quarter saying it has driven them to tears, research has shown.

Other research showed one-sixth of workers reported anger at work has led to property damage, while a tenth reported physical violence and fear their workplace might not be safe.

"It's a total disaster," said Anna Maravelas, author of "How to Reduce Workplace Conflict and Stress." "Rudeness, impatience, people being angry -- we used to do that kind of stuff at home but at work, we were professional. Now it's almost becoming trendy to do it at work.

"It was something we did behind closed doors," she said. "Now people are losing their sense of embarrassment over it."

This is the kind of story that bloggers love to share.
There's just one eensy-beensy problem. This is not a spanking new story --it's a very recycled story. Just type in Desk Rage in Google and you'll get over 5 million hits.

Most interestingly,one of the top five results is an article dated July 2001 from the Monitor on Psychology. The article, written by Jennifer Daw screams the headline: Road rage, air rage, and now'desk rage."

According to a recent phone survey of 1,305 American employees performed by Integra Realty Resources, stress leads to physical violence in one in 10 work environments. And almost half of those surveyed said yelling and verbal abuse is common in their workplaces.

Dubbed "desk rage" by the popular media--and known to psychologists as counterproductive or deviant workplace behavior--this behavior includes acts of aggression, hostility, rudeness and physical violence.

If I'm punching the dots correctly, that 50% figure reported in Reuters last week is a figure that has been floating around since before 9/11.

The story resurfaced again in 2004. This time it was Kate Lorenz of Careerbuilder.com in association with CNN.com who offered up helpful hints to avoid or deal with a desk rage situation.

Those hints include:

• When a clash occurs, take control of your emotions
• take the time to consider what happened that prompted your colleague to fly off the handle
• Encourage everyone to breathe deeply
• If the feud has been going on for a while, take it outside the office
• Keep your tantrum-throwing colleague or associate at arm's length
• If you see a coworker yelling at a colleague or calling fellow employees names, his behavior should be considered bullying and must be reported.

Does anyone ever really follow these helpful hints? Personally, it sounds like a bunch of hooey to me.

Not too long ago I was teaching a leadership course that had a case study where the employees had to say what they would do if an employee picked up a metal object from their bosses desk and said, " I'm going to take you out."
Not surprisingly nearly 100% of the people answered the way their employer wanted them to -- do not stop at go, report them to HR immediately.

However, in our conversation I would often change some of the factors in the case study. Here's what I would add:
What if you had worked with the employee for twenty years, knew they had a temper but also knew they were not violent? Oh, and for good measure, you totally understood why they were so angry.

Usually more than 60% of the class said in that situation, they would not report the person to HR but have a chat with them instead.

Given a hypothetical, people nearly always say they will report that behavior but when push comes to shove, people react very differently.

And so goes part of the problem. Most employees would rather tolerate bad behavior than report it to HR and get their co-worker in trouble. Or, they don't report it because the person throwing the temper tantrum is their boss and they are afraid of retaliation.

Writing about Desk rage this week Cold Cakes,  also cited  very old research conducted by Caravan Opinion Research in the year 2000.

Rising stress levels can cause seriously inappropriate behavior. 13% of surveyed workers claimed to have personally committed, or have observed co-workers commit, an act that would be described as "desk rage"--angry or destructive outbursts during work time because of the high levels of stress.

So this desk rage has been simmering like a tempest in a teapot for at least eight years, and now all of a sudden people are saying it's a new phenomenon. What's with that? Maybe its getting legs because people think that there should be an increase in desk rage.

Hey,I know lots of people who have been angry at work for a long long time.
Desk rage is not new but like the bra burning myth of the women's lib movement, it seems to be catching steam because it sounds like it sound be true. Of course people are angrier now --it costs more to get to work, their jobs are insecure and oh, their 401(k) is shrinking and they can't afford to pay the mortgage.

And like the bra burning myth of the early 70s, once the idea gets firmly planted in people's minds it begins to take on a life of its own.

 Here is the headline from the original story from Reuters,
Desk Rage spoils workplace for many Americans

And here is how its getting reported in the Korean, OhmyNews
International,
Desk Rage supersedes Road Rage
Employees no longer safe in the workplace

 
Desk Rage is evidently not just a US phenomenon, in 2006 the Russian agency Promo Interactive -- dozhivi.ru created either a tv spot of a video designed to go viral for Actimel that features Desk Rage. The concept behind the video is---and I'm relying on a loose Google translation from the Russian written website here,

Actimel strengthens the body's protective system, office clerks therefore stress to them not so afraid and they still leave a chance to live up to.

Kind of just makes you look forward to going to the office tomorrow.

Elana writes about business culture at FunnyBusiness