Anger Management

It happens with disturbing frequency, yet each time, it manages to shock us: in a pique of emotion, someone walks into a workplace or a church or a school and starts shooting. The media flocks to the scene like crows to road kill, and within 24 hours the world learns that the murderers had been dropping clues for months about their anger, and in many cases had flat out shared their homicidal plans with friends and therapists. Fearful of stirring up trouble, though, these people kept their knowledge to themselves.

In retrospect, stirring up trouble seems to have been the better option. Certainly that's how the media will spin it: "How could so many people have missed the signs?"

Isn't it amazing how easy it is to see signs when you start with the violent act and work backward to find the cause? When you begin your investigation with full knowledge of the outcome, every detail stands out in high relief. Normally unimportant personality traits or "innocent" statements become obvious clues. It’s like following a blazed trail.

For those of us who reside in the present—the very present would become the investigated past if a coworker turned violent—there are no blazed trails to follow. We blaze new ones every day. Clues and indicators and signs are to us merely innocent events and personality quirks.

Recognizing that workplace violence is a very real phenomenon—homicide accounted for 12 percent of workplace fatalities in 2007—what are we supposed to do? Do we really want to create a work environment wherein no one is allowed to express anger or frustration? Are we to force everyone to get along? Would that even be possible?

This topic received a lot of attention during the November meeting of the ISRI Safety and Environmental Council as we discussed a number of scenarios that might reasonably arise during the course of an average work week. The intent was not to reach a consensus on a right answer, but rather to discuss how managers would respond to situations that might portend violence. It led to some spirited discussions.

Give some of these a try at your next supervisors' meeting:

• Two workers, friends on the job, go bar hopping together one Saturday night, and they end up trying to pick up the same girl. They fight. One ends up with a broken nose, the other with a dislocated thumb. The friendship is over, and the whole plant learns about the incident. What do you do when they return to work?

  Is this just an off-the-job scuffle to be ignored in the workplace, or should you get involved? Is anger management counseling in order?

• A female office worker arrives one morning with a black eye and a split lip. She says that her boyfriend did it, but that he didn't mean it. She refuses to press charges, but you know for a fact that the boyfriend will be picking her up at the end of the day. What do you do?

  If your worker's version of events is true, this boyfriend has committed a felony. Are you obliged to get involved in this kind of personal matter? With the boyfriend returning, are you concerned for the safety of your other workers?

• In the process of laying off employees due to decreased business, a crane operator with a young family says, "You have no right to do this to me. I swear to God I'll make you pay. My family won't be the only ones to suffer." What do you do?

  These are tough times, one of the worst job markets in half a century. Your crane operator was probably just popping off at the mouth, right? Or was he? If your spouse or son or daughter works for you, have they just been threatened?

• A 20-year-old male worker comments while at work on a female worker's physical attributes, and the female worker slaps him. What do you do?

  We can all stipulate that the male worker was way out of line, and maybe we even shout an Oprahesque "You go, girl!," but the female worker returned a verbal assault with a physical one. Can you tolerate that? If one of the offending parties in this scenario were your son or daughter, would your disciplinary response be different?

I think scenarios like these areuseful tools for testing a company'scommitment to a violence-freeworkplace. As with so many otheraspects of safety, we tend to sendmixed signals when it comes to aggressive behavior. We use a lot of euphemisms for violence, including "teasing" and "horseplay," either of which could easily escalate to bullying and harassment.A common trait shared by perpetrators of newsmaking mass murderers is their perception of themselves as victims.

—John Gilstrap
Director of Safety