Anger management all the rage as conflict returns to the office
Despite economic recovery and rising wages, anger management is in vogue. As Alexis De Tocqueville once observed, people don't start a revolution when they are dirt poor. Similarly, when you have nowhere to go, you make yourself nice to colleagues.
So it must be a sign of good times to come when two workers from Hong Kong Economic Times were arrested for assault on Wednesday after a minor altercation in the office pantry.
The incident started at about 9am in their paper's North Point office. According to police, two women, aged 29 and 37, bumped into each other in the pantry. Both worked in the information resources section.
'The younger woman apparently patted her colleague on the shoulder a bit too hard,' a police spokeswoman said. 'There was an argument and the 37-year-old victim alleged that the other woman slapped her face and pulled her hair. The victim was holding a glass of water and somehow water was poured on the other woman.'
The 29-year-old woman, now all wet, went to complain to her boyfriend, 41, who also worked in the office. He then walked over to the victim, by now back at her desk, and allegedly splashed water on her. The couple were arrested and later released on $500 bail each.
LoDown suggests the paper's bosses call St James' Settlement Corporate Training Centre, which is offering this month a course on a behavioural model for anger management in the workplace called BOMB. It stands for, and I quote: 'Body Management, Omitting Skills, Mastering the Conditions, and Brainwashing'. Maybe it's worth the time and money for our friends at the Economic Times to learn all about the course.
