Being nice

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^I agree that its not a gender specific behaviour, even though I do associate being snippy more with women than men, I can understand that it is an environmentally conditioned reaction to powerlessness, or simply a conditioned way of being.

This is why I work at home. Cant get work done if I have to deal with office politics.

I've taken some time off, and the headspace is great.
There are so many distractions in work, that have nothing to do with my job description but I have to engage with them and still get my job done.
I can get to a point where I could work from home, but that will be some years from now and after more education.

Sometimes just looking at the person and saying nothing can work, too. They'll usually fill the silence by either backing away from the rude thing they said, or trying to add to it and end up sounding like an azzhole or an idiot.

I agree with the posts that point the blame for the situation on the environment that is being cultivated and not the gender of the participants

--->>THIS-->> The boss is the biggest culprit for these games and I have had to remove myself from her range, but obviously not completely because she became quite unreasonable when I took it too far, I was labelled anti social because I took a hiatus from eating in the staff room, since then its been snippy comments about my appearance from other staff and all smiles when they want something from me

You hit the nail on the head.
I travel to different faci!cities in my entire state and the minute I walk in I encounter helpful kindness or sniping and shirking. It always comes down from the top! The boss determines everyone's attitude. I just have to plow ahead and ignore the madness. It would be a lot harder if I had to stay and deal with that kind of situation. That's why I love my job. Hope your boss gets transfered out!

i'm selectively nice. i can be quite bitchy and passive aggressive, and i don't deny it's about playing with power.
however, i have noticed that many people are bitchy and passive aggressive about things which i wouldn't even think to be bitchy or passive aggressive about. also, i'm generally nice or mean to people situationally rather than deciding whether a person overall is deserving of my bitchy passive aggressiveness or my nice civility. i'm easy going so long as i don't have a serious problem with someone else's behavior, whereas i've noticed many times people are mean to others for reasons that i find trivial, misguided, or obviously in exchange for social rewards.
i definitely agree with others on this thread; the social reward for being mean, especially from a position of real or perceived powerlessness is probably why snippy behavior is so pervasive.
but i think it's important to note the distinction between types of meanness, because being nice and non-confrontational most of the time is boring. also, debating opposing views can sometimes turn snippy but its not intrinsically mean, which is a distinction that can be hard to recognize especially in a textual context where intonation and nonverbal language is easy to misunderstand.

freshman year of college my roommate and i didn't get along, and so her and all of her friends in our dormitory (who barely even knew me) didn't like me. one day they all decided to call the cops on me because they knew i smoked weed and were hoping i would be searched and get into legal trouble, which happened. i had to pay the court 400 dollars and sit through an excruciating 12 hour class about the dangers of weed and alcohol. i even had to pay 5 dollars to not have my fingerprint taken
so the next week after i went through that load of crap i overheard one of the girls who called the cops on me complaining that she only has 20 dollars and her dad hasn't sent her a new check yet. having just been relieved of all the money i earned working, i was feeling very bitchy and passive aggressive. this girl left her shower supplies outside of the door to her room, and one night i opened her shampoo bottle and poured a copious amount of water-based lube into it.

i don't think those girls were mean to me for good reasons, i think they were operating in a herd mentality and being mean to me made them feel powerful and closer to each other. however, i don't think my response was unjustified even though it definitely was not nice.

Completely deserved.

Mmmm... This is what I had in mind when I first read this thread. Sometimes, the upper management can cause a trickle down effect if they have a bad or schlocky attitude, or manner of running their business. That's would explain why the men are also taking up a similar attitude.

We have men and women in my work environment, but normally, people are pretty decent to each other. They "cut up" and joke around, and sometimes there may be some slightly heated words. But it's rare. My warehouse is a pretty chilled place. And our management is decent. Makes all the difference.

I saw a weird version of this when I was working in the male dominated delivery world, where everyone is in competition with each other to take the most orders, but certain principles of fairness and efficiency still had to be observed to keep everything going smoothly. What was odd to me was that when we did have female drivers, they almost invariably took the competitive aspect of the job very personally, and would think that their co-workers were out to get them specifically out of malice, rather than that their co-workers were simply trying to maximize their own earnings by working aggressively. To be sure, the guys in that industry could be awful, I've seen punches thrown over "stolen" orders, but that was over one guy taking money from another, not taking offense from the mere fact that the job is overtly competitive. I don't want to draw any broad conclusions, but I think it's interesting that most of the women I worked with did not do very well at all when the competition was out in the open and strongly meritocratic (if you want to make more money as a driver, all you need to do is be quicker than everyone else, and you can't fake that), and would frequently cry or bitterly complain about how everyone must hate them, without ever seeming to notice that they were being treated exactly the same as everyone else. I have to wonder if in a different environment that might have manifested as the type of catty sniping that the OP mentions, just because it was so different from the way the men seemed to react to the pressures of the job.

I've had the fortune to work for a couple of really wonderful managers. It's really amazing how they managed to get people who were really insecure and competitive to pull their claws in and cooperate with others - simply by always being civil and friendly, and making small corrections whenever things threatened to get out of hand. The employees in these places were no better than at other places, they were just more content with their job.

Also, one thing that seems to help is to have some sort of gender and age balance in the workplace. I think it defuses unhelpful competition, as people find fewer reasons to compare themselves socially with their colleagues. That's just my theory, though.

I think Ive used up my reserves for being snippy with people and people being snippy with me, I dont know, life is short and I just cant be bothered with needless tension, but work is a competition and I'm in the wrong environment.

That could be because women generally act cooperatively rather than competitively. If so, it could have something to do with women's tendency to nurture (because of child rearing.)


Uh huh.

Oh yes, women have such trouble with meritocracy. It's far better when presents are placed at our feet.

I'm wondering if this aspect is biological, or sociological.
Personally, I'm not big on competition. And if I am in a competition, I'm not really aggressive, and have a tendency to not really care of I win that much... there is a little bit of drive, just not that big.
Though I'm a male, I am more nurturing than competitive.

I guess everyone has varying degrees of that, though. What do you say?

I'm competitive when I'm playing a sport or a game. Even if I suck at it.

As far as human relations are concerned, I'm non-competitive.

I'm not competitive when it comes to sport and games, I just don't care (one of the reasons I rarely play against people, it brings out the worst in many) I can be very competitive in other ways though, but - call it hubris if you will - I want to win by merit, not cheating or sabotaging others. As a result, I see "winning at any cost" as a cowardly and dishonourable attitude