In 1958, an art professor named Robert Propst set out to design the perfect office. As head of research for the Herman Miller furniture company, Propst began to study the meaning of the modern-day workplace. He conducted extensive studies of office workers: identifying their every inefﬁciency, useless motion and wasted second—in the wild hope that he might, through architecture, correct them. Propst is seen as an early inventor of “ergonomics.” His observations on the importance of periodic physical activity spurred his invention of the stand-up desk. His belief that “fortuitous encounter[s]” between employees fuelled creativity led him to design porous workspaces with plenty of meeting spots. When his magnum opus was released onto the American market in 1964, its clean lines, movable walls and swivel chairs were “received as a liberation.” Propst called his creation the “Action Office,” but today it is known as “the cubicle.”

By 2011, according to Nikil Saval’s new book, Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace, at least 60 per cent of working Americans performed their labour in some form of cubicle. But only seven per cent claimed to prefer it to other kinds of work environments. In popular culture, “cube farms” are depicted as stagnant, anonymous incubators of petty grievance (think Dilbert and The Office)—not the liberating engines of creativity and social mobility that Propst hoped they would be. “Man is born free,” Saval writes, playing on Rousseau, “but he is everywhere in cubicles.”

It wasn’t meant to be this way. Above all, Cubed is a history of “office utopianism”: the belief that the perfect office is both attainable and inevitable—and that, once realized, it will nurture a state of pure efficiency. Saval takes readers on a zippy whirl through the greatest workplace inventions of the last two centuries: the “office clerk” and the “type-girl;” the air conditioner and the Modern Efficiency Desk; skyscrapers, suburban office parks, and “wacky” dot-com work spaces.

The first office was created to handle the first paperwork—which belonged to 18th-century merchants. By 1910, there were some 4.4 million American office workers. By the turn of the century, the world had its first “efficiency expert”: Frederick Taylor, whose crude model of workplace incentives fed the era’s obsession with productivity. Taylor turned desks away from the door (to minimize distraction and maximize supervisors’ snooping abilities). Later, his teachings gave rise to departments of personnel management (“human resources”) and the professional manager. Even Lenin, writing after the Bolshevik Revolution, granted that “Taylorism” was both “the refined brutality of the bourgeois exploitation” and something that “the Soviet Republic must at all costs adapt.”

Fast-forward to the ’90s (“open offices,” Ping-Pong rooms, boss-less corporations), the early aughts (ergonomic specialists, teleconference technology, Silicon Valley “campuses”) and recent years, which have seen mobile, cloud-powered businesses compete against the physical office. Still, the cubicle endures.

Today’s designers see offices not as potential tools of management science but as organisms that should adapt to the human animal. Saval writes that furniture companies have recently “intensified their use of anthropological techniques . . . to design around behaviour rather than attempt to inﬂuence or change it.” The utopian office is thus über-adaptive, minimizing its own bearing. “We’re not designing private offices anymore; we’re designing community spaces,” Lisa Fulford-Roy, a senior vice-president at the design firm HOK, told Maclean’s. (HOK famously designed Toronto’s Google HQ, which features a fireplace lounge, a “grassy knoll,” a secret lounge hidden behind a bookshelf and carpeting made from “recycled fishing line harvested from the ocean floor.”) Fulford-Roy says the trend is toward “evidence-based designs,” which privilege flexibility.

But flexibility oft proves elusive. The original cubicle was designed to be flexible. But over time, its walls grew rigid. “What passed for workers’ welfare,” writes Saval, “could with a little imagination also be seen as social control.”

On Sept. 24, 2007, a Monday evening, Cathleen Renner sat down in her home office to tackle a project. Renner, 47, was a manager at AT&T, where she’d been for 25 years. It isn’t clear how many hours she spent at the computer that night, making a plan for a possible employee strike, but she did send an email to a colleague at 12:26 a.m. When her son got up at 7 a.m., she was at her desk. Renner took him to the bus a little later, and as she walked out the door, she clutched her leg and let out a cry of pain. Still, she returned to work. At 11:34, she called an ambulance. Renner was dead by the time she reached the hospital.

Like most of us, Renner spent long hours on the job seated at her computer; in a workers’ compensation claim filed after her death, her husband argued that sitting was what killed her. (Renner died of a pulmonary embolism after a blood clot formed in her leg.) The case was not exactly straightforward; AT&T called an expert who pointed out Renner was morbidly obese, weighing 304 lb., and had recently started taking new medication, birth control pills. But in 2011 a New Jersey judge ruled in James Renner’s favour, noting his wife’s job required her to “spend unusually long hours at her computer” and awarding him workers’ compensation benefits as a result. The decision was extremely unusual, the first of its kind legal observers could recall. But if a growing number of health experts are right about the dangers of sitting, it could be a harbinger of things to come.

Like obesity or smoking before it, sitting is the new plague, and not just because it can lead to deadly blood clots. Alarmingly, the latest research links it to obesity, diabetes and the major killers, heart disease and cancer. And exercising the recommended half-hour a day, while beneficial, isn’t enough to stave off the ill effects of sitting. “Thirty minutes is two per cent of your day,” says Mark Tremblay, director of the Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group (HALO) at the CHEO Research Institute in Ottawa. “What about the other 98 per cent?”

The latest and most powerful warning comes from a team at the University of Leicester and Loughborough University in England. In a meta-analysis of 18 studies (which included almost 800,000 participants), they found that sitting for long periods increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease and death. And, as Tremblay suggested, sitting was shown to be a risk independent of exercise—meaning that a person who regularly visits the gym is still in danger if he or she is inactive for most of the rest of the day.

Sedentary behaviour—sitting at work, watching TV, commuting—now eats up the vast majority of our time. In another study, Australian researchers looked at TV watching specifically. “TV viewing time may have adverse health consequences that rival those of lack of physical activity, obesity and smoking,” it stated. “Every single hour of TV viewed may shorten life by as much as 22 minutes.”

Of course, those who aren’t watching TV are likely sitting with an iPad, a computer, a video game or a book. We sit at the office, at home, in the car. We sit for work, and to relax. The difference between all these types of sedentary behaviour isn’t understood, and we can’t say how much is too much. “Not a lot of people study the health consequences of reading, and we need to,” says Tremblay. In 2011, his group launched the Sedentary Behaviour Research Network (SBRN) to focus on the health impacts of sitting. It is the first and only group of its kind in the world. We’re just beginning to understand the sitting disease, but what we already know suggests that modern society is making us quite sick.

Even as a child, Dr. James Levine wondered why some people seem destined to be fat, whereas others can eat as much as they like and stay thin. Now an obesity researcher, he’s spent decades looking into it. In a 1999 study, he fed test subjects an extra 1,000 calories a day on top of what they needed to maintain their current weight. Some gained almost nothing; others packed on 10 times as much. In 2005, Levine, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., followed up with a twist: his subjects wore a pair of “magic underwear” he’d designed, interlaced with sensors to track every movement.

As Levine meticulously monitored caloric input and output, it became clear that those who stayed thin were moving around more, but they weren’t devoting more time to formal exercise. Instead, they were unconsciously making little movements throughout the day, burning off the extra calories. They were also spending two hours less per day in a chair, compared with peers who gained weight. Years later, the fact that sedentariness is linked to obesity, independently of exercise, still surprises. “I just came from giving a talk at a sports centre,” Levine says. “I thought people were going to throw their frozen yogourts at me.”

The most cutting-edge research shows that if people sit too much, they’re at increased risk of cancer, according to Christine Friedenreich, a University of Calgary cancer epidemiologist. A 2010 literature review in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Preventionfound that sitting was associated with a higher risk of colorectal, endometrial, ovarian and prostate cancer, as well as cancer mortality in women. Sedentary people are more likely to have metabolic syndrome (a cluster of symptoms like high blood pressure, insulin resistance and extra fat packed around the abdomen), which is associated with heart disease and some types of cancer.

The human body is built for movement, not for sitting still. “The leg muscles are the largest in the body, in terms of skeletal muscle,” says Peter Katzmarzyk, a professor at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La.. “When you sit, you’re deactivating them.” After a little under an hour, our metabolism starts to go to sleep. The body becomes less adept at vacuuming sugar and fat from the bloodstream, causing them to build up and insulin levels to spike. The human system is like a Ferrari, Levine says. “If you leave it to idle, it clogs up.”

It takes a surprisingly short time even for early signs of muscle wasting to occur. In a 2010 study, a team of U.S. researchers recruited subjects to wear a platform shoe on one foot for 48 hours, preventing one leg from touching the ground. “We had them wear accelerometers so we could monitor their movements,” says lead author Kimberly Reich, an assistant professor at High Point University in North Carolina. “Honestly, they were just couch potatoes all weekend. We instructed them to relax, but when they needed to move, they had to use crutches.” Taking a muscle biopsy 24 hours after the shoe was off, they saw changes in gene expression that could lead to muscle wasting. “We’d hypothesized that when they started walking again, everything would be back to normal,” she says. “It wasn’t.” (The team didn’t collect biopsies more than 24 hours after, so we don’t know if or when these changes were reversed.)

Before scientists started to chart the effects of too much sitting, sedentariness was treated as a neutral factor—shorthand for the absence of exercise. This was in spite of the fact that earlier research had hinted sedentariness could be dangerous: in the 1950s a study in The Lancet noted that London bus drivers had double the risk of heart attack compared to bus conductors, who walked around taking tickets. That’s changing. “Too much sitting now may be seen as distinct from too little exercise,” stated a 2012 paper from Neville Owen of the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Australia, published in the journal Preventive Medicine. In just the past few years, sitting has emerged as its own powerful risk factor.

It’s a new way of thinking. We still don’t have an across-the-board definition of what “sedentary behaviour” means. The research network has called for a standard definition that would classify it as a waking behaviour done in a sitting or reclining posture which has an energy expenditure less than or equal to 1.5 metabolic equivalents, or METs, a measure of the energy demand of movement. (One MET is resting, and brisk walking or running might account for three to eight METs.) Sleep doesn’t qualify; it’s a restorative state and, unlike when we’re sitting, we don’t tend to snack while we sleep. Still, even on the question of sleep there is disagreement. “Picture your great-grandfather doing chores. He needed to rest so his muscles could rebuild,” says Tremblay. “Today’s world is different. The need to repair and regenerate is not really there.”

Of all the types of sedentary behaviour, TV watching seems to be the worst, Tremblay says, “worse than playing a board game or working on a computer.” He compares it to hibernation: “Your metabolic rate almost goes below resting.” When tapping away at a computer, for example, we’re a bit busier, more alert. “You may be less likely to be nibbling on something, whereas if you’re watching TV, you might be snacking,” he says. “You’re exposed to commercials that prompt you to eat, smoke or drink.”

The Australian study wasn’t the only one to highlight the dangers of TV. Another, published in the online medical journal BMJ Open in July, found that the U.S. population could gain an estimated two years of life expectancy by reducing sitting to less than three hours a day, and gain 1.38 years from reducing television watching to less than two hours a day. A 2011 review of studies, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, estimated that among 100,000 Americans per year, each two-hour increment of TV watching per day was associated with 176 new cases of Type 2 diabetes, 38 new cases of fatal cardiovascular disease and 104 newcases of all-cause mortality.

But TV watching is also the most widely studied form of sedentary activity, partly because people tend to have a good sense of how much television they watch. It can be harder to recall how much time was spent sitting at a desk or in a car.

It will be years before we untangle it all, but for now a consensus is growing: too much sitting is deadly, no matter what kind. A recent series of articles in TheLancet went so far as to call physical inactivity a global pandemic. “Of the 36 million deaths each year from non-communicable diseases,” a commentary states, “physical inactivity and smoking each contribute about five million.”

Over the years, we’ve instituted more and more sitting time into our lives. In 1970, two in 10 working Americans were at jobs that required light activity, like sitting at a desk; three in 10 were in high-activity jobs, like construction or farming. By 2000, more than four in 10 were in desk jobs, and only two in 10 were in high-activity jobs, said a 2010 commentary in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. We also spend longer hours at the office. Screen time has increased dramatically, the same report noted, and other contributors to daily sitting time, like hours spent watching TV and driving, are at all-time highs. Between 1989 and 2009, the number of households with a computer and Internet access jumped from 15 per cent to 69 per cent. Screens are ubiquitous. Almost one-third of U.S. children under age 2 have a television in their bedrooms, notes a 2011 study from the non-profit Common Sense Media.

Some companies are finding ways to build activity into their employees’ work hours. Researchers at CHEO, home of Sedentary Behaviour Research Network, take walking meetings; if the group’s too big, they’ll book a room and stand. At the San Francisco headquarters of Square Inc., a mobile payment app, “a lot of our engineers and designers are at stand-up tables,” CEO Jack Dorsey tells Maclean’s. Dorsey, who also co-created Twitter, notes that Ernest Hemingway worked at a stand-up desk. (Not just Hemingway—Leonardo da Vinci, Ben Franklin and other great minds famously worked standing up.) “I feel more creative on my feet,” he says. Standing desks are used at Google, AOL and Facebook.

Sensing a new market, office-supply companies are swooping in. Ergo Desktop, which sells adjustable-height desks, was launched in 2009. Back then, the company was “just myself and my wife’s encouragement,” says Dan Sharkey. Today, the Ohio-based business employs 16 people, sells $3-million worth of desks a year and attracts clients like ESPN, Harvard University and NASA. Steelcase, another office supplier, worked with Levine to develop a desk mounted on a low-speed treadmill so employees can walk and work (it sells for upwards of $5,000). Levine also developed the Gruve device, a personal activity monitor that vibrates if its wearer has been sitting too long. Australian inventors have created something called an “alarming cushion,” which works on the same principle.

But overhauling a culture centred on sitting is easier said than done. Standing at a meeting can give the impression of restlessness or inattention. Walking at a treadmill desk while typing is an acquired skill. And standing all day isn’t really healthy, either; not long ago, when more jobs were in fields like manufacturing, the workplace plague was standing. “It’s fatiguing,” says Alan Hedge, director of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Laboratory at Cornell University. Standing can also lead to its own health problems, like varicose veins.

Hedge has an electric desk that raises and lowers with the touch of a button—but he never stands to use it. It’s too much of a bother. “When I raise it, I have to change the position of the screen on the computer and move things around, and I’m just not going to do that,” he says. Fancy equipment or not, like Hedge, plenty of people would simply rather work sitting down. Cutting back on sitting time at home is equally troublesome. It seems we’d rather watch others exercise on The Biggest Loser than work out ourselves.

We still don’t definitively know the best way to prevent the sitting disease. Of the research that’s been done, one thing does seem powerfully effective: breaking up sedentary time. A 2012 study in Diabetes Care from a team including Neville Owen found that overweight or obese adults who interrupted their sitting time every 20 minutes with two-minute walks had healthier glucose and insulin levels in their blood.

It could be that we’ll see recommendations from the World Health Organization and others on breaking up or reducing sitting time, like the ones that already push people to exercise. In Canada, it’s already started: the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology has released “sedentary behaviour guidelines” to warn kids off more than two hours of recreational screen time per day, and guidelines for adults will follow. In Denmark, according to a report in Bloomberg Businessweek, employers are required by law to provide adjustable-height desks for their employees.

We could see mandated walking breaks for office workers, and more workers’ compensation claims. The floodgates could soon be open to legal claims similar to Cathleen Renner’s. Perhaps with an eye on that possibility, AT&T has appealed the Renner decision, according to Patrick Caulfield, James Renner’s lawyer; the case will be heard by the Supreme Court of New Jersey.

For the millions of us who are mostly sedentary, though, change would have to happen at a societal level—everything from the workplace to the commute to home life would be affected. It would be a monumental task, but observers insist there is precedent. After all, indoor smoking today is an anachronism; eventually, maybe spending long stretches seated in a chair will be, too. “If we said to people 20 years ago, ‘There will be a smoking ban,’ they would have been shocked,” says Emma Wilmot of the University of Leicester, lead author of the meta-analysis. “Now, we accept it.”

Technology hasn’t just changed the way the world works—it has changed the way people lunch. Noon hour is no longer a time to get out of the office and grab a bite with friends, because it’s now an excuse to stay in, eat at your desk—and shop.

Janice Bereskin discovered lunchtime shopping a few years ago. “I don’t skip lunch, but I combine eating and shopping all within my lunch break,” says the Toronto lawyer.

“I can shop for myself, the kids, and talk on the phone all at the same time. It’s so much more efficient than walking to a mall and going store to store.” Not only that, she avoids “pushy salespeople,” and says it gives her a boost. “And you know there will be another boost when the package arrives. It feels like you’ve received a present, even though you paid for it and knew it was coming.” Recent purchases include a Smythe blazer and Rebecca Taylor top fromeLuxe.ca.

A little more than a year after it launched, eLuxe is a fashionistas’ go-to for its deals on designer clothes. Founder Joanna Track thought the site would be busy at night when people have more downtime, so she was “surprised that there was so much activity at lunch time.” She noticed a spike in traffic between noon and 2 p.m. Now online retailers like her offer two-hour “stop, drop and shop” promotions during that early-afternoon window. “It’s been tremendously successful,” says Track, who rarely shops at conventional retail stores anymore.

“Everyone’s time is so stretched these days. Online shopping allows women to get their retail therapy in without leaving their desk,” Track notes. Being able to eat your lunch at the same time is a bonus. “Don’t try that in a store,” Track says, laughing.

Don’t have an office? You can shop from your smartphone or tablet, although most companies don’t frown on an online buying spree as long as it’s on your own time, says Sari Friedman, a Toronto human-resources consultant and career coach.

“Most companies are not shutting down even Facebook because they realize that this is a social-media world and that can actually help their business, as long as their productivity isn’t going down.”

Besides, businesses should have a corporate climate that radiates trust, not suspicion. “I’m not saying everyone should be trusted, but if they are on their lunch hour and are shopping it can actually be beneficial. They are not leaving work early, let’s say, to line up in a parking lot just before Christmas so they can shop.”

Since it is indeed that most wonderful time of the year, shopping during work hours is attractive to people who want to avoid the inevitable crowds, parking madness, and huge queues at the cash register. Friedman believes employees are more productive when they have “a little space” to go online. “If it’s their lunch hour, it’s their time. I still think that people should go out and get some air.”

The lunchtime shopper has to be focused, however. “There is no time for distractions,” says Nancy Pavela, marketing director at Jackman Reinvention Inc., a Toronto retail consulting firm. “Who doesn’t love the feeling of getting something for yourself or getting something done? It’s kind of like that feeling you get when you go to the gym in the morning. And I don’t have to put on a coat.”

The immediacy of the online deal can be problematic for those who are trying to rein in their spending, says Richard Dunwoody, executive director of Licensed Credit Professionals Canada, a non-profit organization focused on personal finance education. He suggests postponing your lunchtime order and reviewing later at home. “This double-check allows you to rethink your purchase order and decide if you need it.”

But Dara Fleischer, who runs the blog Fashion Junkie, loves the instant gratification. She is so addicted to online shopping, she recently received something she swears she didn’t mean to buy. “I think it’s like sleepwalking, but ‘sleep-shopping.’ ” The New York shopaholic does the most damage on designer-clothing mecca Shopbop.com. “They just make it so easy. And you can return anything in two seconds.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/culture/a-lunch-affair-with-shopping/feed/0The office petri dishhttp://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/the-office-petri-dish/
http://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/the-office-petri-dish/#commentsTue, 23 Oct 2012 14:06:01 +0000macleans.cahttp://www2.macleans.ca/?p=304307Why so many researchers and academics are turning their attention to the modern workplace

A recent study that received widespread attention reported that bald men have an edge in the office. They are perceived to be more powerful and masculine. Another popular study, from University of California’s Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, showed that female workers who flirt are more effective negotiators. Yet another bit of research, from Hiroshima University, found that looking at pictures of cute animals improves workers’ concentration and makes them more productive. Meanwhile, a more dire report recently found that more than one in five Canadian employees suffer from depression (suggesting that the recession’s psychic toll on workers is worse than ever imagined).

This is just a sampling of the flood of analysis that comes out in any given week about life in the workplace, produced by universities, think tanks, consulting firms and mental health organizations. Researchers routinely perform studies on workplace stress, workplace romances, sexism on the job, racism and ageism. Taken together, it all offers a somewhat disturbing, even disheartening picture of today’s work environment, where a haircut or the length of your skirt might be the key to success. Or where the actual office seems more like an episode of The Office. But it also underscores the increasingly intense level of interest our culture has in what goes on behind cubicle walls.

The workplace is the main landscape of our modern lives. Many of us will talk to our bosses and colleagues more than members of our immediate family. So it is perhaps inevitable that cubicle culture is getting so much attention. Researchers who study the workplace say that because office and work-family dynamics have become more complex, the volume of studies analyzing workplace issues has been on the rise. “Trying to balance work and family life is becoming more challenging for so many reasons,” said Julie McCarthy, an associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. “There are two-career couples. Our workplaces are becoming more competitive, more international.”

The fascination with research on working life has a long history. Karl Marx was one of the first modern philosophers to identify the condition he called worker alienation, which he viewed as the inevitable result of capitalist-driven industrialization. Marx argued that factory work and assembly lines set up hierarchies that distanced workers from the products they produced, causing apathy and alienation.

Karl Aquino, the Richard Poon professor of organizations and society at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business, says people are still fascinated with the workplace power structures that rule our lives. Nearly 200 years after the industrial revolution, most people still view work as a necessary chore, not a path to fulfillment, Aquino says. “For many people, jobs are really more burdensome than they are self-actualizing,” he says. “We do it because we have to make money.”

For many, that makes the workplace more like a jungle where survival is the name of the game. Workers are tossed into confined environments and forced to fend. It should come as no surprise that animal instincts kick in, Aquino says. That makes the office an exciting place to study. And people eat up the results—particularly those loaded with dire findings—because they’re searching for tips to survive.

There are signs, though, that employers are paying attention to the complaints from the cubicles and to the warnings from academics. Experts say workplace studies that were once dismissed as pop psychology have gained traction in the recession, as employers search for ways to stem lost productivity due to stress.

Vancouver-based executive coach Ray Williams says he’s already seen changes in the technology sector, where younger CEOs give workers more control of their working life. The so-called millennial generation, the kids of baby boomers, have “been brought up to be assertive,” Williams adds. “So, they walk into a workplace and say: ‘Hey, man, you’re not going to treat me like that.’ And when they become managers and leaders, they’ll create a different kind of workplace.”

Perhaps younger workers are paying attention to the workplace studies too, like the latest from the University College London in which researchers found that job stress contributes to heart disease. As Williams notes about younger workers: “If they’re treated abusively or if they’re asked to be workaholics, they’ll just walk.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/the-office-petri-dish/feed/0Am I the only sane one working here?http://www.macleans.ca/culture/am-i-the-only-sane-one-working-here/
http://www.macleans.ca/culture/am-i-the-only-sane-one-working-here/#commentsThu, 08 Oct 2009 19:20:10 +0000macleans.cahttp://www2.macleans.ca/?p=85104How to handle problematic employees without losing your mind or your cool

“If you feel confused and frustrated by the insanity at your office, you are not alone. Sometimes it seems as if the whole world of business has gone crazy,” writes clinical psychologist Dr. Albert Bernstein in a new book, Am I the Only SANE ONE Working Here?: 101 Solutions for Surviving Office Insanity.

Among the problematic characters Bernstein tackles is the colleague whose work isn’t done and who lies about it. “Never ask why,” advises Bernstein. “He may say it wasn’t really his fault, because no one gave him the information he needed. This may pull you into an argument about who sent him what and when, but that won’t get you the PowerPoint any more quickly. He will not learn anything from your lectures and his mistakes, except that he is a screw-up, to which he readily admits.”

Advice: demand to see his work in progress. “This approach will minimize the damage by giving you more usable information, and enough time to do the job yourself if necessary.” Next, tell everybody. “Send emails on how the project is going and who is doing what. The liar’s section will be the shortest, with his pitiful excuses prominently featured.”

Then there’s the colleague who thinks her work is perfect and she’s indispensable. The trouble is she doesn’t pay close attention. “She never makes mistakes,” writes Bernstein. “She always follows directions, so if you didn’t want it done that way, why didn’t you tell her? Even though she’s the weakest member of the team, she rates herself as excellent and she believes she should be paid as much as her boss, because she works longer hours.” Never tell her she is wrong, warns Bernstein. “Specify what you need from her and when you need it. Never do this verbally, because her mind will automatically change your instructions to conform to whatever she is already doing. If you are explaining something to her, don’t rely on her to take notes; provide them for her. If you send her information in an email, always get acknowledgement in writing. If you don’t, she will say you never sent it.”

Some colleagues attempt to assert dominance by using passive-aggressive tactics such as checking their watch or BlackBerry throughout your presentation. “Respond to this with a general time update,” suggests Bernstein. “Something like, ‘It’s 2:15 now. I have three more topics to cover, and I expect we’ll be out of here by 2:30.’ Do not look at the offending party when you say this. Everyone else will, however.”

If a co-worker or boss lashes out at you, take control by saying to your attacker, “Please give me a minute to think about this,” advises Bernstein. “[He] will not get angrier at you for seeming to take what he says seriously. Delay may also encourage him to do a little thinking of his own, which clearly couldn’t hurt.”

Never try to reason with a person who is yelling, he says. “Simply waiting or keeping your own voice soft may do the trick.” Don’t explain yourself. Instead, ask the attacker, “What would you like me to do?” Bernstein says, “This simple, unexpected question is the most useful tool you will ever find for dealing with anger.” In any argument, “the person who asks the questions has the upper hand.” Also, “the person who stays coolest is the perceived winner of an argument. If you keep your head while he’s acting pissed off, he will kick himself so you won’t have to.”

Bernstein goes on to warn that “unless you are at the very top of the dominance hierarchy, an emotional outburst is poisonous to your career.” If you do lose it, “Shut up. Now,” writes Bernstein. “Sit down. Leave the room.” Afterwards, do not apologize. “An apology will make you look weaker still. Your best bet is to say nothing unless you are asked. Then, a simple statement that your outburst arose out of a strong desire to do the best job possible is more than enough.”

If your VP is obsessed with motivational speakers, you’re in a milieu Bernstein calls “high-power bulls–t” and you must watch your language. “The magic of motivation must constantly be stimulated by slogans that end with exclamation points and be inspired by photographs of flying eagles and racing sailboats, emblazoned with one-word statements of key elements of Western philosophy that believers hang on their walls in lieu of art.” Show respect, he says. “Clap enthusiastically for motivational speakers, and never, ever roll your eyes.” Cultivate patience. “Your suffering may be rewarded in heaven.”