Workplace conflict: Can we talk about it?

Most of us see ourselves as the good guys in work conflict situations, and therein lies the problem, says Rita de Brun

IF you observed a pack of animals of the same species cooped up together in adjoining fresh-air-free cubicles from 9am to 5pm, so as to perform seemingly endless tasks to tight deadlines, would you be surprised if they, feeling a little claustrophobic, irritable and trapped, snapped at one another from time to time? Of course, you wouldn’t.

Yet when it comes to ourselves, eking out a living in similar conditions, we tend to fail, whenever a co-worker has a go at us, to see the mundane inevitability of it all.