The other evening, I was taken aside at a summer party by the host, who expressed heartfelt sympathy for the torrid time I’d been having lately. She followed me on Twitter, apparently, and was so dismayed at the abuse I’d been getting that she had filed an official complaint to the platform about a mutual acquaintance who had been using intemperate language towards me. Which was considerate. Except I hadn’t actually noticed any abuse.
You see, whether it is Corbynites complaining about you being too right-wing or Brexiteers complaining that you are too left-wing or readers getting in touch to complain vociferously about something you said about an Edwardian novelist in a book preface bloody years ago, the tone of feedback on social networking, when you’re a writer or journalist, is so relentlessly furious that you eventually stop noticing any of it at all. You could tweet “the sky is blue” and you’d get a load of people getting the wrong end of the stick and furiously trying to turn the subject to sharia law.
Indeed, I said as much recently and received a load of joke responses, which in themselves demonstrated how routine this stuff has become. (“It’s not the sky, it’s the refracted light of the sun”; “If you don’t like it, f*** off to a country with a different colour sky!”; “True patriotic Brits prefer grey skies. You’ll be calling for sharia law next I suppose.”)
This relentless rage is a problem that extends well beyond social networking, of course.
In the 21st century it seems that politicians must endure antisemitic attacks, racist abuse, intimidation, smears, slashed tyres and death threats in the course of their work. We are at each other’s throats on the roads, in the economy section of aeroplanes, on Tripadvisor and Good Reads, and it was no surprise to read this week in a survey conducted by Weber Shandwick and Powell Tate that three quarters of Americans believe that incivility, in the form of intimidation, harassment, violence and discrimination, has risen to “crisis levels” across the Atlantic.
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Which I mention because there was a fascinating exception in the results. There appears to be one sphere of life that has not been infected by this incivility: the workplace. In the survey, 86 per cent of employed respondents described their workplaces as civil and respectful, with 63 per cent claiming that people were more civil at work than outside it. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Leslie Gaines-Ross, chief reputation strategist at Weber Shandwick, claimed: “Companies are perfectly positioned to promote themselves as havens for civility and respect. For society and democracy at large, the workplace might be the one institution that incubates a more constructive way of bringing people together.”
Now, this is obviously not always the case. Most of us have worked for organisations where misogyny, racism, homophobia and bullying are rife, where colleagues put food down their trousers before serving it to customers they don’t like (I can’t name names), and, let’s face it, my chosen industry, newspapers, is not exactly known for its fluffiness. I once worked for an editor whose habitual morning greeting went along the lines of “I can’t believe you’ve f***ing bothered turning up after yesterday”. About a quarter of the respondents to that US survey confessed to having quit a job because of “its uncivil environment”. It is notable that the survey found that while politicians (75 per cent), the internet and social media (69 per cent) and the news media (59 per cent) were viewed as the top perpetrators of incivility in America, corporate America (31 per cent) was at the bottom of the list.
According to HBR, some companies have recognised the significant role they play and have acted upon it. Prompted by the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Lilly, the pharmaceutical company, now holds regular “Can we talk?” sessions, where employees from different levels and backgrounds can engage honestly on controversial topics. The Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore gives every new employee a laminated card with “ten tips on maintaining civil discourse and behaviour at work”. Which seems unnecessary. For surely the civilising effect of the workplace is intrinsic: it lies in the simple fact that it is the only remaining sphere of life where people of different backgrounds, ages and viewpoints are obliged to come together and behave in a civilised way to one another, in person.
Everywhere else, communities are atomising and life is becoming anonymous: pubs, restaurants and shopping malls are closing as people prefer to drink, eat and shop via online outlets at home; an increasing amount of family life feels like it is conducted over WhatsApp groups; the only way to get your children to talk to you is to turn off the wifi; organised religion is becoming disorganised. In the office, or on the factory floor, we are obliged to look people in the eyes, consider their feelings and talk to them like human beings, even if we cannot stand them, else risk censure from managers or human resources. You see the civilising effect of human interaction in action with journalists all the time: they might have bitter arguments with colleagues online but are almost always perfectly polite to them in person, at summer drinks parties.
Not that I need to work hard to sell the workplace at this time of year. The office really comes into its own in July and August. There is nothing like a cantankerous two-week “holiday” with your family to make you feel better about the predictable and reassuring monotony of Excel spreadsheets, colleagues, meetings and Powerpoint presentations. There is nothing like humidity and stifling heat to make you appreciate the relief of an air-conditioned workplace. Increasingly, there is nothing like the general incivility of modern life to make you appreciate the workplace. It may even be the last hope for human civilisation.
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Sathnam Sanghera is a journalist and author. Follow him on Twitter @Sathnam