Bad boss also bad for your health

One head chef had a bad habit of throwing knives around the kitchen, in the direction of people who made him angry. Another woman's boss told her coworker she couldn't take a personal day to bring her dog to the emergency vet "because dogs are replaceable." Yet another boss was caught shaving time off of his employee's time cards and banking it into his own for a bigger bonus.

These are just some of the stories from a Reddit thread about horrible bosses in which employees share their stories of angry, disrespectful, and generally incompetent bosses.

These poor employees aren't alone. Various polls of workers have shown that between 13 percent and 36 percent of U.S. workers report having had a dysfunctional manager, and 98 percent have reported experiencing uncivil behavior at work.

Of course, there are as many ways for bosses to be horrible as there are horrible bosses. There are the minor slights - dismissive behavior, passive aggressive e-mails, or privileging another worker's accomplishments over your own. Then there are the more serious kinds of abuse.

But even the little slights can add up. And these behaviors are not just unpleasant for employees. Research suggests they are actually bad for worker health.

Experiencing rudeness at work, and even replaying the event in your head later, elevates levels of hormones called glucocorticoids, Christine Porath, an associate professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, recently argued in an op-ed for the New York Times. That can lead to disparate health issues, including increased appetite and obesity.

That's right: In addition to making you unhappy, your rude boss may be making you fat.

Often, bosses may be adopting these attitudes unintentionally or unconsciously. Power hierarchies affect us in mysterious ways. People are more likely to be curt, dismissive, or angry with those who sit below them on the workplace hierarchy than those who rank above them, and they might not even realize they are doing it.

While people are focused on how much others respect them, they don't often pay as much attention to the effect of their attitudes on others. In surveys of hundreds of people in organizations carried out by Porath, more than half said they behaved uncivilly because they were overloaded. More than 40 percent said they didn't have the time to be nice. Sometimes rudeness is more calculated, however. Porath's research suggests that many people believe that having a tough or curt attitude helps them to project authority.

Unfortunately for these people and their underlings, flexing one's muscles at work doesn't do that much to demonstrate authority. Instead, it appears to undermine employee performance. It leads to lost work hours and productivity, as workers put less effort into their jobs, feel less committed to the company, and suffer from stress or health problems that prevent them from working effectively.

So what can be done? Whether you are a boss or an employee, start by being nice at work. If you are in a position of authority or want to get there someday, this will help your leadership potential. Despite the common idea that "nice guys finish last," research has shown that civility is key to getting ahead at work. Porath's own research showed that employees in a biotechnology firm were more likely to seek a civil colleague out for work advice and see that person as a leader.