Alright, so in the first place, this is attacking the problems in American work (and work the world over) from the wrong vantage point. What if you merely like one of your workers more than the others and you rate them higher than the others? That should be just as insidious but because it doesn't involve sex, somehow that's not as bad, it's just "life". Almost everyone in HN has experienced this sort of toxic manager at some point in our careers and we've for some reason normalized it just like the rampant sexual harassment.
If I could have my way, we'd ask ourselves why do managers have so much sway and power over our lives in the first place, that their bad moods and habits can literally kill us? If people cannot be trusted to be managers when normal human emotions and interactions occur, then why are they managers in the first place and why do they have so much power over us?
Two reasons mainly. First and less charitably, managers and executives are a self-perpetuating phenomenon. They’d have to be the ones to slit their own throats, and they won’t. The second and more depressing reason is at the core of much human misery from politics to business: it’s better than the known and proven alternatives in most cases. Like what passes for democracy these days, it’s a lamentable mess, but still preferable to the proven alternatives on offer.
If I could have my way, we'd ask ourselves why do managers have so much sway and power over our lives in the first place, that their bad moods and habits can literally kill us? If people cannot be trusted to be managers when normal human emotions and interactions occur, then why are they managers in the first place and why do they have so much power over us?