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19 March 2024

Do rude staff get biggest salaries, increments?

Published
By Shuchita Kapur

As children, we were all taught to give way, help others and put other people’s needs before ours.

In the primary school, we all followed what the teacher said in the moral science lesson, and what our grandmas tutored us on being the nice one as she put us on the school bus every single day.

But 20 years on, as many of us have realised, giving way to others is not just being nice. It’s being naïve. Some call the nicer ones push-overs, even spineless and many learn this the hard way.

“I was just being an accommodating employee, giving way to a pushy colleague. He was the aggressive one and hogged the limelight when both of us had worked equally hard on a given project. He got the bigger increment, as all this happened close to appraisal time,” said Matthew Richards, an executive in a PR firm in Dubai.

“Nice guys finish last,” but Richards took a long time to realise this and had to wait for one full year before setting on the task of proving himself.

Studies published in different journals of personality and social psychology highlight that such less agreeable individuals earned more than their agreeable counterparts.

Bosses, often, try to pacify the so-called difficult team members to avoid confrontation and the easy and better-behaved employees may be given lower salaries and increments as they never really put up a fight.

So is becoming ‘rude’ and ‘offensive’ the way to earn better increments?

Recruitment experts in the UAE believe that rudeness may get in a bigger number on the paycheque for once, but in the long run, it isn’t necessary that the Richards of the office will continue to suffer.

“In the short-term, rude employees may be able to negotiate a stronger package,” said Graham Whitworth, Senior Banking Consultant at Charterhouse Partnership, “but when there are opportunities for promotion, they are often overlooked. The employees who earn the most are able to be direct without being rude and liked without being seen as a push-over,” he told Emirates 24|7. 

Industry experts believe that those who push and shove their way to try to get on the top may finally see the exit door soon.

According to Ash Athawale, Recruitment Manager at REED consultancy, the rude ones don’t last long. 

“Rudeness translates to unprofessionalism and that should never be tolerated in the workplace. Rude employees have shorter careers with the company. I have seen top sales people who were rude, being terminated by their employers without worrying about the impact on the business,” he said.

Many companies in the country are largely controlled by families, where aggression is not tolerated. “In the UAE, successful business relationships are built on trust,” as the Charterhouse Partnership expert puts it.

In such organisations, polite behaviour is often endorsed and employees are encouraged to be team players.

As rude behaviour is often looked-down upon by colleagues, nobody expects an employee to be overly sweet, unless s/he is in the hospitality business.

“There has to be normal behaviour. I’ve seen both kinds of people and as a HR manger, I would hire people who are just normal workers,” said an HR manager on the condition of anonymity.

“There is no place for rudeness in a work environment. An employee doesn’t have to be over-polite or rude – they are expected to follow a professional code of conduct and that is usually detailed in the employee handbook,” as Athawale explains.

[Image via Shutterstock]

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