Perception and Learning

Civility is a demonstration or a moral standard of respect for fellow employees, co-workers and humans in general. Civility is supposed to be our building blocks in developing and softening the division between, lower and upper class citizens and most importantly between employees and their employers. However we are approaching a time in which individuals think that we should display our "individuality" and practice freedom of speech (Anderson and Pearson). With that said, we see more and more incivility in the workplace and less practice of civility. Incivility is a huge problem in organizations. This incivility leads to employees lacking in enthusiasm in the workplace, allows them to neglect work and practice their own discourteous behavior. "A survey of 178 employees revealed that a majority of the aggression occurring in work settings is of a less intense form: verbal rather than physical, passive rather than active, indirect rather than direct and subtle rather than overt" (Anderson and Pearson). We see a less intense form of abuse in the film. However, most times, less intense forms of aggression and incivility lead to bigger problems which become hard to tame and lead to the physical, active and overt ways of handling the situation.

In the scene below we clearly see that incivility is occurring in the organization between Miranda and Andy. Miranda verbally abuses Andy, putting her physical appearance down by calling her fat girl. It seems as though Miranda's opinion is the only one that matters. This was the beginning of the incivility spiral for Andy in which she changed her social identity in the next scene which was the tipping point of the incivility spiral. Her appearance change made her apt to counter aggression for indirect revenge against her colleague Emily. She began doing better work than Emily and her appearance was also a threat.