Of course office workers, being primates, are constantly jockeying to keep or improve their position in the hierarchy, whether by dominance displays, squabbles over territory, or active confrontations. None of these behaviors is surprising to find in a species as social and political as ours. What’s interesting is how people obfuscate all this social competition by dressing it up in clinical business jargon. Richard doesn’t complain about Karen by saying, “She gets in my way”; he accuses her of “not caring enough about the customer.” Taboo topics like social status aren’t discussed openly, but
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