Toxic Work Environment Quotes

You also want to fire people who a) create office politics, and b) who are persistently negative.

I had a terrible manager once who described my career as 'spiraling downward.'

Let me spell it out: with the psychotic boss, nothing you do is ever quite right. They set traps, asking you to do things, and no matter how hard you think of accomplishing it in their way, it is wrong and you are to blame. This tends to instill a lot of fear in you.

I worked for 20 directors as a production designer, most male. I was on the set to witness firsthand a range of sometimes atrocious emotions - well-documented firings, yellings, fights between directors and actors, hookers, abusive things, budget overages, lack of preparation. A man gets a standing ovation for crying because he's so sensitive, but a woman is shamed.

I would almost rather be in debt constantly than work with horrible people that I hate.

Never, ever, work for bad people

If I try to use human influence strategies and tactics of how to get other people to do what I want, to work better, to be more motivated, to like me and each other-while my character is fundamentally flawed, marked by duplicity and insincerity-then, in the long run, I cannot be successful. My duplicity will breed distrust, and everything I do-even using so-called good human relations techniques-will be perceived as manipulative.

Some of my unhappiest moments have been in organizations. Somehow it seems to be quite respectable to do things in organizations that you would never do in private life. I have had people insult me to my face in front of colleagues. I have had my feelings rammed down my throat on the pretext that it would do me good. I have been required to do things which I didn't agree with because the organization wished it... In my worst moments I have thought organizations were places designed to be run by sadists and staffed by masochists.

Fear is not a motivating factor. You might be able to get a little bit more out of someone in the short term, but you will completely erode your business and your culture in the long term. You're going to lose all your good people. You're not going to have people tell you the truth, and it becomes the tradition.

If you're working for a sexist jerk, you have to leave.

Fashion is a very stressful place to work because of the demands of doing the shows - no one expects a writer to produce two books a year on the dot - but it's also a very toxic place to work.

"Proper work" usually involves performing a task you hate on behalf of people you'd gleefully club to death with a bull's knee if only it were legal to do so.

In the most dysfunctional organizations, signaling that work is being done becomes a better strategy for career advancement than actually doing work (if this describes your company, you should quit now).

Work has become like prison because of the way we treat it. If you are trapped with people who you do not care for, it feels like a concentration camp.

You're always feeling powerless in life. If you're in an abusive relationship or working for what we call a psychotic boss sometimes the only option is to leave because you're emotions get so entangled with these manipulative people that staying there you're just helpless because they're good at passive aggressive games and you're not, so you have to leave.

In corporate life, I have noticed, it is getting harder and harder to say that things are bad.

It's a tough world out there. You're going to prepare yourself for politics, bad bosses, hating employees - and usually when you're the absolute best, you get hated on the most.

Sad company is bad company.

I think a lot of women wouldn't want to stay in a place where they're being harassed.

The atmosphere in the newsroom could be pretty poisonous. When I arrived, the people who worked on the 'Six' were sitting there slagging off what had gone out on the 'One.' I thought: 'What is this place? And what are you saying about me?'

I always knew pesticides affected farmworkers. That's why I always tell people, "eat organic." Not just because it's better for you but because you know the people who picked your food weren't in a toxic environment.

I've had some terrible jobs, but working in a kitchen at Cracker Barrel is probably the worst I've ever had. I was a grill cook - awful! It wasn't the smell, it was the people. The music, too. We had to be 'country fresh,' so they played this terrible country music eight hours during the shift. It was a bleak existence - a very dark time.

Now, if your boss is a sadist, then you have a big problem. In that case, fire your boss and get a new job.

I will not create jobs or hold jobs that kill people, and that plant - that plant kills people.

Positive work environments outperform negative work environments.