CATEGORY | Toxic Workplaces

It’s a jungle out there. A concrete jungle, that is. While humans have evolved way past all other animals in a cognitive sense, we still need to navigate many of the situations that animals encounter in the wild. While many animals are categorized as predators or prey, people can also act in a predatory fashion and see other people as their ‘prey’. Except in the human world, the predatory person doesn’t eat their prey – they try to manipulate or take advantage of them instead. Predatory people don’t see EVERYONE as prey though – they instinctively pick people they think they can exploit for their own gain. Overly nice people are one of the main groups people try and exploit, for reasons we’ll discuss. Nice people aren’t off the hook, though. Many times, they’re not taken advantage of by just predators, but by everyone – and they ask for it! The workplace is one of the main places nice people get taken advantage of, and it affects workload, promotions, salary, reputation and more. In this article, we will discuss how to stop being too nice at work using twelve simple techniques.