Your Colleagues Are More Likely to Be Jerks on This Day of the Week

It’s Monday. Of course it’s Monday.

In a study published this month in Anxiety, Stress & Coping, researchers from Macquarie University in Australia looked at how workplace incivility fluctuates over the course of the workweek.

Participants of both genders reported experiencing the most incivility at work on Monday and the least on Friday. For each weekday, the likelihood of experiencing workplace incivility dropped by .78.

Although the study only surveyed people working in the legal industry, the pattern held up for people in different job roles.

It’s no secret that many people prefer Fridays to Mondays, but it now appears that people might dislike Mondays enough that they’re more likely to go out and pick fights with their coworkers. Research published last year showed that out of the weekdays, people have the most positive associations for Friday and the most negative for Monday, with the days in between being more positive or negative based on how close they are to Friday or Monday.

A 2011 meta-analysis found evidence of a “Monday blues” effect with people reporting lower mood overall on Monday. However, the analysis found that those with the worst case of the Monday blues were not people working the 9-5 but were in fact university students. Meanwhile, married men were the least likely to dread Mondays.

No matter how you look at it, all these studies seem to suggest that Mondays really are the worst. These are just averages, of course – Mondays don’t have to be terrible. Forewarned is forearmed!

Maybe go out of your way to say something nice to your coworker today. Let’s make Mondays a little better, one Monday at a time.

Have a good Monday! And maybe wait a few days to ask for that raise.

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