We can be honest. We’re all friends here.

Who hasn’t had that boss that was intimidating, harsh, cruel or downright abusive – especially verbally or mentally?

And how many of us, after getting a lashing from our boss, stewed until we drove home and thought, “I probably should have said this,” and then you got that evil smirk on your face as if you were resolved to do that very thing the next time?

And then it didn’t happen?

Well believe it or not, there is a study that seems to suggest that for your own job satisfaction, you might as well say what you have always wanted to say.

Notice the study is about job satisfaction, not job retention. Just want to be clear.

Yelling by David Goehring

[Image courtesy of Flickr user David Goehring via a Creative Commons license] If you have an aggressive or abusive boss, a recent study suggests that retaliation may actually not be a bad thing for a worker’s mental health and job satisfaction. No guarantees about job retention, however.

Anyway, the study was conducted through Ohio State University (sorry, The Ohio State University, in case there are alumni reading this), which apparently is a place that has its share of aggressive bosses.  The research found that those workers who actually retaliate against their bosses actually had less mental distress and reported better job satisfaction and higher commitment to their employing company, compared to those who sat and took the abuse.

The research was done among about 170 people who filled out two surveys about seven months apart. The first survey asked questions about their hostile bosses, how often they humiliated or ridiculed them, and then how often the workers responded. The later survey then asked these same people questions about their job satisfaction, negative feelings (like guilt or low self-esteem), psychological stress and commitment to the job and the company.

It seemed from the surveys that those who did not retaliate against their bosses were the ones who had more negative  repercussions, such as bad feelings, mental stress and lower job satisfaction. Those who dished it back to their bosses did not report negatives, but more positive feelings about themselves and their jobs.

The researches said that there seems to be a connection of respect that ties to the more positive feelings by those who retaliate. The head of the research, Dr. Bennett Tepper of The Ohio State University’s Fisher  College of Business, noted that there seems to be a “norm” that those don’t sit back and take abuse, and instead  respond to their bosses, gain a dose of admiration and respect from co-workers, and that seems to be a contributing factor to the workers’ more positive feelings about their jobs and the company for which they worked.

What was not covered, however, was the way in which the retaliation occurred, and whether yelling back at the boss or coping in other ways contribute more to the positive feelings and respect.  Would you be more respectful of a person who yelled back at the boss in a professioal environment, or would you respect the worker more if he got back at the boss in a more subtle, professional way?

You know what? I am genuinely interested in this, so please feel free to leave comments about your thoughts, or if you have some anecdotes or case studies in your own experience with you or a co-worker and let me know how things changed (or didn’t change) if there was retaliation or not.

This will obviously be an unscientific survey, but I would love to get your responses. Is there a method of retaliation that actually does work better? Or is it just that the retaliation happens at all?