When Green Is Mean

Envy is common and corrosive—and usually denied. Most often, it stalks the office as a sense of
unfairness.
By Judith Sills, published on September 01, 2008 - last reviewed on August 19, 2009

Green may be the millennial workplace virtue, but when it shows its face as envy, it is the time-
honored office serpent, the worm in the apple. In envy's grip, you view your colleagues through the
distorted lens of your own competitive failings. And should your successes awaken your colleagues'
envy, it wears so many disguises it's difficult to avoid its acid bath.
Envy is the bile on which we choke when we want something that belongs to someone else. (Its
cousin jealousy is the toxic sensation that someone might take from us what we already possess,
notably the affections of an important person.)
Mild envy might be a socially acceptable compliment in our material culture, where its frank
admission ("Oh, I hate you," delivered with a smile) can accompany admiration of a friend's
purchase of, say, a knockout new home or car. But in the workplace, envy is often more than mild
and, frankly, no compliment. It can be an invisible destructive force. If you experience envy—as
target or sufferer—you might never know what hit you.

Top of Form

City or Zip

Bottom of Form
Generally, envy derives from a complex cocktail of competitiveness, emotional insecurity,
and situational dissatisfaction. Four factors favor its flourishing at the office: a highly
competitive workplace culture, an emotional dunce of a boss, favoritism in our families of
origin, and, of course, exceptional achievement that ticks off everybody else.

Some institutions, whether by ignorance or tradition, are built on an underground swamp of envy that
erodes their very professional foundation. Sadly, these are often the most prestigious of workplaces,
where the best and the brightest battle to prove whose is the biggest. The wellspring of envy in
which these achievers swim is often apparent only to those who escape to milder climes.

Envy inhabits every level of ability and accomplishment, often fostered by the deliberate or oblivious
favoritism of your boss. "The principal has such obvious favorites, it makes the rest of us hate them,"
says one elementary school teacher. The result of this perception is, predictably enough, a cliquish
faculty, a demoralized workforce, and a set of work standards constantly undercut by the feeling that
they are unequally applied.
While a boss' favoritism certainly stokes envy, significant favoritism in your own childhood makes
you especially vulnerable to it. The office family—with its inevitable structure of senior adults in
charge, rivalrous siblings, inequitably divided resources of time, affection, and money—carries
whispers of our own original families.
If favoritism was a painful theme in your own childhood home—say, the boys got the biggest share
of freedom while you were the daughter who had to stay to clear the table—you are apt to relive
perceptions of favoritism inside your office family. When it happens, you get that old familiar feeling
of angry, agitated envy.
Finally, envy is almost universally provoked by exceptional achievement. "I worked on a newspaper
for years with a great group of people. But when my book became a surprise best seller, they
weren't so great anymore, at least not to me. They were sniping, cold, and critical of my other work.
It came as a surprise, and it hurt."
Whatever its source, the impact of envy is corrosive, most particularly because it is denied. Few of
us look in the mirror and see green. Instead, we look around and see unfairness, and
we punish those we feel have been unduly rewarded at our own expense. We withhold support,
sincere admiration, sometimes even friendship. We sneak to level the playing field, tearing down a
colleague's reputation in an unconscious effort to enhance our own. We become critics where we
may have been fans, and even gossips ("I've got an idea what she did to win that... "); in our hearts
we believe we are better people.
Envy unleashed, and our reluctance to face it in ourselves and call it what it is, presses relentlessly
toward professional mediocrity. The envied have two bad choices—suck up to the protection of the
powerful or keep their heads down to avoid the potshots of the angry horde. And they might make
the mistake of gloating and so make being envied worse than it has to be.
As for us enviers, the poison of envy can sometimes transform itself into something halfway
constructive. It can unite us in an unspoken office brotherhood against him or her who dares to show
us up. This is not a good thing, but it's not all bad.
Personally, too, some people push through envy's sow's ear and come up with at least an imitation
silk person. They conjure mental magic that transforms envy into aspiration: "If she can do it, write it,
sell it, win it, dammit, I can, too!"
The flush of exertion required to meet your newer, higher goal will wipe away that ugly shade of
green.