Be Nasty Day

What the day is

Be Nasty Day is observed on March 8, framed as a counterweight to the many days encouraging kindness. The research on actually doing it is unusually clear.

Origin and background

Experimental work on workplace incivility has repeatedly found that rudeness degrades performance in measurable ways. In studies where participants were treated dismissively by an experimenter or an actor before completing tasks, their performance on subsequent problem-solving dropped, and their output on creative tasks fell further still. The effect is not simply hurt feelings; the cognitive cost appears to come from attention being consumed by the incident afterward.

The more striking result concerns bystanders. People who merely witnessed someone else being treated rudely showed similar declines, without having been the target at all. A single unpleasant exchange therefore taxes everyone in earshot, which makes incivility expensive in a way that is invisible on any budget.

It also spreads. Researchers describe rudeness as behaving contagiously, with people who experience it becoming more likely to be short with the next person, so a single incident propagates through a team over the following days.

There is a related finding that complicates the picture honestly: rudeness is sometimes read as competence or confidence, particularly from people already high in status, which is part of why it persists despite costing so much.

The one defensible reading of the day is as permission to stop performing pleasantness where it is unearned, which is not the same thing as being unpleasant. Declining, disagreeing plainly, and refusing an unreasonable request are all compatible with civility.

How to take part

• Say the blunt true thing rather than the nasty one. They are different.
• Notice whether you are shorter with people after somebody has been short with you.
• Apologize for the snapped remark, which stops the chain.
• Intervene when someone is treated badly in front of you. Witnesses pay too.
• Decline something you have been resenting, politely and clearly.