Two managers at the Danzig Co. were injured this week in a “Hallway Rage” incident, the second occurrence in a month at the San Antonio condiment dispenser maker – and the latest of over 5,000 similar confrontations across the US in 2019.
Hallway rage is caused when business people walk down hallways at a high rate of speed in order to look busy and important, and then collide with others trying to do the same thing.
“In the last five years the average hallway speed has increased from 2 MPH to 2.7 MPH,” says business behaviorist Joan Wallmer of JWW Consulting. “People think if they stroll or saunter they’ll look like they don’t have enough to do and are therefore dispensable.”
The two Danzig managers suffered only minor scrapes and bruises, but about five percent of hallway rage incidents lead to hospitalization.
“People used to just flash obscene gestures or question the other persons’s sex habits,” says Wallmer, “but these days they seem all too quick to bring out the fists. “ In October alone, she says, US casualties included six dislocated jaws, 13 broken fingers, and the attempted removal of a tattoo.
And the situation is expected to worsen, with more people now multi-tasking to appear even busier – reading and texting as they walk. “In the digital age you can’t look like you’re wasting hallway time,” she said.
Some companies are taking safety measures like posting “Walk Responsibly!” signs. But Wallmer says most are reluctant to rein in their high-energy staffers.
“The faster people walk the more they produce,” she says. “And that adds billions to the bottom line!”
