Resentment Examples at Work: 5 Ways Workplace Tension Takes Hold

Workplace resentment can silently erode trust, collaboration, and morale, leading to lasting cultural damage if left unchecked. Recognizing resentment examples helps address unresolved conflict, burnout, and broken promises before they harm productivity and team relationships.

By Douglas Wade, Attorney

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. What makes them this way?

3. Resentment resolutions

Introduction

You should be concerned about restless resenters, not quiet quitters. Despite their distaste for management and the task they do, these individuals continue to work. It’s the worst nightmare for any firm.

Resentment can go too far, with people actively undermining your business and controlling others. It doesn’t only lead to a modest decline in engagement or productivity. Before you realize it, your business may be seriously disrupted by cultural difficulties.

If you know someone like this at your workplace, you’re likely nodding in agreement and squirming inside at all the instances you can imagine in your mind where they have deliberately caused trouble.

How did they get to be this way, then? How can you completely avoid it? And once there is animosity, how can it be stopped? Take note of the following advice, regardless of where you’re at on the spectrum: avoid allowing bitterness to develop out of control. The journey back is lengthy.

What makes them this way?

Although it may surprise you, people don’t desire to have resentment, and they don’t begin this way. Unfortunately, resentment can stem from a single negative encounter or accumulate over a lengthy period of negative cultural issues.

In the event that there are already resentful individuals in your corporate culture, you must ascertain the reason behind their behavior. Without knowing the root cause, nothing can be solved.

Additionally, some of you might not be there yet. If so, it’s critical to recognize the elements that may eventually lead to resentment in order to steer clear of these typical cultural traps.

Some potential sources of the resentment are suggested by this list. This is not a comprehensive list. After all, there can just be a miscommunication that is exclusive to your company. Looking at some real-world resentment examples will help you steer clear of these pitfalls.

So, how does it start? Let’s explore common resentment examples that are often overlooked.

1. Unresolved dispute

There are numerous ways that conflict might manifest itself. It might involve a disagreement about working methods or between coworkers. For instance, a recent Stanford University study showed that conflicts between managers and staff had increased as a result of employees working from home. Conflict over hybrid work practices is expected to rise in the upcoming years, according to the study.

Actually, based on my observations, the dispute over “where” we work predates COVID. Back then, when one had to ask for the right to work from home, the level of bitterness generated was immense.

Resentment results from unresolved conflict.

This does not imply that we must satisfy everyone. There will be occasions when the choices our company must make will not satisfy everyone. The leader/CEO of an organization must always create psychological safety and trust.

Listening to the issues of people is more important than trying to ease them. It is more vital to listen to people when they are in pain rather than to comfort them. The leaders tend to ignore the pain and struggles of other people. We avoid having such difficult conversations since we are aware that it is going to make us uncomfortable. In actuality, though, we really need these awkward discussions.

Ignoring the problem is the biggest source of annoyance and fuels the fires of resentment.

2. Burnout

People who suffer from burnout at work may get resentful of their workplace, particularly if there is a culture at work where putting one’s health and wellness last is expected. Resentment examples are always visible in the workplace, and such issues are often heard in private office conversations.

Burnout brought on by the job might make it hard for employees to desire to help the business in any way. After all, the excessive demands of their jobs have caused them to lose their health. Do you think they will be strict about deadlines now?

Burnout is not limited to just work. It affects many different aspects of your life. Your interactions with others, your eating patterns, your sleep patterns, your sexual appetite, and your physical and emotional well-being.

Burnout can lead to extreme stress that, in some cases, may cause an individual to develop chronic health complications. It would be natural to expect that an individual would be angry when it is their place of work that has led to their feeling of burnout.

3. Broken Promises

Another classic in the list of ‘resentment examples’ is when leadership makes commitments that never materialize. My work as a culture guide has shown me that the most frequent source of resentment is broken promises. In some situations, individuals have often been informed about chances, training, or promotions that never materialize.

When people’s expectations and hopes fluctuate so much, they stop believing whatever the company says. As an alternative, people grow suspicious and think that the company’s claims are only empty rhetoric. Other unfulfilled promises. More unfulfilled promises.

These businesses often have the most noble of intentions. They genuinely aim to advance individuals or establish learning and growth paths. However, time comes in the way of everything, and different priorities take precedence.

4. Unwelcome Work

Some of those bitter people used to be kind people at work. The person who takes over when others have resigned or become ill. But all of a sudden, they were the mainstay of the workforce. Or in the worst situations, because of bad supervisors, they inadvertently end up becoming the workhorses.

Being assigned a task or project that wasn’t yours in the first place or that you don’t want to do is a surefire way to end up bitter.

People are treated more like robots than like human beings by the unwanted work. People will, therefore, naturally begin to feel resentful.

Even worse, when people ask why they were ditched for someone else’s initiative or work, the typical answer is either the traditional emotional blackmail of “proving your devotion to the firm will work in your favor” or a guilt trip along the lines of “We are all overworking!”

5. Nothing will change

Despite others assuring them otherwise, a lot of bitter people operate in these crazy corporate settings where the same thing keeps happening.

You can’t keep saying the same thing over and over again about what’s not working until you give up and simply get by, which makes others angry. Why? Because they are sick of being ignored, sick of experiencing the same discomforts, and sick of change never occurring.

Change frequently lands on the desks of executives who are already overburdened and do not prioritize these suggestions or ideas. Since it wasn’t “THEIR” idea and they aren’t experiencing the team’s suffering, it ends up at the bottom of the priority list. Naturally, management makes that decision; employees are never trusted to venture into something new on their own. Thus, animosity is fueled by the never-ending conflicts, bureaucracy, and silos.

Resentment resolutions

You can’t just do one thing to make resentment go away because it’s a volatile feeling. You must adhere to a procedure if you want to genuinely end animosity.

It will take more than one quick remedy to allay the skepticism of those who already feel deeply out of passion for their jobs. For genuine transformation to occur, these people will require time and space.

Here are some actions you can take to try to restore a work environment that seems like it can go forward, regardless of whether you are in the middle of a deadly landmine of anger in your corporate culture or have noticed subtle hints of it creeping up.

1. Acknowledge it

The fact that individuals are resentful must be acknowledged.

It does require a certain amount of tolerance. As a business, you must take some accountability for your part in bringing this to your culture.

Being a leader requires you to be aware of your own feelings. Until you believe that you are in an equitable and level-headed state of mind, you cannot shift animosity. A certain amount of bitterness in the environment might make certain leaders feel angry and frustrated; they may start to believe that individuals are “ungrateful.”

You will only exacerbate the situation if you attempt to address the animosity from this angle.

You must change your thoughts and feelings before you can proceed. Work through your upcoming challenges.

2. Be aware of its origins

Make a deliberate attempt to ascertain the source of this resentment. Since you haven’t talked to anyone yet, you will be forming assumptions at this point, so it’s more about introspection than passing judgment.

You can use the reflection to determine whether this is a case that has occurred or whether there is a more significant cultural issue at your organization.

It is imperative that you acknowledge this as a critical area for improvement within your firm if you have arrived at the conclusion that it is an organizational culture issue.

3. Open the space and call it out

This next section isn’t for those who are weak at heart or leaders who often place blame and guilt on others. Thus, it may be beneficial to all sides to get an external facilitator to help you, in case you do not think that it would be taken appropriately.

Give your members an avenue to voice themselves. This session is aimed at bringing out what leads to resentment of the work environment. We must address the big elephant in the room, as the term goes.

The most important thing you can do as an administrator during the meeting is to listen. And I mean pay attention. Put on your listening headphones and listen to everything. Despite your keen intent to “fix” the issue and provide solutions, your only focus during the gathering/meeting should be to listen carefully. Pay attention to what the employees are saying, analyze the feelings in their faces, and ask them to elaborate on why this has hurt them so deeply. You won’t comprehend until then.

This kind of conversation won’t be easy to encourage. It will be painful and difficult. However, these times contain the resolution’s pearls. We cannot effectively move on unless all of the bad feelings have been resolved and everyone feels heard.

4. Do something

Take one step back before you bolt off and think you are now to blame for everyone’s troubles. Yes, you need to be proactive and act, but you need to act in a manner that unites your team to work together to tackle these issues. By studying these ‘resentment examples’, businesses can proactively build healthier and more transparent/open cultures.

It’s time to work with your team to come up with a solution after you’ve determined what caused the animosity. What must occur in order to proceed with this?

Resentment drains essential organizational energy that would be better used elsewhere. Do something about it right away before it turns into a problem for you.

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Resentment Examples at Work: 5 Ways Workplace Tension Takes Hold

Introduction

What makes them this way?

Resentment resolutions

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