Previous in-depth focus groups found that postal workers employed by a crown corporation in Canada identified a lack of respect in the workplace. A lack of respect or discourteous behavior might be better understood as a phenomenon of workplace incivility. The purpose of this paper is to report a larger cross-sectional survey to determine: the magnitude of workplace incivility among Canadian postal workers; any association between incivility and indicators of worker well-being; and, the potential buffering benefits of social support from co-workers. Questionnaire packages were mailed to nearly 2,000 employees of Canada Post Corporation, asking for anonymous responses to questions about their job, demographics, satisfaction and commitment, treatment in the workplace, and well-being. More than 82 percent of 950 respondents reported at least some workplace incivility. After controlling for demographic and work factors, incivility explained significant variation in worker burnout, anxiety, depression, and hostility (i.e. adjusted R² values ranged from 5 to 46). In addition, the association between incivility and worker anxiety, depression, and hostility was reduced when workers reported greater social support from co-workers. Incivility is more than just a minor or infrequent source of psychological distress for people working in service. However, a positive outcome is that co-worker support helps reduce the adverse effects of rude and discourteous behavior. To our knowledge, this was the first large-scale survey exploring workplace incivility in the public postal service. The data from a large sample of postal workers across Canada suggest that the treatment of employees is an ongoing problem at this organization. This research is relevant for understanding workplace interactions and health in the service sector in Canada, though the authors expect it is germane also to other occupations worldwide.

Remote work has escalated as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, and citizens have been doing their part to mitigate the spread of viral infection. The downside of quickly switching from a workplace office to remote work is that neither employees nor employers have had time to consciously process the new work environment and formally evaluate health and safety concerns. The aim of this commentary was to make suggestions on how to make remote work more satisfying, safe, and healthy for employees. First, I explored existing research on disease outbreaks and mental stress as the backdrop for discussing health-related strategies. To determine which types of strategies or measures would help, next I examined existing organizational research, including a qualitative study by my colleagues on workers’ perceptions about what makes a healthy workplace. Themes that emerged from the qualitative study align with three broad recommendations discussed in this commentary: cultivating personal space, building in ergonomics, and boosting self-regulation (self-learning) skills. Finally, I suggested that future research should explore the joint roles of the worker and his/her management team in recognition of organizational commitment to occupational health and safety alongside each worker’s need for autonomy in their personal workspace.

While there has been much emphasis on the objective properties of beautiful faces, some theories of physical attractiveness implicate norm-based coding of faces and experience-dependent preferences (e.g., Langlois & Roggman, 1990 ; Rhodes, Jeffery, Watson, Clifford, & Nakayama, 2003 ). This study further explored experiential influences by correlating a person’s standing height with his/her ideal vertical location of the internal features in computerized faces. Taller raters created faces with larger ratios of forehead height to chin height–resulting in a larger forehead and a smaller chin, presumably caused by their biased exposure to faces from above eye level. Faces produced by shorter raters had a smaller forehead and a larger chin. The moderate correlation was maintained after controlling for age and gender (i.e., semipartial r = .41; N = 39), and rater height alone explained 24% of the variance in preferred location of the internal facial features. These results point to individual differences in perceptions of attractiveness, accounted for to some degree by the facial proportions encountered in everyday interactions.

This study used a computerized perceptual task to delineate the most attractive location of faces' internal features for female adolescents (M _age = 17.4 years), female university students, and, for comparison, mothers with experience viewing immature faces. Compared to university students, adolescents and mothers created female schematic faces with larger ratios of forehead length to chin length—yielding a larger forehead and smaller chin. University students as a group selected an optimal location of features that was close to average, i.e., faces with medium-sized forehead and chin. Furthermore, only for the university sample was there a positive correlation between feature location and standing height, suggesting that preferred faces for adult women (non-parents) depend on typical viewing angle of mature faces from above or below eye level. These results support developmental changes and individual differences in aesthetic preferences arising, at least in part, from the facial proportions encountered in people's everyday lives.