Mood you bring with you affects work

0 Comments | Philadelphia Inquirer, The, July, 2006 | by Stacey Burling

If harsh words from your spouse or a near-miss with some expressway creep have you fuming when you walk into the office, there's a good chance your bad mood will affect your work all day.

Conversely, if you walk in happy, odds are you'll stay that way, even if customers are mean to you, and you'll do better work.

A study of call-center employees found that the mood people were in when they came through the door was the most important determinant of their mood throughout that day; that mood affected performance; and that nice customers could make everybody feel better while mean ones got to only the inexperienced workers.

The as-yet-unpublished study was conducted by Nancy Rothbard, a management professor at the Wharton School, and Steffanie Wilk, a former...