My first real job after school was in corporate HR for a giant bank. AAaaaaahhhh! I ran away screaming and never looked back.
I’m not going to vote because my experience is limited. But I will say that, in that experience, it was women. Men just showed up, did the job, and left.
I wonder where all that malice comes from. Are there homes where the parents treat kids with this same untrustworthy-but-nice vibe a lot? I realize that this tends to be more of a female tendency in a general sense, but there are plenty of women I’ve worked with who don’t act like this.
I figure it comes from HR school.
In my workplace, it’s divided by right brain/left brain. The creative people (marketing, advertising) are very fun to be around, but they also create a lot of drama with their over-the-top personalities. They tend to be very insecure and jealous, even if they are brilliant, energetic, and charismatic. They are late for everything. They operate on their intuition instead of their intelligence.
The non-creative people (engineers, finance), aren’t nearly as fun, but they don’t complain as much, either. They analyze instead of emote. The vast majority are in long-term, committed relationships. They tend to be more collaborative vs. competitive. If you want an engineer to bitch about you, show up late and ill-prepared.
If the women have power or uncontested (a.k.a. non sanctioned) power, than the answer is definitely women.
In an environment where you’re job is actually worth something to you, and you are managed by a man (or woman) with balls who will fire your ass on the spot, then you tend to keep your mouth shut more and don’t feel so entitled to share your opinions about things that are irrelevant. Between labor unions and labor laws, you can do just about damn near anything in an office job and not get fired. Being a mouthy backstabbing bad attitude employee goes unnoticed often.
Lots of factors determine the answer to this, but generally nowdays it’s more female oriented.
…another nice example of special privileges (er sorry equality) backfiring.
Male and voted other. Painting with a broad brush below. Note I say “tend to” not “always do”…
The bitching tends to be more women. They get offended easier and are more likely to retaliate in petty ways. Backstabbing tends to be revenge for perceived offenses.
Men tend to be less easily offended, and tend to be more performance oriented: You hate Joe because he is a slacker, not because"he thinks he is all that". Backstabbing from men tends to be aimed at getting themselves ahead rather than punishing the offender, or at worst throwing someone else under the bus to avoid blame.
I have worked with one man I am pretty sure is a sociopath. No women.
I’ve been working in HR for 19 years and in my experience they are no better or worse than any other employees.