Second -- and worse than outing bad attitude to the general populace -- is trying too hard to make it productive. SGI's HR department proudly points to the "progress" made through the forum: more vegetarian food in the cafeteria after complaints from herbivores; new safety measures on the Mountain View campus to accommodate concerned pedestrians.
Netscape's Zawinski groans again. "The bad-attitude forum is for venting," he explains. "It's where I go to express that I'm really pissed off. If I'm actually going to try to do something to fix problems, I go somewhere else." Bad attitude is about flaming, not fixing.
Finally, the kiss of death for bad attitude is any attempt to domesticate it with rules or policies. Just the barest hint of management interference splintered Netscape's forum. Rumors of management reprimands for particularly inflammatory bad-attitude postings began to circulate. One posting suggested that the existence of a newsgroup in which people trash each other's work in harsh and profane terms violated company policies concerning a healthy work environment. A flurry of invective buried the suggestion immediately -- but even the specter of official guidelines was enough to send the hard core overboard.
Just as quickly, Zawinski upped the ante, by starting a members-only renegade email list called Really Bad Attitude. And he instituted a rigorous guideline: anyone who wants access to the list has to pass an "entrance exam" that tests both their attitude quotient and flaming ability. To date, about 100 Really Bad Attituders have gained admission. More important, bad attitude has returned to the place where dissenting sentiments live at most companies -- and perhaps the only place where bad attitude can thrive: underground.
Katharine Mieszkowski (katharine@wwire.net) is a San Francisco-based writer and frequent Fast Company contributor.
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