During my very first month on Fleet Street, I was asked to write a piece on a subject close to the heart of the newspaper editor I was working for.

I was 22 and had little idea of what I was doing. When I was done, the editor strode over to my desk and plunked himself down, his cigar billowing smoke into my face. After he had read the piece, he pressed the delete button until all my work had vanished. Then he rose, ignored me and told an older journalist to have a go at the same subject. I took the Central line home that evening feeling pretty crushed.

Not long afterwards, I saw the film Swimming with Sharks, in which Kevin Spacey plays a tyrannical film producer whose bullied assistant finally turns on him, kidnapping and torturing him in revenge. Compared with the life of a Hollywood underling, Fleet Street was pretty mild.

Close by in the City, men and women far older than me were being subjected daily to shouting, belittlement and every variety of professional humiliation. Memoirs of City life, like Geraint Anderson's Cityboy, brim with tales of adults tolerating almost anything in return for a pay cheque.

Whether it is the double first from Cambridge bullied into doing the thrice-daily Starbucks run for senior traders or the 45-year-old investment banker being bawled out by a client, incivility seems embedded in the City.

The problem with this behaviour, aside from a few raw feelings, is the subject of The Cost of Bad Behavior: How Incivility is Damaging Your Business and What to Do About It, a new book by two American professors, Christine Pearson and Christine Porath.

“Incivility does seem more severe in investment banking, where people are always shouting at each other, and in the entertainment industry,” says Porath. “But the truth is that every industry claims it's the worst.”

Pearson and Porath began their research looking at incidents of employees killing their colleagues. From this extreme, they worked back to examine every kind of workplace slight to understand why some forms of incivility are taken seriously, such as sexual harassment, while others are not.

Common examples of incivility, they found, included taking credit for other people's work, passing blame, checking emails during meetings, talking down to or not listening to others, making derogatory remarks and avoiding people.

What may seem trivial examples of bad office manners, they found, had a serious effect on morale and staff retention. Serious enough to get the attention of the companies with whom they shared their findings.

Before becoming an academic, Porath worked for a sports management and marketing company and had observed first-hand how people were affected by the constant belittlements, insults and verbal digs that were considered part of the firm's culture. Her research confirmed her fears.

After a single incident of incivility, not including anything sexual or physical, 48 per cent of the hundreds surveyed decreased their effort at work, 38 per cent intentionally decreased the quality of their work, 80 per cent wasted time worrying about the incident, 66 per cent said their performance declined and 78 per cent said their commitment to the firm declined.

Twelve per cent said they had left a company because of uncivil treatment. For firms already struggling with motivating and retaining staff, the figures were staggering. Behaviour which was regarded as everyday was actually deeply damaging.

“A lot of people don't realise what they're doing at the time,” says Porath. “And as people move up in an organisation, they are treated less and less honestly by their staff, so they have no idea how bad they are.”

There are a number of reasons for rude behaviour, but by far the most common is stress. Over 60 per cent of people blame bad behaviour on excessive work. They say they don't have time to be nice. Just four per cent say they do it because they like to.

Many older people feel they have a right to treat their juniors as they were treated. They are not just acting out of revenge, however, but through a sense that they are doing their subordinates a favour by toughening them up.

Whatever the reasons for someone's rudeness, says Porath, the perpetrator will eventually pay. If it's Donald Trump claiming that rudeness is a form of honesty, he will eventually run into the little old lady in Atlantic City who held up his casino developments for years by refusing to sell him her modest boarding house. Being nice is much more successful over the long term.

Men and women, the researchers found, are equal offenders, but they tend to respond to incivility in different ways. Women are more likely to avoid the person who mistreated them, go outside the firm for sympathy, and then plot a quiet revenge. Men tend to be more aggressive and eager to publicise their intent to get even.

For companies trying to contain incivility, Porath and Pearson have several recommendations. Start from the top. If the leaders get away with it, everyone will have a go. Hire polite people.

Train managers in what to look for. But most important, when incivility does occur, take it seriously. Don't brush it off as an employee being over-sensitive.

Many companies tolerate rudeness in otherwise very successful employees — the rainmakers and top salespeople, for example. But they are exposing themselves to the higher risk of lawsuits and serious reputational damage. No one should get a pass.

Finally, when an employee leaves, you should make sure to interview them six months later. Few people tell the truth on the way out of the door. But with some time to think, they may.