Staffing a hotline for victims of abusive bosses, Yasuko Okada has heard it all -- from complaints about one manager who would communicate only by e-mail with an employee he disliked to another who kicked, slapped and ridiculed a worker in front of clients.
Meanness, she said, is increasingly a sign of the times.
Though relations between superiors and subordinates in Japan have long been strict by Western standards, Okada and other workplace watchers said the pressures of the economic slump are turning a growing number of middle managers into office bullies.