Revenge Is a Dish Best Not Served at All

Editor's note: If you have a pressing business-etiquette question for Miss Conduct, please send her an email.

No fewer than three major studio films this fall focus on revenge -- The Brave One, Reservation Road and Death Sentence -- but in post-9/11 America, we don't have to look to fiction to see how easily a sense of powerlessness can become pathological.

Now, vendetta is an Italian word, and as the Corleone clan knows, revenge is a dish best served cold.

That chilling wisdom might seem counterintuitive, because revenge even at work is such a hot pursuit. Unfortunately, this heat means that when we channel Clint Eastwood, we shoot first, usually from the hip, and ask questions later. This rarely works, though, because a sloppy response rebounds far worse upon the vengeful than upon the target. (Plus, you sound stupid saying "make my day" constantly in an office setting.)

Nevertheless, even if you take the Italian approach and serve up your revenge as cold as carpaccio, it can still be a hot pursuit. It takes work to craft the perfect snare: to bait, hook and land your fish. All that energy has to come from somewhere, and it glows from the heat of humiliation.

The Danger of the Game

Seeking vengeance at work, however monumental (say, taking down your rival firm) or minor (slighting a rival colleague), appeals to our wounded pride.

It restores the ego, or seems to, casting you as the star of your own movie -- or at least an HBO series. With each client you as Ari Gold poach from your competitors, or with each clap of thunder you as Tony Soprano steal from a subordinate, it can feel as though you're getting back some of the self-esteem that was taken away when they one-upped you.