The Fast Company blog has weighed in on the recent trend of violence in professional basketball. The Denver Nuggets and the New York Knicks are the latest to get attention for players beating each other up on national television. Learn More Here to make it interesting, as he compares the situation to the workplace:

Imagine being at the office with one minute and 15 seconds left in the day. Then imagine shoving one of your coworkers, and punching another in the face.

What would your boss say? What would management do? I would probably be fired, if not arrested. But I work for a magazine, not a basketball team….

Violence in the workplace is not tolerated, so why is it tolerated on a basketball court?

Fair point. On the other hand, what behaviors do you tolerate at work that in other contexts you would think are ridiculous? I’m not talking about high stakes stuff like violence necessarily, but what about the way you communicate, or the way you do meetings, or the inability to express emotions, etc. There are a lot of things we do that don’t make sense, but we continue to do them. And we will stay the course unless we talk about these things that have traditionally been “undiscussable.”

Jamie Notter