As common in studies of personality, the researchers perform a bait-and-switch in defining key terms. To ensure mass appeal, like a skillful astrologist crafting this week&#x27;s horoscope, they introduce the term &quot;toxic worker&quot; as an employee who is &quot;harmful to an organization&quot;, leaving the authors plenty of room to maneuver.<p>Unfortunately for the authors, today&#x27;s scientific paradigm requires at least the semblance of a statistical analysis. Finding a numeric measurement for an aspect of human consciousness, such as &quot;toxicity&quot; (or how much of a jerk you are), can be quite difficult. For the empirical portion of the paper, the authors choose to define a &quot;toxic worker&quot; as one who has been fired for &quot;an egregious violation of company policy&quot; such as &quot;sexual harassment, workplace violence, falsifying documents, fraud, and general workplace misconduct&quot;. In their data, 1 in 20 employees was eventually deemed &quot;toxic&quot;.<p>While I&#x27;m sure most people can identify a jerk at the office, they might also tell the authors, &quot;You keep using that word [toxic]. I do not think it means what you think it means.&quot;