Should you let an awful coworker stumble?
Tempting, isn’t it? Yet, counterintuitively, the answer is no. What seems like a victory often hides a trap. While you’re enjoying the awful’s coworker downfall, others profit—and you pay the price. The story of two rival Italian cities explains why.
Nina savored it. Not just appreciated it, not merely noted it with satisfaction. She savored it.
Like one savors a rare wine, lingering over the last bite of a forbidden dessert. Damien—three-piece suit, shallow-shark smile, that awful coworker who explains your own projects to you with the serene confidence of someone who has never doubted himself—had just spectacularly failed in a client meeting.
Not a minor slip. A total wipeout. The kind of disaster where words come out wrong, PowerPoint slides turn into witnesses against you, and the silence afterward feels like a cathedral after someone’s let one slip.
And Nina, a friend I’d trust with my secrets but not my fries, exulted. She told me the story with a quiver in her voice, strategic pauses, and “and there you see…” full of delight, even mimicking the main client’s expression—the six-figure-check signer—when Damien confused their needs with another project. She could have stepped in, but she chose to stay silent.
The contract? Lost. The fallout? Disastrous. Bonuses cut, team reshuffled—consequences affecting everyone, including Nina. But at that moment? She didn’t care one bit. Damien had fallen. It was Christmas in February!
Listening to her, I couldn’t help but think of something else: a horse race in Italy, in Siena.
The office Palio
Siena hosts a horse race twice a year on the Piazza del Campo. The Palio isn’t just a competition: victory doesn’t come from being the best, but from not losing—and especially from seeing your rival fall. The contrade—neighborhood-tribes who’ve hated each other since the Middle Ages with the meticulousness of a family vendetta—often prefer to see their rival stumble rather than cross the finish line themselves.
What’s striking is that while Siena perfected this zero-sum game, its rival, Florence, played differently. Florence built, traded, innovated, competed too, but with a mindset of expansion. Result: Florence became the cradle of the Renaissance. Siena became a beautiful museum city.
Florence even enriched itself enough to “buy” France—marrying its daughters, Marie and Catherine de Medici, to French kings. Meanwhile, Siena perfected contrade banners.
The Palio is magnificent, theatrical, perfectly contained. But it tells a story: when rivalry becomes the main driver, when making someone else lose matters more than winning yourself, you end up frozen in your own ritual.
And that morning, Nina had turned the fifteenth-floor meeting room into her Piazza del Campo.
The thrill of the fall
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: there’s something deeply, viscerally satisfying about watching someone you hate stumble—the colleague too sure of themselves, the neighbor who always succeeds, the old classmate posting Maldives selfies while you unclog the sink.
Their failure offers relief we rarely admit. It isn’t jealousy exactly. It’s more primal: the need to rebalance a symbolic hierarchy that was pressing down on us. Their fall elevates us without any effort. Gravity-based promotion.
Behavioral economists have a term for it: negative fairness preference. In Zizzo & Oswald’s experiments, people accepted losing money just to make someone else lose too. Others refuse a gain if someone else gains more. They’d rather see no one win than tolerate inequality, even if beneficial. The brain treats social hierarchy like survival. The size of the pie doesn’t matter if your slice is smaller.
Absurd, but painfully human. That morning, Nina applauded inwardly as the contract slipped away.
When the game spills over
The problem isn’t that this reflex exists—it’s when it spills over.
The Palio works because it’s a well-defined zero-sum game: one winner, indivisible glory, everyone goes home for pasta afterward. But when this logic invades real life—work, innovation, collective effort—it turns toxic.
Because unlike the Palio, the workplace isn’t zero-sum. Damien’s success, as unbearable as he is, doesn’t condemn Nina. On the contrary: in a healthy dynamic, his skills lift the team, open doors, create opportunities. Even if he takes the credit, even if it’s unfair, the ecosystem grows.
Yet we prefer to watch him fall. Even if everyone loses, bonuses shrink, and the company’s credibility suffers.
Nina knew better; she wasn’t naive. Two days later, the joy had vanished, replaced by a dull guilt and a crisis meeting where everyone pretended not to look at each other. But in the moment? She would have sold her soul for Damien to fall even harder.
The cost of indulgence
This reflex is expensive, more than we realize. It sabotages potential, poisons collective dynamics, turns every success into a personal threat. We see it in companies, teams, projects that could have thrived.
Injustice exists, of course. Special favors, legitimate frustrations—they’re real. But what Nina felt that morning wasn’t righteous indignation. It was simpler, rawer: the joy of seeing someone fail.
And that joy deserves naming—not to condemn it, it’s too human—but to understand what we do when we obey it. It relieves the ego immediately but builds a culture of mediocrity. “If I can’t shine, no one will.” That’s the war cry of collective stagnation.
The harder alternative
So do we deny Nina’s satisfaction? Lecture her? Absolutely not. What she felt was normal—deeply normal. Damien was unbearable.
Florence and Siena had the same rivalries, the same oversized egos. The difference? Florence channeled it into expansion. Siena channeled it into ritual. Florence wasn’t perfect—Savonarola burned paintings. But at least there were paintings to burn! There was creation, innovation, growth.
The distinction matters: there’s justified frustration, and there’s delight in someone else failing. Confusing the two is costly.
The challenge isn’t eliminating the urge; it’s consciously choosing not to obey it every time. Otherwise, a world governed by it takes hold. It’s called decline. Comfortable, morally satisfying, equal in falling—but it builds nothing. Invents nothing. It just recycles grudges and spreads mediocrity evenly.
Nina, three days later
I saw her the following week. The jubilation was gone. In its place, an odd fatigue, uncomfortable clarity. “I know it was dumb, what I felt. But damn, it felt good at the moment.”
I told her it wasn’t dumb, just human. Humans also invented agriculture, writing, penicillin—that is, the art of rising above immediate impulses to create something lasting.
She laughed. “You should write something about this.”
So here it is.
And Damien? Still there, still unbearable. Working on another project, probably explaining someone else’s job. The difference? Now Nina watches with amused detachment rather than simmering rage. (And if shifting from rage to amused detachment seems impossible, here’s how to keep your cool with difficult colleagues.)
Maybe that’s what growing together means: accepting some people are unbearable, some succeed more, and still choosing to play for collective progress. Even when it stings, even when it’s unfair. Because the alternative—indulging in shared downfall while consoling yourself that no one wins—is a luxury that comes with a steep cost: lost opportunities and narrowed futures.
And frankly, there are better things to do.
