When dealing with a toxic coworker, one of the first lines of defense is to limit your contact and communication as much as possible, Stanford management professor and office bullies expert Robert Sutton says. One of the most effective ways to do that is to put a little physical distance between you, as Sutton explains in his book The Asshole Survival Guide: How to Deal with People Who Treat You Like Dirt.
At the heart of this strategy is the “Allen curve,” named for MIT researcher Thomas J. Allen’s observation that the closer people sit, the more they communicate, both in person and through other media. Allen found that people are four times more likely (paywall) to communicate with a colleague who sits six feet away than with one who sits 60 feet away. Coworkers who sit 150 feet or more away from each other communicate as often as colleagues in separate cities.
Allen did his research in the 1970s, but more recent studies have found that the curve holds even in the era of email and instant-messaging services like Slack.