Last week, for the first time in many years, I had a big, shouty, stand-up row with a colleague at work. It started off quite small, as these things often do. But then he accused me of being sloppy. I accused him of trying to cover something up. The two of us stood in the middle of a large, open-plan office and let rip. His complexion was deepest crimson and so was mine.

From my point of view he was intransigent, patronising and utterly insufferable. From his point of view – and I'm guessing here – I was superior, sarcastic and utterly toxic. So we fought for a bit and later, trembling with rage, I returned to my desk.

The conventional view is that rage at work is bad, as well as being mad and dangerous. A Gallup poll in the US showed that one in five office workers has been so furious with a colleague in the past six months that they would have liked to hit the other person.

But the true picture is more complicated than that. There is good rage and bad rage. Someone who gets angry all the time is impossible to work with. But for the rest of us, occasional bursts of anger, especially if performed with panache, have much to be said for them.

My rage attack had two advantages. First, it was a gift to everyone else. Humdrum office life was briefly interrupted with a little drama. Eyes popped, and suddenly there was something to whisper about at the coffee machine. It was also good for me as it got my blood coursing agreeably through my veins.

Companies have got themselves into a muddle over anger. On one hand they tell us to feel passionate about our work. On the other they expect us to be professional at all times – which means keeping our negative emotions under lock and key. Passionate and professional strike me as odd bedfellows.

Actually, I've never really gone along with the idea of passion at work. I've looked the word up in the dictionary and it means: a strong sexual desire or the suffering of Jesus at the crucifixion. Neither of these quite captures the mood of the average white-collar worker.

However, if what passion means is minding about work, I'm all for it. The trouble is that minding means sometimes feeling furious when things don't go according to plan.

Indeed, for me work is one long rage opportunity – starting with the fact that the machine that dispenses hot water for tea is on the blink. Clearly some management of rage is in order, and here is what the experts usually suggest.

Their first tip is to breathe. I've never been able to see what the big deal about breathing is. It keeps me alive, but that's as far as it goes.

Their second is “positive self-talk” – to squash your negative feelings and give the other person the benefit of the doubt. This is dodgy advice. Why should I give my patronising colleague the benefit of the doubt when he was so clearly in the wrong? The very thought makes me much crosser than I was before.

The third tip is forgiveness. Again, no dice: I don't forgive the water machine and I don't forgive my colleague.

The reason this advice is so hopeless is that it is trying to eliminate anger. Instead, what we all need advice on is how to do anger better. My outburst last week could have been improved on. The first problem is that I don't get angry at work often enough, so last week's row was too shocking to my system. Once every 10 years is too little. Once every 10 minutes is too much. The ideal might be about once every couple of months.

The next problem was that I didn't end it properly. Afterwards I sought the advice of a pugnacious colleague. He said I should send an e-mail saying: “Don't ever speak to me like that again, and I demand an apology at once.”

I rejected this because such e-mails are not my style. My style is more to nurse a lifelong grudge (and possibly write a column about it). Which approach is better? Clearly the pugnacious one is. My problem was that I was an anger wimp and didn't follow through.

Apologies all round are a good way of ending it. A fairly senior woman I know often has bad-tempered outbursts but always says a large and generous sorry afterwards. She reckons (and she may be right) that the effect of a furious shout followed by an apology often leaves her victim marginally better disposed to her than before the rage attack.

There are other principles for good anger. It is almost never good to shout at a subordinate. Mine was a row of equals. Second, however angry you are don't let it spill out of control. Throwing the computer keyboard is not advisable as it makes you look an idiot and then your computer doesn't work, making you crosser still.

If you are small and male, anger is to be avoided. A man under 5' 7” who loses it at work just looks comic. This isn't fair, but that's the way it goes.

The people who worry me most at work are not the people who get angry but the ones who never do. A calm man I knew in my teens once told me: never lose your temper, it makes you look weak. He had a catastrophic nervous breakdown in his mid-20s, poor man, and is now in sheltered accommodation in Arizona.

前一陣子，我在上班時間和一位同事大吵了一架。多年來，這還是第一次發生這種事。我們吵得很兇，聲音很大，而且站在辦公室中間。起因是件很小的事——吵架這種事通常都是如此。但之后他說我無事生非。我說他試圖掩蓋事實。我們兩個人站在一間大大的開放式辦公室中央對罵。他氣得臉色發紫，我也一樣。

在我看來，他倔強、高傲、完全無法忍受。在他看來（我猜），我孤傲、刻薄、完全不可救藥。所以我們吵了一架；然后，氣得直發抖的我回到了自己的辦公桌前。

傳統觀點是，在工作中吵架很糟糕，既瘋狂又危險。蓋洛普(Gallup)在美國進行的一項調查表明，在每5個辦公室職員中，就有一個在過去6個月中對另一位同事非常氣憤，以至于想把那個人揍一頓。

但實際的情況比這更復雜。吵架有好壞之分。那些總愛生氣的人，不可能與其共事。但對于我們其他人而言，偶爾發發脾氣（特別是如果以優雅的樣子表現出來），則另當別論了。

我發脾氣有兩個好處。首先，這是送給其他所有人的一份禮物。單調的辦公室生活被一場小小的劇目短暫打斷了。人們都瞪大了眼睛；頓時，人們有了在咖啡機旁低聲私語的內容。這對我也有好處，因為這讓我的血液歡快地流過我的血管。

企業在生氣問題上陷入了困境。一方面，它們告訴我們對自己的工作要充滿激情。另一方面，它們期望我們一直要表現得很專業——意味著壓抑我們的負面情緒。對我而言，激情和專業就像一對同床異夢的夫妻。

實際上，我從不贊同在工作中要充滿“激情”這個想法。我在字典中查了這個詞，它的意思是：強烈的性欲或耶穌受難時的痛苦。這兩個解釋都不能確切描繪普通白領的情緒。

然而，如果激情意味著專心于工作，我則完全符合。問題是，專心意味著有時當事情沒有按計劃進行時，你會感覺憤怒。

事實上，對我而言，工作中充滿發怒的機會——這次起因是泡茶用的熱水機壞了。當然，有一些憤怒管理方法，而專家們通常會作如下建議：

他們的第一個建議是深呼吸。我從沒看到深呼吸能有什么大用。它只是讓我活下來，僅此而已。

第二個是“正面的自言自語”——壓抑你的負面情緒，對另外一方暫作“無罪推定”。這是個不合理的建議。為什么我應該在我高傲的同事顯然有錯時，卻對他“無罪推定”？這種想法讓我比之前更生氣了。

第三個建議是寬恕。這也沒用：我不會寬恕那個飲水機，也不會寬恕我的同事。

這條建議之所以毫無用處，原因是它試圖消除憤怒。換言之，我們需要的建議是如何更好地生氣。我上周的暴怒本可以有所改進。第一個問題是，我在工作中生氣的次數不夠多，因此，上次的吵架對我的規律而言太令人震驚了。每10年吵一次架太少了，每10分鐘吵一次又太多。理想狀態可能是每幾個月吵一次。

接下來的問題是，我沒有以合理的方式結束這場爭吵。隨后我到一個愛吵架的同事那里尋求建議。他說我應該發封電郵：“別再像那樣和我說話，我需要立即得到道歉。”

我拒絕這么做，因為寫這種電郵不是我的風格。我的風格不只是培養一生的嫉恨（并可能就此寫篇專欄）。哪種方法更好？顯然，那種好斗的方法更好。我的問題是，我是個愛生氣的懦弱的人，而且不能堅持到底。

無論到哪里，道歉都是一種結束爭吵的好方法。我認識一個非常高層的女士，她經常發脾氣，但之后總是說一大堆“對不起”。她認為（她或許是對的），憤怒地大吵一架之后表示道歉，往往會讓她的對手比吵架之前稍稍順從于她。

好的生氣還有其它原則。對下屬大叫幾乎永遠不是個好方法。我這次是與平級吵架。第二，無論你多生氣，都不要失控。不建議摔電腦鍵盤，因為這會讓你看上去像個白癡，之后，你的電腦壞了，會讓你更生氣。

如果你個子矮小，而且是位男士，那就不要生氣。矮于5英尺7英寸的男士在工作中發怒，就像在上演喜劇。這不公平，但事實就是如此。

讓我最擔心的人，不是那些愛生氣的人，而是從不生氣的人。我在十來歲時，曾經認識一位很鎮靜的男士，他曾經告訴我：永遠不要發脾氣，這讓你看上去很脆弱。在他25歲上下時，他遭遇了一場災難性的神經崩潰。可憐的人，現在他在亞利桑那州的收容所里。