People who make negative comments for the purpose of belittling their coworkers are a tremendous drain on the productivity of a business.  The problem is that negative comments are hurtful and almost always ruin people’s days.  When this occurs, it immediately sucks away people’s energy and now they are no longer able to apply their best effort toward performing their job.  A friend of mine who is a manager recently told me that he receives at least one degrading email a month from one of his superiors.  “When this happens,” he said, “I completely shut down for the rest of the day.”  Let’s assume that 29 other employees received similar emails from that same person.  If each of them responded by shutting down for a half-day, that’s 15 days of lost productivity each month all because of one thoughtless email!  The message here is: If you have negative people working at your company, especially if they’re in leadership positions, don’t ignore them.  You need to find a way to get them rehabilitated or get rid of them because they’re killing your productivity.