I mentioned it in a comment elsewhere in the discussion, but I've got one coworker who is just a terrible person, another that treats others terribly when he is

I mentioned it in a comment elsewhere in the discussion, but I've got one coworker who is just a terrible person, another that treats others terribly when he isn't getting his way, and used to have a third who would treat his reports like crap if they didn't worship the ground he walked on. I've got a couple family members who are just unabashedly nasty to everyone. There's a couple more who are just awful to service workers because they think they're lesser for the work they do. Those are just the people I have to directly deal with on a regular basis. The author apparently logged the number of people who were jerks over the course of a given time and and that's how they came up with the numbers they used. Whether those people are awful all of the time, who knows. I know there's a number of people in my life who are just terrible people all of the time. Of course, they think they're the nicest people in the world and are the victims in every situation. The lesson in the article is to be decent to everyone and if someone's nasty in return, ignore it and focus on the people you can help. The numbers aren't necessarily the point, but from my experience, it's a reasonable estimate.