It was just another tree in a copse of similar trees.

Hardly numerous enough to be called an orchard, the trees were there long before I. While only one held apples worth the effort, their gorgeous blossoms heightened my pleasure each spring. Steps from the house, it was easy to enjoy the scent as well as the individual beauty of each blossom up close.

Although many things grow quite unacknowledged at any season, I have always felt a particular fondness for my apple trees. (Some, while equally old, continue to give me sweet apples — and, with not too much effort, their sauce.) I relished the part they played in my surroundings while admitting I took them for granted. Trees are simply there for life. Right?

Seems like some have a far shorter lifespan than others. I have always missed the stately beech that succumbed a few years ago and watch the remaining birches, knowing their expectancy isn’t terribly long. (A few are gone already.)

Still, the noise was unexpected: an unearthly creaking that seemed to go on and on with that followed by a crash that did shake the house. It took a while for all the falling branches to get untangled. I hurried out to investigate.

Rotten to the core.

Once I could check it out — walking around, climbing up to better see the hollowed out interior, I was surprised the tree had not fallen much earlier. There was very little of the outside left to have kept holding upright those branches (still full of green leaves).

Unlike some columns I have written, I doubt if anyone needs a definition of “rotten to the core.” Literally, it means exactly what it denotes. Still, the Internet had a lot to say about the idiom, beginning with its first recorded usage in 1804.

I was surprised how closely rotten apples were connected to rotten trees. Shakespeare uses it in “The Taming of the Shrew,” “There’s small choice in rotten apples,” and again in “The Merchant of Venice,” “A goodly apple rotten at the heart. O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!”

I admit my surprise at the close connection between apples and rotten trees (certainly not all trees that fall are apple laden) and delved happily into a column from ScienceDaily titled “Rotten to The Core: How Workplace ‘Bad Apples’ Spoil Barrels Of Good Employees.”

The author, a business school doctoral student, grew interested in further studying workplace conflict, specifically how the negative behavior of one group member can have a powerful and detrimental influence on entire groups or teams.

Seems his wife was unhappy at work, characterizing the environment as cold and unfriendly. One of her co-workers was especially caustic, always making fun of others in the office.

When this man became sick and had to leave the office for several days, the atmosphere changed dramatically. “People started helping each other, playing classical music on their radios and going out for drinks after work,” all happenings that disappeared as quickly as they had occurred once he came back.

That experience led Williams Felps with Terence Mitchell to analyze a series of studies that focused specially on how bad teammates can destroy a good team. Defining negative people as those who don’t do their fair share of the work, who are chronically unhappy and emotionally unstable, or who bully others, they discovered that a single “toxic” employee can be the cause of a downward spiral in an organization. When organizational dysfunction did occur, the majority of those surveyed could identify at least one “bad apple.”

Drawn to employees whose work required a great deal of interaction with one another, the two men looked at groups of five to 15 members in sectors such as manufacturing, fast food, and university settings.

“Most organizations do not have very effective ways to handle the problem,” says Mitchell. “This is especially true when the problem employee has longevity, experience or power. Companies need to move quickly to deal with such problems because the negativity of just one individual is pervasive and destructive and can spread quickly.”

“According to Felps, group members will react to a negative member in one of three ways: motivational intervention, rejection or defensiveness. In the first scenario, members will express their concerns and ask the individual to change his behavior and, if unsuccessful, the negative member can be removed or rejected. If either the motivation intervention or rejection is successful, the negative member never becomes a ‘bad apple’ and the ‘barrel’ of employees is spared. These two options, however, require that the teammates have some power: when underpowered, teammates become frustrated, distracted and defensive.

“Common defensive mechanisms employees use to cope with a ‘bad apple’ include denial, social withdrawal, anger, anxiety and fear. Trust in the team deteriorates and as the group loses its positive culture, members physically and psychologically disengage themselves from the team.

“Felps and Mitchell also found that negative behavior outweighs positive behavior — that is a ‘bad apple’ can spoil the barrel but one or two good workers can’t unspoil it.”

Methinks it’s time I recheck some of those oranges and apples sitting in the back of my refrigerator.

Susan Crossett has lived outside Cassadaga for more than 20 years. A lifetime of writing led to these columns as well as two novels. “Her Reason for Being” was published in 2008 with “Love in Three Acts” following in 2014. Both novels are now available at Lakewood’s Off the Beaten Path bookstore. Information on all the Musings, her books and the author may be found at Susancrossett.com.