Dec 14 2006
Is Work Stressing You Out?
Last month, MSNBC had an article titled, “Desk rage: Workers gone wild. Job stress fuels backstabbing, tirades, even assault“. I read this article is a sense of familiarity and outrage. It points to a growing trend of the corporate world where people are constantly on edge and on the brink of hysteria and hostility.
This is nothing new to me. I’ve worked in the corporate world for over three years and hysteria, screaming and backstabbing is “normal”.
Tirades? Yep.
Perfidy? Check.
Assault? Uh-huh.
The articles states:
Some desk-ragers “go postal,” screaming, cursing, trashing office equipment, even assaulting others. But desk rage also manifests as a slow boil that leads to gossiping at the water cooler, backstabbing, poor productivity, abusing sick days, stealing supplies or becoming irritable or depressed. Some people simply get fed up, stop communicating, put on a headset and emotionally “check out.”
Desk rage isn’t something companies like to publicize, so there are few statistics on it. But a 2001 survey of 1,305 workers, commissioned by Integra Realty Resources in New York City, found that 42 percent of respondents said there was yelling and other verbal abuse in their office, 23 percent said they have been driven to tears because of workplace stress and 10 percent said employees have actually resorted to physical violence.
To those who observe the behavior of people in today’s world, this should come as no surprise. Indeed, to me, the surprise of these numbers is that these behaviors aren’t more prevalent in our society. Considering the amount of stress that people are being subjected to on a daily basis, I half expected the number to be at least twenty percent more.
I suspect much of the stress is derived from new technologies and ease with which we can access information. These technologies can keep an employee fully integrated into the activities of their company 24/7. Without so much as raising a sweat, an employee can access all the information he needs all from the comfort of his home computer. It’s efficient. Cost effective.
What this also means is an employee is on call all the time.
Working 9 to 5 is out.
Working 24/7 is in.
How did we arrive at a place when a man is forced to working 50 to 70 hours a week and get paid for 40? Who made this decision? Did Congress pass a new law I didn’t hear about? Don’t people see the disparity between what they get paid and how much they work and what they are responsible for? Previous to now, a person who worked those kinds of hours - knocking himself out everyday and losing sleep - aimed to become vice president or CEO of a company. Now, a simple mailroom clerk is pulling down the same hours and is incurring the same amount of stress.
I know. I did it.
How we got here can be explained quite simply. What are we going to do to get ourselves out of this situation is another matter.
We arrived at this sad point through the desire to be self-important. Think of how many times you have seen someone try to make himself indispensable to a company by working more hours, taking on more responsibilities, even though their wages remained static. I’ve seen it too many times, and I’ve done it myself.
Late in the 19th century and early in the 20th century, the men of that age worked terribly hard to give us a decent life. They forced the government to enact labor laws regulating the number of hours a man can work in any given day. The government in turn forced the companies to abide by these laws. The men of that generation labored for the choice to live decent lives and not be the slave or serf of any man.
All that was thrown out the window the moment we, the people, decided we wanted to be important at what we do for a living, as if a man’s worth is the worth of his function within a corporate entity. And with the advent of all these communication technologies, the option of living a quiet decent life has become very difficult.
And it’s not hard to find something to be unhappy with in the modern workplace: heavy workloads, long hours and technology that keeps workers constantly on call. “They never get a break from their work responsibilities,” says Enyeart.
With laptops, PDAs, cell phones, e-mail and pagers, there is an ever-widening gap between the amount of information people are expected to keep up with and the amount they can reasonably process, says Dr. Kerry Sulkowicz, a psychiatrist and founder of the Boswell Group, a corporate consulting company in New York City. “The technology is outstripping our capacity to use it,” he says.
And, according to this article, this is one of the solutions offered by a company:
In August, her group introduced — by popular demand — a new workshop titled “How to Manage Emotions and Excel Under Pressure” that’s aimed at helping companies combat desk rage. Human resources personnel asked for the course to help deal with office temper tantrums and other destructive work behavior.
In other words, therapy. Note that turning off the cellphone, PDA or pager is not even an option anymore. Also, note that establishing concrete hours of operation isn’t even to be entertained. You see, the problem here is not the impossible demands of companies and managers. It is the employees. They should get a shrink and change into something… well, more acceptable. The employers created this insane environment for the workers and are shocked when their workers suddenly mount tirades at each other.
When you hear company slogans like “Expect More”, or “We will do everything to meet your needs”, or something along these lines, that means (equal sign) their employees will be given the short end of the stick.
It’s utter madness.