Sure, you know what road rage is. As a New Yorker who doesn’t drive, I occasionally suffer from bursts of “subway rage.” (Dear woman across from me, your purse does not need its own seat!) However, my fellow disgruntled cubicle dwellers of the world should also be on the lookout for “desk rage.” As we spend more and more time at the office and those offices try to squeeze more people into less space, it’s only logical that people get more fed up with each other and become less patient. Via Psychology Today:
A U.S. News and World Report poll says that 89% of U.S. workers said incivility is a serious problem and 78% said it is getting worse. The cost of workplace violence to employers is estimated somewhere between $6 to $36 billion annually.
Ever said “Such and such coworker makes me so mad I could just kill her?” Odds are good you aren’t alone. So how can we curb this growing problem? I vote for things like flex time, more vacation, and, if possible, working with people who don’t finish off the last of the coffee and then refuse to refill. Seriously. I hate that guy.
I consider myself a bit of an expert when it comes to profanity – in fact, my roommate is not a native English speaker and he relies on me to teach him how to swear. This new study from Keele University in the UK has just confirmed for the world something I’ve known for ages – swearing is awesome and it makes you feel better.
Their study involved 64 volunteers who were each asked to put their hand in a tub of ice water for as long as possible while repeating a swear word of their choice.
They then repeated the experiment using a more commonplace word that they would use to describe a table.
The researchers found the volunteers were able to keep their hands in the ice water for a longer when swearing, establishing a link between swearing and an increase in pain tolerance.
So, I thinks this means you’re now allowed to curse as much as you want at the office. Because it helps you relieve stress, obviously. Funny, perhaps your boss was onto this phenomenon some time ago.
It usually isn’t up for debate whether abused assistants are bitter – the question is more likely to be about how bitter they are. But last week, at the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting, the members discussed a new phenomenon they’ve named Post-Traumatic Bitterness Disorder. Similar to its cousin, PTSD, the newly named ailment is described as “angry plus helpless.” It’s becoming increasingly common as already-beleaguered workers cope with the results of a suffering economy, thus compounding their emotions. In addition to being disgruntled, they’re being laid off, forced into a combo job, or hanging on for dear life. Here’s what German Dr. Michael Linden, who coined the PTBD term, had to say:
Embittered people are typically good people who have worked hard at something important, such as a job, relationship or activity, Linden says. When something unexpectedly awful happens — they don’t get the promotion, their spouse files for divorce or they fail to make the Olympic team — a profound sense of injustice overtakes them. Instead of dealing with the loss with the help of family and friends, they cannot let go of the feeling of being victimized. Almost immediately after the traumatic event, they become angry, pessimistic, aggressive, hopeless haters.
Wow, so did he come and spy on me in order to come up with this diagnosis? And believe me, “failing to make the Olympic team” is something so unlikely to happen to me that I am not worried about how I might react when it happens. Trust.
It seems like getting promoted would be awesome for you – you’d earn more money, get a better parking space, and be able to boss people around. However, a recent study at England’s Warwick University claims the opposite. After interviewing 1,000 workers who had been promoted into management roles, researchers determined that a promotion caused one’s mental health to decline.
Experts said being given extra responsibility could lead to more stress, anxiety and depression.
They said the problems could be exacerbated by workers who were promoted having less time to access health services.
GP visits fell by 20% to less than two a year after promotion, the study found.
But what about that major ego boost that comes from getting promoted?
Lead researcher Chris Boyce said: “Getting promoted at work is not as great as people think.
“Our research finds that the mental health of managers typically deteriorates after a job promotion and in a way that goes beyond merely a short-term change.
“People given senior positions need to be given the proper support and training to handle the extra responsibility.”
I feel weirdly vindicated by this article. Maybe they should hire me to do a study about whether being unemployed, conversely, makes people happier? I’d venture to say yes.
There’s an entire cottage industry based around hating Mondays (Garfield comics, the Boomtown Rats song “I Don’t Like Mondays”) and loving Fridays (TGIFriday’s, anyone?). But according to a new study, the most stressful time of the entire workweek is … Tuesday at 11:45 AM. What?
According to the study, which was conducted in the UK:
Most workers coast through Monday getting their brain in gear and catching up with gossip from the weekend through social networking sites.
But on Tuesday reality sets in and staff spend the first part of the day going through emails they ignored on Monday before planning the week ahead.
I can kind of buy this logic, except that I spent time checking Facebook and blogs pretty much every day of the week and not just Monday. I’d be curious to see some data on what times of the week people are most likely to schedule insanely dull marathon meetings, since that was what always caused me the most stress.
Remember when you were a kid, and didn’t want to do something, and your mom said ‘a little broccoli/making the bed/math homework never killed anybody?’ Well, sometimes work can kill you, as any of you who read this site can easily attest. The Japanese, who have a word for everything, have a word for “death by overwork.” This word is karoshi and was officially coined in 1987, when the Japanese government acknowledged overwork of employees as a potential cause of death.
The most recent person to die by karoshi was a senior car engineer at Toyota. The man, whose name has not been released, was working on a new hybrid Camry model. The man’s wife’s lawyers said that ”in the two months leading up to his death, the man averaged more than 80 hours of overtime per month.”
Continue reading ‘karoshi: sadly, not a buzzword’
I don’t drive anymore, but when I did I could definitely see why people got road rage. Now, living in New York, I get subway rage–sometimes it’s all I can do not to punch the woman who “accidentally” stepped on my foot three times. But considering how most people spend way more time at work than they do in a car or other mode of transportation, there’s been an uptick in reports of “desk rage.” Whether you’re the one on the giving end or the receiving end of yelling, hitting, name-calling, stapler-throwing, and the like, you have definitely witnessed some desk rage moments in your office.
So why are we turning into a nation of Naomi Campbells?
Continue reading ‘buzzword: desk rage’
Of all the press releases that come across the STA desk, this is one of the more hilarious ones: a sheet informing me that April is National Stress Awareness Month. Funny, because I thought every month was national stress awareness month. If you’re an assistant, every freaking day is an entire stress awareness month. Of course, we’re aware of stress. What would be better for these well-intentioned folks at the health department is, say, National Stress Relief Month. Or, like, National Stop Being a Douche to Your Assistant Because It Actually Affects Their Health Month.
That said, tomorrow, April 16, is National Stress Awareness Day. Because a whole month is too much for some people. To be fair, it is the day after tax day, which means a lot of you will be coming down from a major stressor. So, try to spend some time tomorrow doing something that makes you less stressed, whether it’s at work or at home. I’m a big fan of unwinding in a hot bath, personally, but you can grab cocktails with a friend you don’t get to see often enough, rent a movie you’ve been wanting to see for ages, stock up on your favorite junk food, or whatever else makes you happy. Or hell…just call in sick. We won’t tell.
