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STRESS:
A SOCIAL DIS-EASE It's
3:45 p.m. You've been xeroxing and collating materials to stuff into
800 envelopes since yesterday afternoon. It simply has to be
out in today's mail. Only about half of the envelopes are full, and
there's still the sealing and stamping to do in the next 75 minutes. Suddenly
the boss bursts in and says "Hey, how did this happen?!?'' He is
pointing at the bottom margin on one of the inserts. The text ends less
than a half-inch from the bottom! "I'm
sorry, but you'll have to do these over. Get them printed out and xeroxed
all over. If you'd done it right from the start you wouldn't have this
problem!'' He stomps out in a huff. Anxious?
Nerves frayed? Is it your fault? Is it just that you don't fit in? That
you can't cope with the responsibilities you must grow up and learn
to handle? Take another
example: You've been processing words on a VDT for the past six-and-a-half
hours, with a half-hour lunch break for coffee tasting like hot water
that's had a brown crayon soaking in it for a few hours. The stuffy
windowless room in which "your'' workstation resides has only the
persistent hum of computers and the clackety-clack of pounding keyboards
to remind you that you are not completely without sensation (the blurry
vision and lower backache you've developed also proves you can feel.) One of the
lawyers you work for rushes in with a pile of scribbled notes and a
series of charts and says "Listen, this is really a rush
job...gotta have it in an hour. It's for a really important case and
we're meeting the judge in chambers in an hour and a half. I want you
to drop everything and get this done!!'' Of course,
it doesn't occur to him that no one could possible get something like
that typed in less than three hours. He's screwed around so long, and
missed his own deadlines so badly that no one and nothing can save him
now. Nevertheless, it took you two months to land this job and you've
seen a couple of people get the ax for stepping out of line, so you
have to try to do it, or lose your job. Stomach
hurt? Headaches? Nervous twitches appearing in odd places? Regular nightmares
about work? You've caught it! STRESS!! The effects of stress
can be quite far-reaching. Among the more fearsome results are heart
disease, nervous system disorders, assorted inexplicable physical malfunctions,
sometimes even dramatic pain. Office workers,
especially VDT operators, are statistically prone to much higher levels
of stress than many other occupations. Some studies claim that VDT operators
suffer higher levels of stress than air traffic controllers. The causes
for these statistics are undoubtedly to be found in the work performed:
highly detailed, but intrinsically useless data shuffling, under intense
pressure for speed and accuracy. And the actual work environment, cut
off from fresh air and sunshine, has plenty to do with it too. Lately more
and more attention is being paid to this pervasive fact of modern life.
Popular psychology has spawned a large, detailed analysis of stress
and its effects. Amidst all the publicity on stress there flourishes
a sub-industry of psychologists, employee relations specialists, time
management consultants, etc., all of whom proclaim their ability to
help the stress-stricken individual learn to cope with the myriad causes
of stress. Unfortunately
the "human service'' provided by these apparent do-gooder professionals
is one of the most cynical or self-deluded approaches to the present-day
human malaise. the "stress-managers'' are bound by their own economic
needs to present stress as something curable when individuals buy the
service they are selling, namely ""stress therapy.'' It's
not enough that work, survival, life itself are making you feel tense;
there has to be someone there to make money from that too! When you
"get'' stress, have you caught something? Or is it more accurate
to say that we are all caught by situations which force us to
put up with ridiculous and humiliating demands, as often as not simply
to fulfill the arbitrary whim of some jerk manager? Stress is
not a result of individual failings. It is the result of an irrational
and inhumane society. The solution to stress will not be found in any
special seminar, or in any special meditation or exercise techniques
(though it is true that some such techniques help some people temporarily
cope with some results of stress). Stress is such a fundamental
part of contemporary society that it will take a deliberate restrucuring
of the social order to reduce it in any real sense. In the meantime,
what can we do to alleviate the more overwhelming aspects of stress?
On the job, nothing helps puncture the tension like resistance to the
hurried "necessity'' of imposed work demands. As long as one needs
to hold a job, a certain amount of self-sacrifice and misery is unavoidable.
But the source of stress can be confronted by keeping the pressing,
yet trivial, demands of work in perspective. If a spirit of humorous
disrespect and ridicule for the compelling time demands of the job prevails
among the workforce, stress can be reduced to a level where it becomes
more boredom than tension. Another source of temporary relief can be
found in unofficial use of workplace resources (e.g., making personal
phone calls, appropriating postage and office supplies, etc.). Fighting
the tyranny of work routines can be stress-inducing in itself. Going
it alone can easily result in being fired. So, solidarity is vital in
the fight for a less coercive work environment. Stress is
a social disease; and it has a social cure: changing the way people
treat each other by changing the society in which they interact. We
""average folks'' are the only ones who can solve the problem
of stress. We can begin by rejecting the idea of stress as a product
of individual failure, with individual solutions, and by continuing
to pursue alternatives to the authoritarian institutions which impose
stress as a way of life. --
Nasty Secretaries Liberation Front |
STRESS is a social disease and it has a social cure. |
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