Dealing with E-mail Onslaughts

When you arrive in the morning, there are forty of them waiting for you. By the time you’ve answered two or three, six more are waiting, and all the time you’re trying to work, notices of new ones keep popping up on your screen. If there’s anything in the office that can make you feel as though you’re being attacked by armies of malicious elves, it’s e-mail. But it doesn't have to wreck your day. Managing e-mail is all a matter of triaging, the way medical staff in an overloaded ER triage patients. Once you’ve got a logical system of directories, some good SPAM software, and a few habits in place, you’ll be able to calmly contend with whatever passes through your in-box, no matter how excessive the quantity. Here are a few tips:

Empathy in the Office

Recently I started reading an extraordinary book called The Empathic Civilization by Jeremy Rifkin. It’s an ambitious 700-page volume that rethinks all of world history in terms of two concepts: empathy and entropy, both of which Rifkin claims have progressively increased over time. Rifkin shows how certain conditions – new sources of energy, new communications media, urbanization, increased contact between members of different groups – facilitate “empathy surges” – times when the overall progress of empathy, i.e., the ability of one human being to imagine what another human being feels, takes a giant leap forward. While these surges never last, as energy runs out due to entropy and civilizations decline, they leave traces to be reignited with the next surge, and thus, over time, Rifkin claims, the human race is becoming more and more empathic.

So far, I’ve only read about a third of this book, but already it’s made so many sparks go off in my head I feel like it’s the fourth of July. This guy is a fabulous big-picture thinker. And of course, his ideas have all sorts of implications for the office world, which I plan to spend the whole next year exploring.

Meanwhile, it’s set me thinking about empathy, a concept I first encountered when doing training at a crisis center where I volunteered for a couple of years before starting social work school. Trainings for volunteers in those days began with an “Empathy Weekend.” On Friday nights, volunteers were divided into small groups run by “empathy trainers.” The trainers explained to us what empathy was, and that empathizing with someone with a headache didn’t mean you had the headache yourself, which is sympathy, it meant being aware that the person was suffering, communicating your awareness to him or her and “validating feelings.”

Office Lit 101: Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener"

Someday, I’d love to pull together an anthology of office literature, assuming one doesn’t already exist, which would include everything from Melville and Dickens to The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit to Dilbert and “Office Space.” Often, I believe, literary artists have presented a far truer picture in poems, plays, stories, novels, cartoons, and films of office life as real people experience it than any nonfiction writer ever has. Thus, in this blog, I intend from time to time to take a look at one or another of these works and consider what it might have to teach us about the office world.

Our subject in this post is the classic, "Introduction to Fiction" story “Bartleby,” which I reread last night for the first time since teaching it in a community college course. The author, Herman Melville, is best known as the creator of Moby Dick, a huge, cosmic-symbolic adventure tale featuring a white whale, and it’s hard to imagine that its author would have anything to say about office life. Wondering what kinds of experience informed both works, I turned to the obvious place for answers – Wikipedia – and found that Melville spent his early adult years at sea having adventures and writing novels about them, then got married and spent some years in a cabin in the Berkshires writing his two greatest novels – Moby Dick and Pierre – during this time he also got to know Nathaniel Hawthorne -- then, in the 1860’s, he got a job in a customs house, where he wasted away for nineteen years and wrote hardly anything before finally escaping back to full-time writing. So, notwithstanding his sea voyages, Melville did spend a substantial chunk of time in an office, though most of it was long after the years he spent in the Berkshires, which was when he wrote “Bartleby.”

"Nature-deficit Disorder" and Office Work

“Nature-deficit Disorder” is not a diagnosis in DSM-IV but a phrase that Richard Louv uses in his landmark book, The Last Child in the Woods. Louv focuses on the importance of direct exposure to nature for children’s healthy physical and emotional development. He cites studies that show that exposure to nature may reduce AD/HD symptoms and also improve children’s cognitive capabilities as well as their resistance to negative stresses and depression.

“Nature-deficit disorder,” Louv writes, “describes the human costs of alienation from nature, among them: diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses. The disorder can be detected in individuals, families, and communities.” But deficit, he goes on to say, is only one side of the coin. The other side is abundance. By becoming aware of the negative effects of nature-deficit disorder, he says, we also become aware of the powerful healing benefits of reconnection with nature.

Are You Climbing the Walls at Work? Dealing with Confinement

To repeat what I said in a previous post, during winter months, office workers may barely see the sun except on weekends. Being shut up in a building, often a single room or, worse yet, the infamous cubicle is, I believe, for many workers, one of the most depression-inducing aspects of the office situation. For one thing, it puts you more at risk for Seasonal Affective Disorder; for another, if you have a certain type of brain-wiring it
can make you feel claustrophobic and restless; finally, it can make getting along with coworkers more difficult due to “cabin fever,” similar to what happens to families when they’re boxed up during a snowstorm. This is perhaps why so many workers compare their offices to prisons.

Unless you’re telecommuting, you may believe that such feelings are unavoidable. But while it’s true that confinement is a fact of life for many office workers, it doesn’t necessarily have to set you up for depression. The key is to take constructive action to counter its effects. Here are some suggestions:

The Responsibilities of Office Workers

My last post was on the rights of office workers, but along with rights go responsibilities to the people we work for as well as to each other. Thus, I’ve put together a second list of the responsibilities of office workers. As with rights, I welcome other people’s ideas about what should be changed.

As office workers, we have a responsibility . . . 

1. To perform the tasks for which we were hired to the best of our ability.
2. To work the agreed upon hours whenever possible, clear all schedule adjustments with our supervisors, and refrain from abusing flex-time.
3. To take care of our own physical and mental health.

The Rights of Office Workers

At the risk of being labeled a troublemaker, I believe it’s time we office workers started thinking about our rights. Some people – especially some bosses -- might find this scary. The assumption is that if office workers become aware of their rights, they’ll soon start blowing up filing cabinets and dancing naked around the water cooler. Who can say where it might end?

Rest assured, I’m not advocating revolution, at least not anytime soon. But it seems to me that historically we office workers have not done nearly so good a job as our blue collar brothers and sisters at standing up for ourselves, and that this has led to many of us feeling – and even coming to believe – that we have no rights at all when we’re at work, especially in recent decades. Too often, employers have dealt with economic challenges at the expense of quality of life for their office workers, forcing people to work longer and
faster and in progressively less comfortable conditions. As I said, I believe it’s time we started thinking about our rights.

The Artist in the Office

Karen is working on her fourth novel. Although her first three novels were published and received good reviews, none of them sold enough copies to allow her to quit her day job. Jack is a fine actor who has played lead roles in community theater productions, but he’s never managed to break into the professional scene. Sam would love to create sculptures for a living, but he has a family to support. All of these people are artists who hold nine-to-five office jobs.

People talented in the arts often end up in office jobs for several reasons. First, the arts are extremely competitive, and while opportunities to earn extra pocket money doing temporary work in the arts are fairly plentiful, those that provide the artist with a decent salary and benefits are rare. Also, achieving excellence in the arts takes lots of time and energy, and office jobs with regular hours and reasonable workloads may leave the worker with more of these than all-consuming professions such as teaching, law, or medicine. And artists, like everyone, need to support themselves and their families.

Delicious Traps: Food in the Office

I still remember the day I discovered the Ice Cream Machine. It was summer, a few weeks after I was hired for my current job. For my first few days, I’d been more-or-less oblivious to my surroundings, but then one afternoon on my way to the bathroom, I happened to glance down towards the end of the long hallway and there it was, all stainless steel and colorful decals, gleaming and beckoning: the Machine. Falling into a hypnotic state, I glided towards it, money in hand. After flattening a dollar-bill, forcing it into a metal slit, and pressing a button, I watched with amazement as the little vacuum-cleaner gizmo reached out to suck up the Eskimo pie, moved it clumsily forward, then released it down into the grab-bin, from which I eagerly snatched it up. As soon as the last, delicious mouthful of creamy chocolate had slid down my throat, however, I was overwhelmed by guilt and anxiety. How was I, a treatment-resistant compulsive overeater, ever going to resist the temptation of making this a daily habit?

Each of us has different dietary needs, and to those of us whose bodies crave sugar and fat, the typical office workday often consists of encounters with one food-trap after another. If this one doesn’t get you, the next one will. You go to a meeting, and spend the whole hour inwardly arguing with yourself about the plate of doughnuts in the center of the table. A coworker invites you out for lunch, and everything on the menu looks great and has a zillion calories. You go into the kitchen for some coffee and someone has left a plate of homemade cookies. You go down to the business office and there’s a candy dish on the counter. You take a break and somehow wind up at the candy machine – again. To the non-food-addicted worker, all of these potential treats are just a way of making work fun; to the food addict, their constant presence is a major stressor.

Is Working in an Office Good or Bad for You? Part II. The Benefits

If you’re an office misfit like me, it may be hard for you to believe this, but hand-in-hand with the challenges that the typical office job poses to the worker’s health and well-being go aspects of the situation that can actually enhance them. Here are some of the benefits of having a job like yours:
 
Security: True, in today’s economy nobody’s job is completely secure. Nevertheless, having at least some degree of confidence that a given amount of money will arrive in the mail or appear on your bank statement at regular intervals can be beneficial, for however long it lasts. And having health insurance is a huge plus, not only because it reduces worry about what will happen if you get sick, but also because of the regular checkups it may pay for, not to mention appointments with a therapist or psychiatrist if you need them. Finally, as you head towards the retirement years, it’s good to know that the dollars are piling up in your pension fund. While the stresses and deprivations of office employment may be formidable, those of having no paycheck or benefits are likely to be even greater.

Structure: If you’ve ever been self-employed or worked as a homemaker, you know how difficult it can be to structure your own time. Although at the office, you may still have to prioritize tasks on your own, chances are other people may sometimes help you with this, if only by giving you deadlines. Knowing what you're to do when frees you from the stress of deciding on your own. And if nothing else, an office job with regular hours gives you a reason to get up in the morning, which is good for all of us.

Music in the Office

“I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,” writes Walt Whitman, whose mechanics and carpenters, shoemakers and housewives all sing as they work.Yet Whitman fails to mention the clerks, bookkeepers, or secretaries who occupied the offices of his day. Even then, apparently, music was taboo in the office.

I’m a person who loves to sing. I take voice lessons and sing in various choral groups. At home or in the car or even walking down the street I’m always singing -- everywhere except in the office. Sometimes I even warble out a few soprano bars from an oratorio in the parking structure on my way into work. Yet the minute I pass through the glass doors of our building, it’s as if someone clamped a hand over my mouth. I’m not exactly sure what would happen if I stood in the hallway and sang “Somewhere over the Rainbow” at the top of my lungs, but something tells me it wouldn’t be good. Singing in the office world is a thing one simply doesn’t do.

While singing or playing an instrument may be taboo, probably for good reason, listening has often – though not always – been considered more acceptable. In the 1980’s, my teenage son showed up at my office one day with a small “FM radio” in a wooden cabinet – one of the originals from the 1960s -- that we'd brought back when my mother moved into a retirement place. From then on, my job was a whole new ballgame. Instead of working in silence, I typed and filed to Brahms quartets and Stravinsky tone poems, listening to Detroit’s classical music station, DQRS. This was fine. I had a private office, the walls were reasonably thick, and no one ever complained. Sometimes people who came in to ask me for a research report would stop and try to guess what piece was being played, which would act as a conversation-starter.

Is Your Boss a Bully? How to Know and How to Survive

One of the blessings of my current office job is a non-bully boss with a heart as big as China. Alas, I have not always been so lucky: personally, I have known what it means to feel bullied at work, and from clients and friends I have also heard stories of outrageous abuses of managerial power.

I define “bullying” as any behavior that is meant to hurt, frighten, or humiliate someone who’s in a weaker position than one’s own. While schoolyard bullies typically use physical strength to bully weaker children, in the office, only the crassest bullies are likely to use muscle-power to terrorize their employees. Instead, their weapons are likely to consist of high voice volume, rapier-like wit, devious strategizing skills, or simply the authority to hire, fire, and promote.

Office Blues and Office Battleshock: Two Occupational Hazards

Every profession has its occupational hazards. Construction workers have to worry about falling, miners about being buried alive; chefs run the risk of burning or cutting themselves. You might think that people who sit and stare at a screen all day have no occupational hazards, but this is not the case. Office work carries with it, first of all, the risk of muscular-skeletal problems such as back and neck pain and carpal-tunnel syndrome. But the occupation hazards for office workers are not just physical. As a mental health professional, I’ve come to believe that the psychological hazards for office workers, especially those at the bottom of the pecking order, are formidable, largely because workers and employers alike tend to ignore their existence and thus do little to address them.

Without appropriate protective measures, workers in contemporary offices may fall prey to either or both of two psychiatric conditions which I call office blues and office battleshock. In DSM-IV terms, these conditions translate into “adjustment disorder with depressed mood.” “adjustment disorder with anxious mood” or “adjustment disorder with depressed and anxious mood.” Adjustment disorders are caused by environmental conditions or events, not merely by differences in brain wiring. A single painful event such as a death or a divorce may cause an adjustment disorder, but so may an ongoing, toxic situation such as a bad marriage - or a bad job. I believe many office workers suffer from eight-to-five adjustment disorders that they experience as a result of multiple psychological challenges, including confinement, inactivity, deprivation, disconnection, frustration, overwhelm, toxicity, and uncertainty. These people may be fine outside of the workplace, but when they’re at the office, they become symptomatic.

Welcome, Fellow Office Misfits!

Do you feel that your office job isn’t “you”?

Do you find it hard to relate to coworkers who love talking about “best practices” and seem to find updates to online systems fascinating?

Do some of the challenges of office life – confinement, inactivity, sensory/emotional/intellectual deprivation, disconnection, frustration, overwhelm, toxicity, uncertainty – seem to bother you more than they do other people?

Do you resent having to flush away hours and hours typing nonsense into a plastic box when your real passion is playing the piano, climbing rocks, writing novels, studying Greek, making quilts, or taking care of your own kids?

Do you dread coming to work every day even though you know millions of unemployed would love to have your job?

If so, you’re in the right place. These days, there are lots of us office misfits out there, and this blog is to be a place where we can congregate and share war stories as well as suggestions for coping with an office world that is at once unnatural, undemocratic, ungenerous, and unrelenting. While to our coworkers, a routine office job may represent success, to many of us it represents either failure to succeed at something else we’d rather be doing or dreams being sacrificed for the sake of loved ones who need our support. Consequently, we may feel lonely and isolated at work, which is why we need each other!