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.

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.

Is Working in an Office Good or Bad for You? Part I. The Challenges

As a mental health professional doing office work, I've been in a good position to assess the ways in which having an office job can be good for your health and well being and the ways it put them at risk. This post is to share my conclusions. It's actually one of two that go together. Here I’ll talk about the challenges, and in the next post, the benefits (yes, all you office misfits, there really ARE some!). So, without further ado, let me give you my list of all the challenges I can think of that the typical office job – especially at the bottom of the pyramid – poses to mind, body and soul (you may be able to think of others and, if so, please comment):

Confinement: 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 due to lack of sunlight; for another, if you have a certain type of brain-wiring it can make you feel claustrophobic and restless; finally, “cabin fever,” similar to what happens to families when they’re boxed up during a snowstorm, may put a strain on all office interactions. Thus, is it any wonder that so many workers compare their office jobs to doing time in a penitentiary? 

Inactivity:  Not getting enough exercise is hazardous to your life and also to your mood, not to mention your ability to concentrate. Sitting in the same position all day while typing things into a computer can damage your neck, shoulders, arms, hands, back, or eyes -- though it helps to have good, ergonomic equipment -- and dealing with pain day after day gets old -- and stressful -- very fast.

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!