The Workplace is Killing Us and Nobody Cares
March 26, 2018 9:13 AM   Subscribe

You make clear that yoga classes and nap rooms won’t fix this. There’s data on this — there shouldn’t need to be, but there is — that suggests that when people come to work sick, they’re not as productive. Companies have problems with presenteeism — people physically on the job but not really paying attention to what they are doing — with lost workdays from psychological stress and illness, with high health care costs. Seven percent of people in one survey were hospitalized — hospitalized! — because of workplace stress; 50% had missed time at work because of stress. People are quitting their jobs because of stress. The business costs are enormous.

It’s true. He takes three points and puts them together. The first point, which is consistent with data reported by the World Economic Forum and other sources, is that an enormous percentage of the health care cost burden in the developed world, and in particular in the U.S., comes from chronic disease — things like diabetes and cardiovascular and circulatory disease. You begin with that premise: A large fraction — some estimates are 75 percent — of the disease burden in the U.S. is from chronic diseases.

Second, there is a tremendous amount of epidemiological literature that suggests that diabetes, cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome — and many health-relevant individual behaviors such as overeating and underexercising and drug and alcohol abuse — come from stress.

And third, there is a large amount of data that suggests the biggest source of stress is the workplace. So that’s how Chapman can stand up and make the statement that CEOs are the cause of the health care crisis: You are the source of stress, stress causes chronic disease, and chronic disease is the biggest component of our ongoing and enormous health care costs.
posted by mecran01 (49 comments total) 52 users marked this as a favorite
 
Podcast on this : discourse collective, your job is killing you.
posted by The Whelk at 9:18 AM on March 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


Does this surprise anyone?
posted by kinnakeet at 9:30 AM on March 26, 2018 [14 favorites]


I am ridiculously fortunate to have basically fallen into the best workplace culture I have ever experienced. I'll probably never find it again, which is why I'll likely stay far longer than I initially planned (no room for much movement up but for now that's okay).

My boss makes it clear that she'd rather we take a few days off and get better than come to the office to spread our germs and also not get much work done because we feel like crap. She allows us to use flex time if we'd rather not use our sick time. She doesn't require a freaking doctor's note if we're sick because we're all supposed to be adults and she trusts us not to lie about being sick.

In addition to that, we get some really nice perks (like coveted seats at sporting events passed on by donors) that she could very easily just keep for herself. I don't live on a single income (I'm married) but I could very well do so if I had to, even though I work in non-profit. My salary is generous for the field, and my medical benefits are stellar.

I've worked for shitty CEOs/companies before and doing so was literally killing me. I'll hopefully never have to do it again. But my little office is a testament to what it looks like when the higher-ups actually care about their employees in the ways that matter. And we're all fiercely loyal to the work because of it.
posted by cooker girl at 9:33 AM on March 26, 2018 [24 favorites]


Here's hoping punishments for using your allocated sick leave and vacation days, like those foisted on New Mexico teachers, against public outcry*, are becoming more rare instead of more prevalent.

* Even if one [sick] day was used, it still counted against them and had the potential to change their rating from “effective” to “ineffective” -- though I'm not 100% certain it's quite this ridiculously strict - I think you can use a few days before all your sick leave is counted against you.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:37 AM on March 26, 2018 [6 favorites]


Precarity for all, ladies and gentlemen. Progress!
posted by doctornemo at 9:43 AM on March 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


I can't tell if it's cynical or not to shrug at this and say this is never going to stop because there's always going to be someone to take your place once work kills you. I mean, it certainly feels cynical. But how vast would a lawsuit have to be, to make it expensive enough to stop treating workers like they're essentially disposable?

My job should be pretty benign as far as this goes. I work at home. I earn lots of PTO. And yet we all get told, be sure to take your phone on vacation, just in case. Bosses send urgent emails while we're out, knowing we'll be checking. We joke about it being "pretend time off." We work sick. Conference calls are made difficult during flu season because someone's always hoarse and coughing, but showing up anyway. One of my coworkers a few months ago apologized that her spreadsheet was late, but she'd had a mild heart attack that kept her out of work for a couple of days.

It's not even that there's a reserve army of unemployed people waiting to take our places...we're not hiring. When one of us quits out of frustration, the rest of us pick up the remaining burden. We're so much less effective over time. We're sicker than we used to be, all of us. Sicker and more stressed. And guilty that we're sick and stressed and not able to give 110%.

Do we really have to wait on enough people suing, for this to change?
posted by mittens at 9:48 AM on March 26, 2018 [30 favorites]


My boss makes it clear that she'd rather we take a few days off and get better than come to the office to spread our germs and also not get much work done because we feel like crap.

So does mine... but since I'm a contractor, I don't have enough sick leave to do this. (I'm in an area with mandatory sick live, so I earn about 8 days a year. Of course, that's earned after hours worked, so it's not like I could take three days off now.) Many companies have official "don't come in if you're sick" policies, but hire contractors who don't get paid sick leave, so instead they get employees who take whatever drugs they need to hide their symptoms and be visibly working, whether or not they're actually being productive.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 9:50 AM on March 26, 2018 [17 favorites]


In my previous life as a consultant/software trainer I was leading a two day workshop for a the employees of a very well known Fortune 500 "Asset management company" near Baltimore.

One of the attendees of this training was clearly very sick with full-on cold and flu-like symptoms, we're talking full-blown coughing, sneezing, etc. I spoke to this person during the break and told her she should go home. She insisted she was fine.

She continued with her symptoms through lunch time. As it happened, the manager of said employee (and the other 12 people in the room) was in the training and I went up to her and expressed my concern that this illness was not only disrupting the training, but holy hell shouldn't this person be home recovering?

So as it turns out, the employee was refusing to take a sick day because this would still "count" against her 5 days of sick time and so she didn't want to "waste" it on two days of a training.

I tried to reason with the manager (who was very stubborn in her own way) that this was a textbook case of how to infect an entire department: put 12 of them in the same room with limited airflow for twp straight days. Nope, she said, I can't force her to go home and she doesn't want to use it, so that's all there is to it.

I, of course, got sick two days later and my only revenge was to refuse to go back a few months later when they needed another training.
posted by jeremias at 9:58 AM on March 26, 2018 [30 favorites]


When I was interviewing for my current job, I knew that the company had good benefits but since starting here I've realized just how out of the ordinary and exceptional they really are. Unlimited "personal" sick time that does not get challenged (I went home early one day because I was getting a migraine and my boss just told me to feel better). A separate bank of "family" sick time to, say, take your kid to the doctor. A long-term disability policy where they will not only pay your full salary, they'll make sure your retirement account is still being fully contributed to - your share and the company's.

There's a commitment to the employee base that's really unusual nowadays. There are very few contracted positions - I think the cafeteria and the IT help desk are the only ones. Janitors, security people, and every other internal service are all company employees and get the same benefits. The technicians have a union. There's a commitment to hiring a diverse workforce that I haven't really seen anywhere else. Everyone gets paid on the rare occasion that the office has to shut down for snow (and I don't mean "take vacation or make up the hours" - everyone scheduled to work that day got paid for their normal hours even they couldn't work from home).

We might not have a splashy campus or mountains of free food and beer, but we've got it where it counts.
posted by backseatpilot at 10:05 AM on March 26, 2018 [15 favorites]


If only there was some way employees could get together and apply some pressure on employers. Could organize. Could bargain collectively. That could be really helpful.
posted by theora55 at 10:14 AM on March 26, 2018 [55 favorites]


If only there was some way employees could get together and apply some pressure on employers. Could organize. Could bargain collectively.

Yeah, if only.

My actual employer is incorporated on the other side of the continent, and judging from the timestamps on their admin notification emails, hires a lot of people in time zones more than 10 hours away from me. I know zero fellow employees.

I gather that, by some stretched understanding of co-employment law, if I managed to contact a swarm of other contractors working at the same company, we might be able to push for a union - but again... I don't have a way to find them, much less get together and collectively agree on action.

The new union-busting method is contractors: if they can't find their coworkers, they can't vote to start a union. And both the actual paycheck company and the place they work at can deny any accountability for working conditions.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:25 AM on March 26, 2018 [14 favorites]


At this point, instead of just hoping and wishing unions make a comeback, I'm switching focus to asking democrats to go ahead and enshrine into law basic rights that any competent union would get for their employees. Paid sick and personal leave, higher pay for nights/weekends/holidays, limits on the max and minimum length of shifts, limits on last minute schedule changes. These should be basic OSHA issues, and once we have a decent minimum standard of workplace decency, maybe/hopefully unions can work on raising the floor.
posted by skewed at 10:33 AM on March 26, 2018 [24 favorites]


Do we really have to wait on enough people suing, for this to change?

Yes. That’s the only way decent people can win in the US at the moment and, apparently, a pretty large chunk of your population loves it that way.
posted by aramaic at 10:35 AM on March 26, 2018 [5 favorites]


I think we need to get enough young people to vote to ensure political changes in labor law.
posted by mecran01 at 10:42 AM on March 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


My previous employer included a decent amount of sick time in our benefits package, in fact, it was one of their selling points. Look you get 180 hours of sick time no matter your experience level! Aren't we great??

Except. If you took a sick day and used any of those 180 hours, you got flagged with an incident. An incident was anything from 1 hour to 3 days of sick time, but it had to be consecutive. If you were out for more than three days, you had to have a doctors note to return.

If you had the beginnings of a head cold on Tuesday and decided to take 8 hours to take the day off sick, that would count as one incident. If you returned to work on Wednesday, but then realized by the afternoon that nope, you're still sick and went home early. That becomes two incidents. If you got more than six incidents within a rolling calendar year, you were reprimanded and not eligible for promotion or other special considerations. So technically you got 22 days of sick leave, but you could only use 15 without being punished. And that's if you used all three days each incident. If you only used one day, hell, you could easily have 16 days in reserve sick time that you can't take because you've used up all your incidents in one-day sick increments.

Before I left, they were working a way to reorganize the sick leave because they were discovering that many people were quitting because of the archaic policy. When HR explained to managers that people could take a sick day and as long as they had time banked, it didn't matter why people damn near lost their minds. What if people took a sick day when they just wanted to stay home and watch tv?? What if they use up all their sick days at the beginning of the year and don't have any left for something bad?

This wasn't some two-bit fly night bullying start-up. This was a quasi-governmental institution that hadn't updated their attendance policy since the 70s when most of the work was hands-on processing kind of work.

Yeah, surprisingly enough flu season devasted us every year, and there was rarely a time when there wasn't someone in our department of 12 that wasn't sick of some kind.
posted by teleri025 at 10:44 AM on March 26, 2018 [11 favorites]


“Incidents.” Good lord.
posted by scratch at 10:47 AM on March 26, 2018 [16 favorites]


I would love to see more widespread collective bargaining, but it doesn’t seem likely any time soon, for more reasons than I have time to type. Failing that, it’s heartening (a tiny bit, anyway) to see labor issues getting some air time. And they are labor issues, even if the jobs are in offices and not factories, on laptops and not in coal mines. There are plenty of ways to metaphorically speed up the line.
posted by scratch at 10:53 AM on March 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


(For instance, one current fashion is: don’t hire enough people, just overwork the ones you already have. Huge cost-containment value there. Good thinking, Smithers!)
posted by scratch at 10:56 AM on March 26, 2018 [14 favorites]


For instance, one current fashion is: don’t hire enough people, just overwork the ones you already have. Huge cost-containment value there. Good thinking, Smithers!

I'm in the middle of workplace bargaining right now and we're dealing with an employer who insists upon the opposite: hiring on lots of people but capping us all well under full-time so they don't have to pay any benefits. Actual argument being floated against allowing us to work full-time: 'well, if we start employing more of you full-time, some of you won't have your part-time jobs here anymore!' Which, well, yes, and that will suck for those of us so affected, but none of us are making enough to survive, as it stands.
posted by halation at 11:03 AM on March 26, 2018 [11 favorites]


My boss makes it clear that she'd rather we take a few days off and get better than come to the office to spread our germs...

I've worked places that said the very same thing, but their actual attitudes toward taking more than an afternoon off sick were completely the opposite.

Also: When you lump workers' five vacation days and three sick days together, and create five PTO days instead, it's no wonder workers show-up on death's door.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:10 AM on March 26, 2018 [21 favorites]


At a previous job I once experienced an unstoppable stress-related nosebleed, which I of course just ignored by cramming paper towels up my nose and continuing to code, struggling to keep the blood off my keyboard. It was kinda like I didn't really notice it. Several hours later I emerged from my cubbyhole looking like an axe-murder victim. To my boss's credit he insisted that I rush to the ER, which I did (I think he may have actually driven me there personally). I was still there, bleeding, six hours later, despite repeated nasal packs. Most unpleasant.
posted by mwhybark at 11:18 AM on March 26, 2018 [6 favorites]


and you know, I think he then insisted I had to take a week off, although I may be mistaken about this.
posted by mwhybark at 11:19 AM on March 26, 2018


Twenty years in France and twenty-five on the web and still the same long amounts of time spent saying "it wouldn't work here" rather than, oh I don't know, brainstorming ways it could work.

Create a contractors' union (we have a few in France).
Propose better laws surrounding contractors - call/write senators, reps.
Go on a massive strike. Clearly there's the potential - there were massive organized marches for gun control around the country. Y'all have a critical mass now. Go on strike. Will you lose money? Yes. When is the calculus going to be a few days striking, lost meals due to that, lost etc. etc., in exchange for a better long term.

See, over here in France – go ahead and shoot that down but while you do that, remember I'm American and tired of the US exceptionalism bullshit, y'all are fucking dying for fuck's sake – it actually IS people WITHOUT privilege who go on strike, and yes they do indeed sacrifice things they can't afford in the short term to improve things they REALLY can't afford in the long term. That's kinda the whole point.

Go. On. Massive. Fucking. Strikes. With clear, actionable demands.

By the way we're going to have three months of strikes in a few days. WIth zero public transportation two or three days a week, no public schools, so on and so forth. These are not people who can afford to lose that income, but they're doing it.
posted by fraula at 11:28 AM on March 26, 2018 [26 favorites]


Go on strike. Will you lose money? Yes. When is the calculus going to be a few days striking, lost meals due to that, lost etc. etc., in exchange for a better long term.

It's not just 'a few days' or 'lost meals' for many in the US, though -- you must factor in healthcare. People striking in France do incur financial losses and run personal risks, but they don't risk their access to healthcare, both in the moment and for the foreseeable future. Risking that means risking their own lives and the lives of their families, when they strike, since they may not be able to find another job with coverage... well, ever again, when they're fired for striking, and they may not be able to afford coverage out-of-pocket.
posted by halation at 11:39 AM on March 26, 2018 [35 favorites]


Well, yes, you’re right. But what do you propose Americans do in the mean time? Hope the bodies pile up enough that businesses change their ways? Cuz the bodies have been piling up, we’ve been told that working ourselves to the grave is How It Is. So if no strikes, no unions, what happens??
posted by Kitteh at 12:26 PM on March 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


Go. On. Massive. Fucking. Strikes. With clear, actionable demands.

How do you go on strike when you literally cannot find your coworkers?

Or did you mean, "all contractors, across hundreds (thousands) of employment agencies, should go on strike" - by finding each other on Facebook, I suppose, and picking a date and location(s) in a way that somehow doesn't get a substantial number of them fired during the planning stages.

People didn't get fired for organizing gun control marches; they could pick a date and start publicizing to drive up attendance in public. They could plan details in semi-private groups - filtered enough to avoid endless drama about who is and isn't invited to speak, but open to anyone who asks for permission to watch the process.

The US job system changes through regulation are only going to happen after a few lawsuits that cost companies more than they're saving by burning through their workforce. Public demonstrations would just work to make targets out of whoever appears to be the organizers.

The work-toward-solutions suggestion: Documentation. Gather data. Gather statistics; gather copies of company official policies/handbooks and emails that contradict those policies; gather upper-management meeting notes that make it clear the plan is to keep half the workforce too desperate to fight for changes. Marches about systemic issues need clear, concise goals, and "better working conditions" is not one of those.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 12:37 PM on March 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


Good point, Halation. And similar to the company that makes everyone part time are the ones scheduling most people for 39 hours a week so that they’re technically not full time and therefore are ineligible for benefits.
posted by scratch at 12:37 PM on March 26, 2018


But what do you propose Americans do in the mean time? Hope the bodies pile up enough that businesses change their ways?

...I mean, that is essentially the only thing that has ever worked before.

Else, we can try to elect people who are not psychopathic criminals to office, basically. The fewer psychopathic criminals we have making laws, the fewer psychopathically vicious our laws will be.

Yeah it fucking blows, what do you want from me? This country fucking blows, and there are no swift fixes, and people who shouldn't die are going to die, and that is all there is to it.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:10 PM on March 26, 2018 [7 favorites]


Workplace stress seems to be a big deal I think also because managers treat employees like they’re children and female employees like children they may or may not want to abuse. I have unlimited paid sick time but I’m sick because of how overworked and stressed out I am from being yelled at and disrespected and I’m here in the office because no one takes me seriously when I dial in to meetings. Every job I’ve ever had had been just the same.
posted by bleep at 1:13 PM on March 26, 2018 [7 favorites]


I took a voluntary separation from my company in December. By January I noticed I kept getting dizzy every time I stood up after sitting for a while. After seeing my doctor and a cardiologist it was determined that I was overmedicated for my high blood pressure now that I wasn't working. My job was truly trying to kill me, albeit slowly.
posted by tommasz at 1:15 PM on March 26, 2018 [15 favorites]


"Finding a job is itself a job. If you are physically or psychologically drained by workplace stress, then you’re not going to have the capacity to go out and look for another job."

Yup.

I have issues with my job, to say the least, but they actually have a good lot of sick/vacation time and since I haven't had any major illnesses other than pneumonia/the flu, I have tons banked. One of those reasons for not wanting to job hunt elsewhere is so as to not lose things like that, because that's rare.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:26 PM on March 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


The thing about strikes is that you have to get a substantial number of people to agree that there's a problem before you can strike, and a lot of these problems wouldn't even be problems if we all agreed that going to work sick was a bad thing, that you should be able to remote in to work at least occasionally without being treated as though you're absent, that if you take your phone on vacation for emergencies then it should be only used for actual emergencies and not stuff people could have predicted coming up before you left, etc.

But these aren't actually prevailing attitudes. I'd happily work at a company full of Metafilter posters because I trust you guys to be normal and sane about this stuff, but my tech lead got me sick like four times last year because he doesn't want to work from home, and I don't entirely blame him because every time I work from home, people act like I've died and stop actually giving me information I need to know and including me in meetings. If the majority of the people at my office already believed that these things were good, my job would be great. The problem is that the majority of the workers, not just the majority of management, even in my job that completely gives us plenty of sick/vacation time, see showing up with the flu as a sign of a good work ethic and working from home as a sign of laziness. And I don't know how to convince them otherwise.
posted by Sequence at 1:43 PM on March 26, 2018 [10 favorites]


mittens: Do we really have to wait on enough people suing dying, for this to change?

F etc.
posted by tzikeh at 2:23 PM on March 26, 2018


I’m honestly not being flip. I want to know what to do b/c I want my nieces to know that they don’t have to work themselves to death when they enter the work force.
posted by Kitteh at 2:37 PM on March 26, 2018


If only there was some way employees could get together and apply some pressure on employers. Could organize. Could bargain collectively. That could be really helpful.

Even if you're a part of a union there's still not much you can do in some situations. I was a state employee and had a boss who bullied me mercilessly but there wasn't anything the union could do about it. I ended up unemployed with CPTSD. It's been two years and I'm only now starting to feel better, but the idea of going back to work still gives me panic attacks most of the time, but I don't have any other options.

And the major reason my boss bullied me? I have IBS (which is exacerbated by stress) and I would end up being late to work (by an hour or two) a day or two a week and she considered my tardiness a moral failing. She refused to allow me to alter my schedule to accommodate my lateness because I had FMLA, so she made me take the time off. I always got my work done early or on time and the quality of my work was exemplary. I was just late a couple days a week (and no, it didn't affect anyone else).
posted by elsietheeel at 2:37 PM on March 26, 2018 [6 favorites]


If your skills lend themselves to starting a worker-owned cooperative, think long and hard about doing so.

I hear wildcat strikes can get results, too, especially for essential services....!
posted by Sheydem-tants at 3:23 PM on March 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


I'm a member of a strong union, but this problem is bigger than individual workplaces, bigger than individual unions. This is a problem brought about by late-stage capitalism and the rise of the precariat class. I'm an academic, and the academy is a *prime* example of forcing precarity onto its workers, with disastrous results at all levels except the level of "making money for the rich people up top." My individual stress is definitely a problem (yes, it's probably killing me, lol) but it's not just me. It's all of us, and it infuses everything we do and everything we touch.

Blaming individual companies seems to miss the larger infrastructural issue. This is not about individuals experiencing stress, and it's not about their individual workplaces. It's way, way bigger than that.
posted by sockermom at 3:32 PM on March 26, 2018 [10 favorites]


There is a ton of assumptions on the opening salvo of that interview. While I'm sure there is data backing up the percentage of medical treatment attributed to chronic illness, the others aren't so clear-cut. Claiming the leading cause of chronic illness is stress sounds like a broad oversimplification at best and an outright lie worst. You can't attribute the uptick in chronic childhood illness to stress. Childhood obesity, type II diabetes, and food allergies affecting children are not likely to be direct results of stress and certainly not likely to be work-related stress. The truth is there are massive parallel experiments going on globally involving antibiotics, pesticides, plastics and any other number of chemicals that humans have only been exposed to in the last hundred years. To say that chronic illness is mainly from stress is disingenuous. And then subsequently claim the largest source of stress is the workplace itself feels like yet another person missing the point when it comes to the factors affecting medium to low-income families. While there is of course stress in the workplace, after all it is work, the majority of stresses come from the economy rather than the workplace. While I accept it can be difficult to separate the two, and it's at this point I am required to mention the "gig economy," for no reason other than it needing to be brought up in every conversation like this, it is broader structural changes and poorly managed economies that are creating stress more than individual workplaces.
posted by krisjohn at 4:12 PM on March 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


“Incidents.” Good lord.

My sister's job calls them occurrences. It's about the same system, and it has all kinds of second order effects.

For example, since occurrences/incidents are cumulative, there is no reason to not use them to their maximum benefit. So, if an employee is going to be to slightly late to work (cost: 1 occurrence), might as well turn around and call in sick for 2 3/4 days (cost: also just 1 occurrence).

Also, since they get 5 (or whatever) occurrences "free" per year, many people save them up and just take almost 5 day weekends (regular 2 day weekend plus 2 3/4 days extra) for the weeks leading up to the calendar rollover since why not it doesn't matter either way.
posted by sideshow at 5:06 PM on March 26, 2018 [7 favorites]


To say that chronic illness is mainly from stress is disingenuous.

If you have links for studies that say, "the growing number of people with diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, depression, and anxiety are not related to the growing amount of stress in society," that'd support your claim. Instead, we have plenty of articles that say "more stress = more chronic disease." It's not proof of causation, but it's a strong enough correlation that many doctors are trying to find more direct connections. They are treating stress as a multi-disease cause, just like poor nutrition or lack of heat: a life-condition that creates or exacerbates the conditions for disease.

The claim isn't that stress is the main cause of chronic disease, but that stress, which is growing in society, is a cause of vulnerability to a list of chronic diseases.

And then subsequently claim the largest source of stress is the workplace itself feels like yet another person missing the point ... I am required to mention the "gig economy,"

The gig economy is part of workplace stresses; they're not limited to traditional office settings. Only getting paid for specific-task trackable hours is a work-related stress problem.

The workplace may not be the largest source of stress - but it's the one that most on the rise. Relationship stress has always existed and does cause health problems, but relationship stress problems haven't increased drastically in the last few decades.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 5:37 PM on March 26, 2018 [7 favorites]


I've said here before but even sweet paid vacation packages are utter bullshit unless everyone is participating. Ever worked somewhere where everyone just resentfully talks shit about whoever is on vacation and "ugh they aren't responding to their fucking email" and "can someone find a way to get in touch with them we REALLY need them on this call"? Really incentivizes you to take some time off and unplug.

The worst part is it's chalked up as hero/martyr "yeah that's just how this industry can be sometimes, it's not for everyone! Yup long hours and weekend work is just the going rate that's how it is haha oh this industry" like it's cute.
posted by windbox at 7:20 PM on March 26, 2018 [8 favorites]


Money/economic insecurity is perennially the #1 stressor in America. This issue is unequivocally tied to overall employability and job security, which is virtually non-existent in the States now.

For an unbelievably thorough look at how stress does actually translate into chronic physical illness, please enjoy "Uncertainty and stress: Why it causes diseases and how it is mastered by the brain" which I'll quote here:
The healthy brain is resilient in the face of stressors and epigenetic cellular and molecular mechanisms produce continuous changes in gene expression. ... Acute and chronic stress interferes with cognition, decision making, anxiety and mood, and in so doing affects systemic physiology through neuroendocrine, autonomic, immune and metabolic mediators and multi-morbidity of disorders frequently occurs ... as is the case for chronic anxiety or depressive disorders.

Because of continued uncertainty, the brain is constantly demanding for extra energy. Such an energy crisis with lack of habituation leads to allostatic load contributing to systemic and brain pathology. This energy crisis has two consequences: first, SNS/HPA-axis hyperactivity and second, metabolic alterations and stress-related health damaging behaviors (tobacco smoking, drinking alcohol, sleep deprivation). SNS/HPA-axis hyperactivity increases the risk of arterial blood flow turbulences, leading to atherosclerosis, thereby causing systemic and brain pathology. Metabolic alterations and poor health behaviors lead to inefficient mitochondrial metabolism, resulting in reactive oxygen species (ROS) and inflammation and worsen systemic and brain pathology. These pathologies include memory impairment, depression, myocardial infarction, stroke, visceral fat accumulation, type 2 diabetes, muscle loss, osteoporosis, disturbed growth and reproduction.
(emphasis mine)

I have several chronic illnesses. There's no question in my mind that my health measurably improved (like, 2 fewer prescriptions and no serious illnesses last year -- oh except partial kidney failure, which I quickly reversed) after I offloaded that stressful job. I was way too scared to ever quit because I was fully vested in my 401(k), had the max PTO accrued at 6 weeks annually, etc.

All that shit isn't helpful if you wake up several times each night obsessing over work. I wouldn't believe Now!Me if I was Old!Me, because changing jobs is also stressful. But... I should have quit that place a long time ago and didn't realize how bad it was until I was fully 9 months removed from it all.

Find a job that treats you like a human being and pays just enough to get by, if you can. I know it's not always a choice, but more money really IS more problems if the job itself puts you in an early grave.
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 7:35 PM on March 26, 2018 [13 favorites]


I started working at a state job about a year ago. It's amazing how expansive the benefits are compared to all my jobs before. I've worked as a "permanent temp" for private companies more than a couple times, which always struck me as a ridiculous way for companies to avoid providing benefits of any kind. The pay at those jobs generally sucked, too. Other times, I was a real employee for companies that had crappy benefits, like barebones health insurance we still paid a lot of money for, no dental coverage, and hardly any paid days off.

People complain that state benefits aren't as good as they used to be, but compared to what I'm used to this is a wondrous bounty. I have vacation days AND sick days, and the work environment is such that we can use them without being frowned upon. My health plan has a lower deductible than I've seen in years and takes very little out of my paycheck. My hours are strictly 8-5, no overtime, no working weekends, no having to monitor emails outside of work. And I have a pension now. I never thought I'd be able to say that. A pension. For me.

My salary isn't anything to write home about, but it's fine. I wouldn't say I love my job, and it can be very stressful at times, like most jobs. The benefits are such that I'd have to think really hard before leaving the state environment, having seen everything else I've seen over the course of my employed life.
posted by wondermouse at 7:42 PM on March 26, 2018 [11 favorites]


Veterinarians have very high suicide rates. Among the reasons: new graduates can have 250-500k in student loans with relatively low salaries for doctors who act as all specialties to every species of animal except one.

We regularly work through lunch and bathroom breaks and squeeze your sick pet into a full schedule. Our jobs lie at the intersection of emotion and money. We get bitten, pissed on, shat on, yelled at, accused of being in it for the money (why do you work?) and of being heartless. It's not morning to night puppies and kittens. It very often sucks.

I have a vet friend who was in a car accident and hospitalized for 2 weeks with a coma BUT STILL got one star reviews on her clinic's facebook page because she had to cancel appointments and obviously wasn't available.

Hug your vet today. And be as kind as you can to those around you.
posted by Seppaku at 8:54 PM on March 26, 2018 [21 favorites]


I was contracting at a small company and another contractor who sat near me came in a couple hours late one day from getting diagnosed with strep. Strep on his elbow BTW, WTF.

I got - probably as a result - strep throat and forfeited eight hours of pay to take a sick day.
posted by bendy at 9:12 PM on March 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


"I've said here before but even sweet paid vacation packages are utter bullshit unless everyone is participating. Ever worked somewhere where everyone just resentfully talks shit about whoever is on vacation and "ugh they aren't responding to their fucking email" and "can someone find a way to get in touch with them we REALLY need them on this call"? Really incentivizes you to take some time off and unplug."

Another reason that happens though is that everyone is so short staffed that one person being out for any reason causes more hell to come down on the rest. Or alternately, you taking a week to "unplug" means you take 2.5 weeks to catch up on your workload and you're more stressed than ever.

I have sweet vacation time, but (a) I need to time my vacations to the few quiet times of the year because (b) there is no one else who does what I do to cover for me and my workload and (c) lord knows every time I am out some kind of drama erupts even during the quiet times, and (d) like I said, one week of "unplug" means double time having to catch up. My coworkers won't cover for me and my boss will (he's awesome), but I just have him do the most urgent emergency stuff, anything larger/slower's back on me later.

I go on vacation to go somewhere I normally can't go to do something interesting, not to "relax." Relax doesn't matter because within an hour of being back at work it's like I never left.

What it really boils down to is everyone has too much to do, is too stressed out, and is dealing with miserable stressed out clientele who want to take their stress out on you, and that's never going to end.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:55 PM on March 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


more important that productivity and profit in many companies is control and domination. we've known about 40 hr weeks and other "treat humans well is best efficiency" business practices for a century. Companies don't do them because the economy isn't optimized for productivity or profit, it is run by psychopaths, bullies and those who mimic them.
posted by Anchorite_of_Palgrave at 12:45 AM on March 27, 2018 [9 favorites]


I gather that, by some stretched understanding of co-employment law, if I managed to contact a swarm of other contractors working at the same company, we might be able to push for a union - but again... I don't have a way to find them, much less get together and collectively agree on action.

May I introduce you to the IWW?

Not all labor organizing has to lie strictly within the confines regulated by US labor law. Worker organizations and worker-community networks can lead actions that put pressure on employers from a variety of sources - job actions, public pressure from a customer or client base, etc. And while only a group of similar-category workers at one specific employer can currently get certified within the formally regulated collective bargaining system, groups organizing farm workers, fast food workers, barristas, the entire Fight for 15 campaign, etc. have had a number of important successes recently by organizing in an industry-wide manner. Previously, industrial organizing (as it's called) is the model followed by unions of actors, screenwriters, songwriters, etc. - their unions are formally organized more as professional organizations, but serve a similar role.

These groups have also been dealing with and solving the issue of how to find fellow casual or contract workers let alone organize with them. There are a lot of challenges to this sort of organizing, for sure. It has different risks than the more traditional, formal sort of union drive (though that also comes with risks - there's a gap between what is technically illegal in terms of union busting and retaliation against employees for organizing versus what employers can get away with), and tactics have to be adapted for each new situation. But there are also success stories and road maps to serve as guides, specifically within the US context even! Reading this and past related threads, for example, I see that Metafilter itself is one potential organising tool. Facebook is another, for sure. More options abound.
posted by eviemath at 5:30 AM on March 27, 2018 [4 favorites]


when i was hospitalized for heart failure--literally dying at that moment--completely out of the blue, our finance person called me 3 hours after i was admitted to inform me i wouldn't be paid for any time off. later that night the CEO called me to "wish me well" and make sure i knew i wouldn't be paid for any time off.

i took 2 weeks unpaid and that was all i could afford. i had to BEG them to turn the elevator on and allow me to use it because i still couldn't make it up the stairs easily.

i was back at work 3 days after pacemaker surgery because there was an event coming up and i'm the only one in my department.

i "look fine" now, so they do not believe me when i have to come in late for exhaustion or have multiple doc appts in a row.

but nowhere else is gonna have health insurance this good, so i'm stuck.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 3:10 PM on March 30, 2018 [4 favorites]


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