The competition is killing us.
We`re dead serious about getting this project done on time.
She`d kill to get that promotion.
These workplace phrases aren`t new, but they have taken on deeper meaning-or at least they should have-in this age of a phenomenon the Japanese call karoshi, or death by overwork.
Since 1988 nearly 2,000 such cases have been reported in Japan. The U.S. doesn`t track similar statistics, but most health experts here agree that workplace stress takes years off lives.
So put a clown nose in your pocket when you leave for the office in the morning. Make a deal with your co-workers that you`ll all secretly wear Mickey Mouse underwear Friday.
And if that doesn`t add some life-saving laughter to your job, find a new way to make a living-because the point, after all, is living, according to C.W. Metcalf, humor consultant to businesses worldwide and author, with his wife, Roma Felible, of ”Lighten Up: Survival Skills for People Under Pressure” (Addison-Wesley).
Times are tough. Companies are cutting costs. Layoffs are legion. Your new boss is younger than you are, with no children and complete freedom to work six 12-hour days every week.
A year ago The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. employment disability cases related to stress had doubled in the last decade. And a Northwestern National Life Insurance survey found in 1991 that 34 percent of U.S. workers said they considered quitting their jobs and 14 percent did quit in 1990 because of excessive stress.
You can crack a smile, or you can crack.
According to psychiatric nurse Donna Strickland, who heads a Denver consulting firm and conducts seminars on the importance and techniques of humor, stress caused by the inability to cope with change leads to breakdowns in the body`s immune system and is related to at least 75 percent of all visits to physicians. And stress plays a role in the two major killers, heart disease and cancer, Strickland said.
Metcalf said women are the newest victims of the work ethic taken to unhealthy extremes, a disorder he calls Terminal Professionalism.
”Twenty-five years ago, young women weren`t even studied in heart attack studies, because they never had heart attacks,” he said. ”But last year heart problems were one of the top three killers of women in the United States.
”Men treat business as war; that`s why all this `kill the competition`
stuff. But the competition is killing us. If you perceive the competitive environment as combat, the way you perceive it alters the biophysical reactions of the body and leads you in the direction of getting these diseases caused by stress,” Metcalf said.
”Women fell prey to this male structure, and that`s an enormous lesson for all of us: Being dead serious is not some abstract idea.”
You know the dead serious people: They`re the oh-so-professional, perfectly dressed ones stalking around the office, their minds on promotions, and their weekly planners and company rule books in hand.
”People let the rules, the regulations, which are necessary, become too much of a doctrine,” said Bill Hammel, who holds the serious job of senior purchasing agent for special flight-bound mechanical systems at Ball Aerospace but moonlights as a professional funny man on radio, on TV and in clubs.
”I think it goes back to when we were in kindergarten and the teacher caught us coloring outside the lines and said, `You`re a bad child.` ”
So color outside the lines: Keep a toy car in your top desk drawer and play with it when nobody`s looking, and don`t forget to make the funny motor noises.
Metcalf`s book defines humor as ”a set of survival skills that relieve tension, keeping us fluid and flexible instead of allowing us to become rigid and breakable, in the face of relentless change.”
”I talked with a CEO less than a week ago whose entire approach to how his people were driven changed because their best salesman died in an automobile accident,” Metcalf said. ”He was speeding, on his way to an appointment.”
”You can get so mired in the seriousness of a particular situation that you get away from the real goal of solving the problem,” says Hammel. ”In a dire situation everyone becomes a little paranoid, thinking, `I don`t want to be the one to say something stupid, to make a mistake.` Everybody gets very conservative-and nobody comes up with creative ideas for anything.”
Metcalf and Hammel said it`s no coincidence that comedy is proliferating these days outside of offices. The last time it happened was during the Depression.
Said Metcalf: ”Ten, 12 years ago there were five major (comedy) clubs in the United States; now there are over 600, and we have a comedy channel” on TV.
”I think there is on some deep psychic level a knowledge that, if you don`t lighten up, you`re going to tighten up-and crack.”
