The Price of Stress
How much are you owed for your suffering?
STRESS was once an important part of biological make-up. Back in cavemen days, you might meet some nasty sabretooth tiger in the jungle and your internal stress button would tell you to run away and kill it, but definitely not stroke it under the chin. Fight or flight - these were the two possible stress responses of our hairy ancestors.
However, modern work stress has nothing to do with evolution. Caveman Bob only experienced stress for a couple of minutes every month or so whereas nowadays the metaphorical sabretooth tiger is standing over to the whole time, sending you e-mails with enclosures you can’t cope and berating you for the fifteen typos you made in the report to the Woolly Mammoth Corporation
Beyond this, flight or fight does not seem to be a particularly valuable asset in today’s fast-moving business world - unless of course you work a pilot at British Airways or a grappler at the World Wrestling Federation respectively.
It’s now open season for all shirkers, nervous types and lily livered pansy-waists to claim cash rewards for so-called stress at work.
CLAIM YOUR STRESS REWARD:
Awkward conversation with security guard about the dietary habits of his border Collies.
YOU WIN: eight pound fifty
Co-worker presented with birthday card signed by everyone in the office except for you.
YOU WIN: twenty pounds
…then everyone sings Happy Birthday, except you. YOU WIN: an extra fiver
Trying to figure out the correct facial expression when listening to the divorced fortysomething woman in accounts describe details of her previous evening viewing a bestiality porn video.
YOU WIN: six quid fifty
Being requested to “get your knob out” by bewigged middle aged homosexual receptionist whose lunchtime drinking has reacted rather unfortunately with his heart pills.
YOU WIN: twelve hundred quid
Realising you have been on auto-nod in entirely inappropriate circumstances: eg boss talking of his freshly dead wife.
YOU WIN: three hundred quid
Blustering Northern executives who indulge in so much hair-tousling, back-slapping, shoulder-grabbing, upper-arm punching bonhomie, that you feel dirty and used.
YOU WIN: twelve hundred quid
Being nice to people you hate - all day, every day, five days a week.
YOU WIN: six hundred quid.
"The answer to how to live is to stop thinking about it. And just to live. But you're doing that anyway. However you intellectualise it, you still just live."