THE EQ SERIES: On Work
Working in retail for the last six years has aggravated my anxiety levels because my job title has entailed people wanting the best of me in the shortest amount of time. I have enough self-awareness to know as a human being I am slow. I like to take my time with things knowing that I have given my complete best. Unfortunately, the retail industry doesn’t accommodate people who are more methodical in their approach to work — it’s all about hitting sales targets — and that’s that on that. This obviously is utopia for both customers and employers but not the employees.
The health sector is another depressing example of the ordeal that employees go through because they are crunched for time. It is no news that healthcare assistants, nurses, doctors in the NHS are overworked. A few months ago, a close relative told me how they had been the only HC staff on a night shift along with one nurse in a brain-injury ward and between them they had to look after 32 patients. No wonder NHS employees take an average of 14 days sick leave citing ‘stress, depression and other mental health problems’ as main causes for illness.
The construction industry as well which is predominantly male suffers from overworked staff and in research done by AXA was found to be the third most stressful industry. It is challenging enough for men to speak up when dealing with mental issues but working in a city like London which is constantly under construction and investors wanting to cash in on their real estate as soon as possible compounds the pressure that they are under. Between 2011 and 2015 it was reported that 1,400 construction workers committed suicide.
The advent of Brexit concerns me on whether demands on employees will worsen with people overworking themselves in what will potentially be an unstable economy. In the UK alone, 12.5 million people have high-blood pressure and other stress-induced health conditions, which means that this should be a national and global concern.
Humans are not meant to work like robots.
At the beginning of 2019 I was overwhelmingly worked out with running my start-up, back and forth travelling, being at university full-time and working as an employee to pay my bills. For a week I kept experiencing sharp pains in my shoulders and tightness in my chest which I found out were pre-heart attack symptoms.
Even though it was a hard decision, this was fundamentally the reason why I decided to leave the start-up I co-founded. I was doing too much at the detriment of my health. Nothing is worth that.
Why was I rushing? Am I just a product of my environment? London is the city that never sleeps. It also doesn’t help that when I look at LinkedIn, every one of my connections are moving up and are getting promotions, new business deals, opportunities abroad, highly-sought-after internships and all the rest.
And then there’s me who takes a whole week to be able to write an article when it takes others less than 45 minutes in one sitting and they get more engagement on their content.
This used to bother me a lot but I’ve come to be okay with that knowing that comparison will only keep me stagnant and consistency is what breeds progress.
But it’s hard to overlook that the companies which are succeeding are the ones geared towards speed of service which in a time-oriented world caters to our fast and crash lifestyle. During the summer I attended a talk at CogX and the speaker was talking about his friend in China who ordered a phone charger online and he got angry that it took 35 minutes for it to be delivered. I thought England was bad but China (and pretty much East Asia) is on another level.
As much as I love Amazon, an article I read about them a few days ago made me look at the company with a side eye. (And yes, I will still be buying my books from Amazon — until further notice). There was an account from a current warehouse employee who said he’s expected to pick up an order every eight seconds and some former employees had sustained permanent injuries because of this obsession to “fulfill” customer’s orders.
Essentially the solution for Amazon would be robots. Robots don’t need to take sick leave. Robots don’t have rent to pay. Robots don’t talk to the media and unionize against their employer (at least for now).
It just seems that everything in our lives is so closely regimented that it hardly leaves any space for spontaneity.
A few weeks ago I went to a VC event and as I was coming out of Bank Station I was overwhelmed by the floods of vacuous looking people during the 5pm rush hour who seemed to have been squeezed, squashed, pressed of their energy hence their eagerness to go home. And that made me sad.
Even though life has become a metrics and revenue game and everyone is in the business of fastness. Fast-food. Fast-fashion. Fast-transportation. Fast-delivery. Fast-agriculture.
One thing’s for sure: It’s either we learn how to slow down or something else (and worse) will force us to slow down.
If you enjoyed reading this article please don’t forget to share, like and comment.
