Overheard at the “Freudian Slip Coffee Shop”

Sean the Shrink: So, how goes your research study?

Sinead the Shrink: It’s been a long five years, but we’re pretty close to submitting it for peer review. We hope to present our findings to the annual convention in November and have it published in the journal in January.

Sean: How many patient profiles did you end up completing?

Sinead: With help from our colleagues in Canada and the UK, we have about five thousand.

Sean: So you proved your hypothesis after all?

Sinead: Without a doubt. The forward and back buttons that control a car’s sound system from the steering wheel are a reliable predictor of success or failure in a patient’s therapy experience.

Sean: Well, Sinead, as you know I was somewhat skeptical when you first told me about your ideas. But sure enough, I recently asked my kids to survey their fellow classmates in Advanced Placement about which button they pushed more often. Seventy-five percent are go-forwarders.

Sinead: That just about matches our results, Sean. The Forwards are future oriented, proactive, risk takers, change agents, open to new experiences, and explorers. The Backs live in the past, are passive, are arrested developmentally, and just can’t see beyond their present reality.

Sean: Maybe you ought to recommend that automakers remove the back button from their new models altogether. You know what we say, first the action and change in behavior, then the change in attitude.

Sinead: Yep, the mind will always follow the body.

Jettison Annifer

She’s ubiquitous
World’s greatest media whore
Please oh please vanish

New Report Unveils Hidden Cost of Doing Business

WASHINGTON (Royters) — So-called mental health days cost American companies a staggering $61 billion a year, according to a recent report by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Employees (NCMEE).

The report, “American Workers Under Attack,” represents the first in-depth analysis of a previously unreported cost to American businesses. It summarizes findings from more than a million survey responses elicited over the past three years from U.S. employees working in all sectors of the economy except for farms and the public sector.

Radoslaw Rakocevic, NCMEE executive director and the principal author of the report, said, “Our report refutes the long-held conventional wisdom that physical ailments are the #1 cause of employee absenteeism. Taking time off for the sake of one’s mental health easily eclipses reasons such as back pain, migraine headaches, and sick kids.”

The survey protocol, according to Rakocevic, “drilled down to identify the subsets under ‘mental health day.’” He said the overwhelming [73%] leader within the set was stated by respondents as “days to recover from mistreatment by incompetent managers and supervisors.”

So how did NCMEE arrive at a figure of $61 billion? Rakocevic said the Center, with support from the Harvard Business School, used data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ “Employment Situation Summary: Q3 2008” (dated October 8, 2008).

According to the BLS summary, (1) there are 146 million U.S. workers in the civilian labor force (non-farm), (2) the average rate of pay (private sector) is $17.64/hour, and (3) the average number of hours worked per week is 37.35.

Using these figures and the reported average of three mental health days per year per employee, the annual cost to American companies is $61,810,560,000, according to the NCMEE report.

Rakocevic added, “As disturbing as our findings are, we shudder to think about how current and anticipated economic conditions—and specifically the jobs picture—will drive the cost of worker abuse to new highs.”

Marshal Will Kane

I just watched High Noon (1952).

The parallels between that film and my life at work are striking. For that matter, most of us who work for someone else all are lone gunslingers going up against a gang bent on doing us in.

Here’s a portion of High Noon’s plot summary found at IMDB:

Will decides he must go back and face Miller. However, when he seeks the help of the townspeople he has protected for so long, they turn their backs on him. It seems Kane may have to face Miller alone, as well as the rest of Miller’s gang, who are waiting for him at the station.

And now my rewrite:

I decide that I must stay and face up to my abusive, incompetent manager. However, I know that when I seek the support of my cowardly coworkers that I have supported for more than a year, they will turn their backs on me. It seems I may have to face my manager alone, as well as the rest of the managers and supervisors, who always close ranks when one of their own comes under attack.

Oink Oink

I apparently missed the occasion on which “pork-barrel legislation” morphed into “earmarks.”

The New York Times reports today: “At the same time, Mr. Emanuel and Mr. Orszag indicated that the president would not pick a fight over the estimated 9,000 ‘earmarks,’ or special provisions inserted by individual lawmakers, in the omnibus spending bill passed last week.”

So, in order to get the president’s budget passed, NINE THOUSAND PIECES OF PORK will be served up to districts nationwide. Just imagine what that picnic is worth.

Kudos to the lobbyist who came up with this euphemism.

Overheard in the Hospital Administrator’s Office

HA: Welcome, new Chief of Staff.

CS: Thank you, Madame Hospital Administrator.

HA: I look forward to the many meetings and conversations we’re going to have. But I just wanted to kick things off informally by letting you know what our top priority is in terms of administration. It’s something that will impact many of your decisions regarding the allocation of staff resources.

CS: I’m intrigued, Madame. And I’m a believer in first things first. Please proceed.

HA: It’s really quite simple, Chief. And it’s critical to our bottom line. Obviously we’re here to provide health care, but we can’t do that the way we’d like to if we’re scraping by with insufficient funds, can we.

CS: Of course not. As I like to say, the Hippocratic Oath is merely the Hypocrisy Oath without a good portfolio!

HA: Well said, Chief. OK, so here’s how we operate to, as you say, build a portfolio. For every patient we see, and that includes outpatients and ER patients, you must ensure that as many appropriate specialists visit each patient as many times as possible while the patient is in the hospital building.

CS: Say no more, madame. I’ll just put a punctuation mark on that sentence by saying pity the poor souls who are merely DOUBLE dipping!

HA: I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, Chief.

The Best and the Brightest

Economy fail
Scores of minds are on the case
Stop thinking and solve

Giddyup Fail

Remember that really bad drawing of a horse, which looked like a camel? The illustration is used to show the product of “committee” work.

Obama and the Congress are that committee now with regard to the economy.

I’m afraid the only thing their horse will be good for will be the glue factory. And the only relief available to us will be to sniff the factory’s product!

This, too, shall pass.

Darren Cools has been working for more than 40 years.

He’s learned from personal experience that his limit on a job is roughly two years. By that time, he hates either the work or his coworkers, or both.

Darren just started yet another job.

He gave his manager a sealed envelope with instructions to open it on Jan. 15, 2011.

The envelope contains Darren’s resignation giving two weeks notice.

Senior Moment Day

Had two, TWO, a couple of days ago.

Left office at 5, went to parking garage, pushed button on car key to unlock doors. No click of doors. Battery must be dead, I thought. Doors were unlocked. Didn’t lock them in the morning.

Put frozen veggies in microwave. Removed them after 4 minutes. Ice cold. Had set the “minute/second” timer, not the “timed cook” timer.

I might have had others. Don’t remember.