Blog 8 Week 8

             I found the section in our text 'Alienation and Burnout' to be of particular interest this week (refer to page 437).  The first sentence ‘No job is perfect; there is always something about it that is not as good as it could be’.  I completely agree with this statement, and at the same time I am forced to recall movie clips of the empowered woman in her perfect job calling all the shots.  Why can’t we find perfection in a career we choose or a life we live?  Is that human nature? 

            Our text defines alienation as a feeling that results in workers when their work seems meaningless and their efforts devalued or when they see no connection between their own work and the final product.  I have felt this way many times in my life, not just related to work, so I consider myself an expert.  If people who supervise you or are at the level of your boss, and they don’t make eye contact or couldn’t care less who you were, what your name is, or what you do, you begin to resent them and your job. 

            I found it disconcerting that this section focused in particular on assembly line workers management.  The assembly line workers are apparently more likely to feel alienated, especially since their jobs could become automated by machines.  As far as white collar management and executives, usually those jobs are not exempt or unionized, so I don’t know of a time when they were ‘safe’ from layoffs.  Either way, an employee that feels alienated feels like they are not trusted (perhaps to do their jobs, or just in general).  In my own experience, if I feel distrusted or second-guessed, over time I begin to resent what I do and where I work.

            Burnout, is defined in our text as a depletion of a person’s energy and motivation, the loss of occupational idealism, and the feeling that one is being exploited.  I interpret the last part of this definition as the feeling that you are being used.  In a relationship if you feel used you might resent the person you are with or bear ill-will, neither of which are healthy.  How would an employee express to their supervisor that they feel used?  The state of physical, emotional and mental exhaustion (love the typo on page 438 in the fifth edition, below definition of burnout, ‘zexhaustion’) can be endless, so how does one change their mental attitude or address the need for change? 

            Teaching, social work, health care, those in occupational therapy and the military are more prone to feeling ‘burnout’ from their jobs.  Specifically, people in these occupations deal with people’s complex problems in stressful situations.  Day after day, these problems take their toll.  I like how our text summed it up: that disillusionment and exhaustion set in.  How many times have most of us felt that way?  Like 2000 times right????  (fyi I am not even thinking about being a parent here, so parents out there, I am sure you surpassed this number)

            I almost can’t stand when the only answer to the problem is stress-reduction techniques.  I mean for real.  Why do we have to change, why can’t the job stop being so ridiculously stressful???  Also, I get that sometimes reevaluating how you view a certain situation can help, but why isn’t there some sort of compensation for the stress we deal with at work (probably due to the fact that stress is subjective.  I know there are plenty of people who don’t stress as much as me or the average person, and their reward shall be a longer life J  )