Monday, May 13, 2013

Work, work, die

Humans are strange critters. No single comparison to yet another nature documentary describes humans adequately.

Yesterday would probably have been stress awareness day in Germany, if they indeed had such a day.

Over the weekend, two well known politicians keeled over and died, one at 53 years, the other at 66 years.

On Monday, tabloid Bild Zeitung had a screaming, itself stress-inducing headline: Germans sick through stress.

And so it is. We'll spare you the numbers to avoid adding to your stress level.

It is enough to know that more and more Germans suffer from stress related illnesses than ever before and that more and more are on some sort of happy pill.

Our comment: Told you so.

Science has established the effects of various kinds of stress under various conditions pretty well.

While we sympathize with those who suffer stress, not all is unavoidable. In Germany, people have been experiencing interesting man made changes in the past ten plus years, and the number of people working two jobs has been rising, just as the number of people who -- working full time -- take home less after taxes than the basic social welfare payment level.

When it comes to stress in general, the blogster has an idea what it feels like.  Not only did yours truly do a six months 7 days a week work "stress test", but we have hopped countries, so yes.

We hate so say this, but overstressed fellow citizens who have enough savings and pension to retire and still hang on to the treadmill should maybe try to do something about it.

The return of early industrial age working hours combined with a GPS tracker that tells your boss where you are at any moment of the working day...some people didn't see that one coming.

It will get worse before it gets better.

Look for a hockey stick curve.


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