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Mental health is still an issue in the workplace

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Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace

#281

Post by bluGill »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #192
bluGill wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If his experience was anything like mine it isn't the working poor. It is the young workers who are not poor. They are still living at home: they do not need to pay for their room, meals eaten at home, health insurance. That is every penny they earn is pure spending money and so despite making minimum wage they are rich with no need to work as many hours as they do. When I was working minimum wage there was also the…

>> That is every penny they earn is pure spending money I never looked at it as pure spending money - it was mostly saving for an education and a start in my adult life. Might be why I'm one of the few of my generation that doesn't think the entire economy is stacked against them?

My post was focused on those who were skipping work. As I recall the majority of the kids had enough work ethic to show up every day. They probably were saving a fair amount of their pay check, but we never discussed that.

Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace

#282

Post by JackFr »

phil21 wrote: post #56
TallGuyShort wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I've never heard of anyone here being asked for a verification, but it would tend to discourage people doing the "sanity day" sort of thing. I suspect that the lack of trust this indicates on the part of the company (not to mention foster on the part of the employee) is probably a sign that you're past the point of no return. I suspect a company that asked for verification was not doing so to see if you were genui…

You're generally correct for the folks who have decent salaried careers. If I got asked to justify a regular random day or two I took off as PTO I'd tell HR to pound sand as anyone rightfully should. Get into hourly low wage stuff and you are treated like children, many shops require a doctor's note for any and all absences with 1 or 2 dermits until you're fired. This has reasons from both ends of course. When I was…

It's not just managerial laziness -- if you want to terminate someone for abusing the paid time off policy, there needs to be a paid time off policy in place. Otherwise it would be relatively easy to claim wrongful termination.

Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace

#283

Post by VLM »

phil21 wrote: post #117
omegaworks wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>by the low-wage masses abusing it (and abuse it they did). This feeds directly into the popular narrative that the working poor somehow lack moral fortitude. Do you have evidence to justify this claim?

> Do you have evidence to justify this claim? Sure, I worked a lot of retail/physical labor/etc. type jobs in my younger years. I was out of the house at an early age, and took these jobs very seriously since they paid my bills. My co-workers for many reasons did not, at least a very significant minority of them. I don't think it's really "out there" to say that the typical minimum wage worker is not as high quality…

A technical analogy that people on HN people might understand better, is there's a difference in quality of service between paying a IT guy $100K/yr to keep your stuff like a webpage up, vs paying a discount hoster $3/month to keep a webpage up. Worst case situation will result in behavior where an outage is worth $100K/yr or the cost of sales of a $3/month AAS provider. I worked in engineering at a AAS provider a long time ago, and the realization that what I can do to fix something as a normal sysadmin is enormously greater than what I can do for less than the cost of sales of replacing the customer at a AAS shop is pretty shocking.

This effect extends thru the entire economy.

From observation its not that people who are poor have no ambition, they just have ambition in areas not involving getting lots of money from work or "reward" from management recognition. They want a happy family life, sex, be cool, get drunk often, ambition in all manner of things, just not into working 10x harder for 2x more money. I probably work 100x harder mentally than when I was a high school kid working at a supermarket and I barely make 10x as much money. For me working 100x harder is not a big deal because supermarket work is not exactly rocket surgery, but I can see a lower ability normie not seeing 100x harder work as achievable without excessive stress for them at their performance level, or perhaps being impossible for them. The "sit at home" under a UBI scenario seems incredibly unlikely. You might not agree with or appreciate the effort of "being cool" or posting high score posts on facebook or obtaining sex, but they will certainly sweat a lot of effort into achieving it. Playing video games is not very profitable but it is somewhat ambitious and takes a lot of effort.

To some extent a marketplace that doesn't meet the participants needs is a failure of that marketplace, which describes a lot of our labor system for a very large fraction of the population. Its not really their fault the system is irrelevant to their interests.

Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace

#284

Post by losteverything »

Here is what i learned from my now blue collar career and my old white collar career

Take sick days. Plan sick days.

My corp job had unlimited sick Time - after 5 days required disability. I felt i had to go every day; no breaks. No way to get a health day. Wanted to be that (very stupid) employee that never took a sick day. Didnt realize it benefited company. I chose my company over my family by not calling out. I wasnt "sick" i thought.

My Blue collar jobs i have to show sick dr note, but that is quite legit and easy. No stress. Dont feel well; tired? Back hurts? Spouse ill? I call out. NO GUILT.

Avoid the mental health or stress words. Use stomach or lyme or back injury or vision.

Looking back all my "i dont call in sick" didnt do me one iota of good

Now, i take off if and when i want. How i wish i was blue collar first before white collar

Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace

#285

Post by rf15 »

sgt wrote: post #270

"1 in 6 americans are medicated for mental health." - that is very high. What's causing Americans to have so many mental health issues? I don't have the stats, but I cannot easily believe that this would the case in let's say Europe.

Remember that getting medication doesn't necessarily mean that there's actually something wrong with you when prescribing medications has a positive effect on your doctor's income.

Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace

#286

Post by nostromo123 »

candu wrote: post #278
exclusiv wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone has access to birth control though. It's common knowledge how reproduction works. You have condoms, birth control pills and copper rings among other options. If you miss that you got plan b. Let's set aside your personal vendetta against the pro lifer Christians. How can you claim that the vast majority of pregnant teenagers don't choose to get pregnant?

Easy: a lot of states teach abstinence-only sex education, and there's a prevailing set of social norms (often imposed by "pro lifer Christians") that makes frank discussions of birth control, sex, reproductive biology, etc. all but impossible. It sounds crazy - and, IMHO, it is - but large parts of the US operate as de facto theocracies, especially where it comes to education. Under those circumstances, it's not sur…

If you don't understand that sex can lead to getting pregnant, I think you're not old enough to be left outside unaccompanied.

Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace

#287

Post by logicalmind »

One of the hardest things to explain to anyone is burnout and the after effects. I've experienced it myself, along with plenty of people around me. But I also know many friends and family members who are committing themselves to their jobs beyond their ability to healthily sustain their lives. This includes working very long hours, essentially never turning work "off". It impacts their health, their relationships and their mental well-being.

Trying to warn people who have yet to deal with it seems impossible. I've had sit-down heart-to-heart conversations with people I love about commitment to work, expectation setting, work/life balances, etc. and I've never had a good outcome. I've watched people go through the inevitable physical sickness that never seems to go away, and then have that turn into emotional and mental sickness which also never seems to go away. In the end, I always wish there was something more I could do to help them head this off. But no matter how hard I've tried it still happens.

Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace

#289

Post by profpandit »

Well, mental health has always been and will continue to be an issue that needs to be addressed in the workplace. This is because the workplace now is at least half composed of programming related tasks. Programming is such a mentally tasking task due to the need to get everything just right to get your computer to do what you want with it, that the fallout from it could be compared to a hangover. Your mental faculties do get tired by the process of programming leaving you in the lurch when you step outside that mental zone, and making you susceptible to attacks on issues unrelated to programming, that many managers and other people that don't exercise their mental faculties enough tend to indulge in. As a programmer, it's just as important to learn what to do outside of your programming related tasks, specially ways to relax and rejuvenate your mental faculties. If you don't do this, you'll burn yourself out leaving you susceptible to mental disease.

Re: Mental health is still an issue in the workplace

#290

Post by cbtacy »

andrewfong wrote: post #73
steven777400 wrote: post #5

Great article. A few years ago (at a previous job) I took a sick day for "sanity", but told them I wasn't feeling well. I felt guilty about doing it. I think part of it is the association of sick leave with externally visible medical issues, and the corresponding "straightforward" medical verification. In other words, if you have a temperature or are vomiting, that's obvious. Many infections or physical injury can be…

Another way of thinking about this, rather than "mental vs physical" or "healthy vs sick" is "how much discretion does your employer give you to balance work with your own well-being". There are plenty employers who are willing to accommodate you if you have an actual DSM-diagnosed mental disorder but are skeptical of a "sanity day". Likewise, there are plenty of employers who will let you take time off if you're act…

You should learn a little about the politics around the DSM before assuming that anything in the DSM is "real" (and everything not in it is "fake").
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