Journalism’s rat race must end

Journalism’s rat race must end

By Opoka Christopher Arop

We all know the type: the colleague who comes in to work, red-eyed and drippy, and puts his germy fingers and wants to nose into your business and try and find out what exactly you are up to because you are sober. on the handle of the coffeepot or the button of the microwave door. He could have called in sick, but that would take a modicum of decency. No, this guy is a “team player.” He’s a cubicle don Corleone, the office iron man who wants to impress everyone at any cost.

We may hate him for his selfish play at martyrdom, but we’re too polite to say so. Instead we squirt disinfectants on our hands and feign concern: “You seem a little under the weather. Why not take the rest of the day off?” Behind his back it’s an open season of sniping and reproach: He’s the one who’s feverish and suffering, but we can’t stop ourselves from taking umbrage at his grief. His zeal for overwork is putting us at risk.

Or is it? You may have seen reports about the spread of germs at work. My good example is how fast this dude with red eyes and sneezing endlessly soon had the pack at the office doing just the same. May be it as from the same glass we shared when drinking water. May be it was his sweaty face evaporating whatever it is he had in his system. (Usmedia people of all people love these tales of viral diaspora.) One of the latest comes from Charles P. Gerba, a University of Arizona microbiologist who placed a (harmless) tracer virus on the front-door handle of an 80-person office. Within four hours, he found the virus on more than half the workers’ hands and more than half the common surfaces.

That fact, widely covered in the press, makes it sound as if we should impose a policy of office-worker quarantine. But this was more a gross-out stunt than a risk assessment. The mere presence of a marker virus doesn’t tell us which, if any, office workers might be likely to contract a real infection.

Even if the spread of germs to furniture does represent an important vector of disease �" still only a theory �" we can take measures of protection. Dr. Gerba found that the presence of hand sanitizer in the break room, for example, and disinfectant wipes elsewhere in the office, reduced the number of infected surfaces by 80 percent. (Then again, these numbers come from a researcher who has been accused of fear-mongering on behalf of the cleaning industry.)

In fact, there’s not much evidence that office cubicles are any more infectious than, say, the passenger/public service vans or our markets. Hospitals, clinics, bars, restaurants: These are places where people interact with body fluids, and transmission risk is high. In office buildings, we just don’t have the same degree of contact.

At any rate, the science suggests that it’s not adults who drive the spread of influenza but children. Kids start shedding the virus several days before the onset of their symptoms, and can remain infectious for up to three weeks after. For grown-ups, the window is much smaller �" just a few days on average. That helps explain why flu appears to spread more slowly during rainy season break and pick up again when the weather gets hot, much like January/February when children return to school.

Those who whine about their ailing colleagues sometimes cite another field of research, that of business economics. It’s said that sick people in the workplace �" so-called presentees, not to be confused with sick absentees, who don’t come in to the office �" cost the economy at least a lot of money yearly.

The problem is, these estimates typically come from studies of chronic illness (as opposed to cold and flu, and hangover), often financed by drug companies in the United States and Europe. They’re driven by a market push for productivity-enhancing drugs, and their methodology is not germane: The research looks at differences between a sickly worker’s office output and that of his healthy colleagues. Meanwhile it ignores the more apparent differences between a sickly worker’s office output and that of a colleague who is lying in his bed at home. This much should be obvious: On any given day, presentees get more done than absentees.

Many newspapers around the world are increasingly treating their employees like machines. It is ludicrous that employers are reducing sick leave and it is beyond...The studies of productivity do hint at a deeper problem, though �" one that has less to do with public health than mass psychology. What motivates our colleague to show up in an unwell state, and why should his presence in the office make the rest of us so edgy, sometimes to the point of anger? Perhaps we all share a common ailment of the workplace, a condition whose major symptom is the morbid fear of downtime. Maybe we’re afraid of staying home because we’re so well-trained to stay at work.

If overwork can be taken as a sickness in itself, then journalism and perhaps Information Communications Technology and may be accounting can become a bastion of infirmity. Let’s take as an example a journalist working at newspaper or radio: such senior journalist may be entitled to 21 annual leave days in a year. He remains with 344 days of full time work. Then management may be considerate and give him a day of his choosing off every week, (344-51= 292). So the journalist now has 292 days during which he may not fall sick without retribution (sick leaves are very tricky business in the media industry, although about eight sick days are provided on average). And in most developing or under developed countries, if such journalist is highly qualified and motivated by his work output and places unwavering pride in his final products and name, he may clock 12 hours a day. That tallies to 3,576 hours a year.

African journalists have always had a tendency to work strange hours, late at night or over weekends. Researchers think the pattern arises from our heavy-handed office culture: If you’re not overworked �" or won’t go into the office sick �" you seem to be a slouch. “We’ve gotten to a point where no one wants to depart from the presenteeism, but we’re all worse off because of it,” one such researcher wrote. “It’s a Gordian knot.”

In other words, the workplace has gotten tangled up in endless searches for a dose of extra credit. Since we’re all in competition �" if I slow down, you get ahead �" no one has an incentive to untie the knot. When we see a colleague with a runny nose, it only makes that conflict more explicit. We act as if we’re worried for his health, or troubled that his work-life balance might be out of whack, but in truth we’re just as driven by the mania for overwork. We’d prefer for him to take his sick days now only so that we won’t have to, down the line.

The problem is, putting pressure on the presentee only serves to fortify the status quo. It treats illness as a threat to productivity rather than a source of suffering. Let’s try to have a bit more empathy. Instead of raging at officemates who try too hard, praise the ones who do their part to slow the rat race down. Support the slacker �" or better yet, be a slacker. Take some extra time. Stay home. That’s how we can show that it’s O.K. to take it easy, and that a happy, healthy life needn’t be a source of shame. I now know what it feels like when some of my colleagues show up at work with red eyes, or very tired and doze off in their chairs. I know why some of my colleagues show up even when they know there is nothing much to do. But what can they do? The rat race isn’t slowing down any time soon, not even at the Juba Monitor because the readers expect more every day. The readers expect a better and finer product every day. Let’s hope 2015, my colleagues will understand that I understand and stop fighting the rat race.