Tuesday, 13 July 2010

Work for death


People have to work to live. They can get money from their job. Nowadays, some people working too hard, and they don't have time to do any other things. This is one of the biggest problems in many countries. Working too hard can drive your life crazy.

According to this article, there are many hard workers who work all day without break, or work overtime in UK. They are obviously over working. They have to work very hard because of staff shortage and they have too much work to do. Overworking causes health problems. For example, working in the same position for a long periods at a time causes physical pain, like back pain which is one of the most common health problems for hard workers in UK
(¶. 2). Another example is that overworking causes stress. " Staff shortage and a heavy workload are the root of workers' anxiety" (¶. 2). Stress can be anxiety or depression.

People need money to live, so we need to work. People can die because of work, this is big problem in Japan too. Some people die from overwork. It is paradox because people work for living, but people die from work. Companies have to cope with this problem immediately, otherwise we will always have this problem.


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References
One in four 'works all day without break' - survey (2010, June9). BBC News. Retrieved July 13, 2010 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/10276677.stm

5 comments:

  1. Akira, I agree with you that this is a big problem. Life is not for working, but we have to work for living. Actually, I used to be like that person who worked very hard. I felt the time ran very fast same as people said when you are happy, but I was not happy. Furthermore, I think it depends on the position and responsibility because I saw some people did not work very hard when I was working with UK company. And I think the root cause may be the economic problem because every business wants to reduce cost. That means they do not want to hire more people.

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  2. Gosh!!! that sounds like my ex-job. I had to work all day from Monday to Sunday and from 9 am to late mid-night (not every week in my working life, but it often occur during the year-end period). My OT paid is very large amount, but who care? no one in my office want such amount of money. We just want relax from our work-load.

    Whatever, due to lack of skillful employees in some of specific job, this situation is inevitable. For instant, my last job, auditor, we have to report many of large businesses in and out of Thailand, sometimes we have to fly aboard to coordinate with foreign audit team. So we have a dozen of works waiting for in every week. Everyone don't want to work a lot, but if the report's not finished by the due, many bad things may occurred. Our firm will lost the trust from client, our client will lost money from investors and have to pay the fee to government, investors can't invest because they lack of information, and so on. That's why I said it's impossible to let the work balance with the life for everyone, especially for young white collar worker.

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  3. I would argue that it is possible to have a well-balanced life but it seems impossible for some because the word “balance seem to vary”. They may put their families first or work first, which mostly depends on the stage of their lives. For me, I put the study first because I am still a student, so that is my responsibility. In fact, however, this does not mean that I cannot have fun or relax. I can have fun while studying and relax sometimes when I need. According to The Lord of The flies, ""We want to have fun. And we want to be rescued." This is perfectly normal for our lives.

    Those who claim that they are able to do only one thing at a time, which is work, sadly, if I may say, such people are not living their lives. Life will be more meaningful if they manage and organise their time appropriately accordingly to what they themselves and others need and want.

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  4. Petchy,

    Sorry to say that, but student's life and worker's life is very different. First of all, the pressure of your society (your environment or your colleague) is not the same at all. If you cannot finish your assignment by the date-line, student will be punished by lost their score on such assignment, but it's not the same with employee status. They will be untrustworthy in their manager view. They might get under-performance from their boss, and it will effect to the certainty in their working life. They'll not only get a lower salary and lower bonus, but they also find a new job uneasily due to the recommendation letter of prior supervisor.

    Those are why you can't say "[the responsibility of study] does not mean that I cannot have fun or relax. I can have fun while studying and relax sometimes when I need" (Petchy, ¶1). I strongly disagree about your example.

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  5. Ah.... I think my situation now quite similar to what you posted. In fact, I'm not the full time job worker but now I carry 3 jobs and also study "academic english" at AUA. So it seem I don't have enough time to rest and sleep tight. It's very difficult to balance my life now for me it depend on the number of job and and the most important thing is my customer, they never end the job easily.

    One more thing, honestly, I'm not the guy who worship the power of money but lately I just get the many jobs at the same time. That is i'm not sure that I whether lucky or not!!

    ReplyDelete

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