http://www.iworkwithfools.com/index.php?itemid=74&catid=2
Working With Idiots Can Kill You!
Thursday November 21, 2002
By KATE McCLARE
STOCKHOLM -- Idiots in the office are just as hazardous to your health as
cigarettes, caffeine or greasy food, an eye-opening new study reveals. In
fact, those dopes can kill you!
Stress is one of the top causes of heart attacks -- and working with stupid
people on a daily basis is one of the deadliest forms of stress, according
to researchers at Sweden's Lindbergh University Medical Center.
The author of the study, Dr. Dagmar Andersson, says her team studied 500
heart attack patients, and were puzzled to find 62 percent had relatively
few of the physical risk factors commonly blamed for heart attacks.
"Then we questioned them about lifestyle habits, and almost all of these
low-risk patients told us they worked with people so stupid they can barely
find their way from the parking lot to their office. And their heart attack
came less than 12 hours after having a major confrontation with one of
these oafs.
"One woman had to be rushed to the hospital after her assistant shredded
important company tax documents instead of copying them. A man told us he
collapsed right at his desk because the woman at the next cubicle kept
asking him for correction fluid -- for her computer monitor.
"You can cut back on smoking or improve your diet," Dr. Andersson says,
"but most people have very poor coping skills when it comes to stupidity --
they feel there's nothing they can do about it, so they just internalize
their frustration until they finally explode."
Stupid co-workers can also double or triple someone's work load, she
explains. "Many of our subjects feel sorry for the drooling idiots they
work with, so they try to cover for them by fixing their mistakes. One poor
woman spent a week rebuilding client records because a clerk put them all
in the 'recycle bin' of her computer and then emptied it -- she thought it
meant the records would be recycled and used again."
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