A Boomer Chronicles Expose: Your Job is Killing You
If your job entails working at a desk, you’ve probably experienced neck, back or wrist problems at some point. Of course, you have! At work, we’re given tasks to do for eight hours a day (unnatural), often indoors and away from sunshine and fresh air (unnatural), using machines and other devices that force us into unsustainable positions (unnatural). If we’re in pain and can’t do the work we are paid to do, we’ve got a big problem.
Besides enduring pain and discomfort that we never should have suffered in the first place, office injuries entail lots of expenses:
- sick days
- medical, physical therapy and acupuncture bills
- special classes for posture improvement
- purchase of special equipment: voice recognition software, a foot-operated mouse, office furniture, keyboards, etc.
- prescriptions
- surgery
I believe ergonomics is a capitalist ploy. Ergonomics is the science of “adapting products and processes to human characteristics and capabilities in order to improve people’s well-being and optimize productivity.” So if you adjust your workspace just right, you may be able to skirt health issues like neck pain, shoulder pain, bursitis, tendinitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, etc. Gotta keep you on the job, after all!
Now, let’s sing the praises of ergonomics:
Ergonomics boosts health on the job from North Jersey.com
Office ergonomics 101 from the Safety Guys
Zeroing in on the Right Office Chair: Experts say better comfort means better productivity
OSHA (Occupational Safety & Health Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor) shows you how to sit at a computer desk
An OSHA list of signs and symptoms of a problem
October 9th, 2007 at 10:27 am
[...] I’ve put a link to this article here [...]
October 9th, 2007 at 10:34 am
There is a book I’ve found that has been very helpful for my repetitive strain issues: End Your Carpal Tunnel Pain Without Surgery (3rd Edition) by Kate Montgomery. It’s a great resource to help identify problem areas and situations with very practical solutions for pain relief.
October 9th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
add-on and special/expensive ergonomic devices do certainly beg the question: why not make office furniture and equipment ergonomic in the first place??
in a previous “desk job” I discovered that a supervisor had purchased all sorts of ergonomic extras for herself (she controlled the office budget), while discouraging requests for the same from other workers. boy am I glad I’m not there anymore!
October 9th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Good information, I learned something which is what part of life is about.
October 10th, 2007 at 8:18 am
Mo: Great point. Why, if they know, this equipment can hurt us, do we not get it at the outset? Your supervisor somes demonic.
Larry: You made my day!
October 10th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
It is not the job that is killing me. It is worrying about how to pay the bills.
October 11th, 2007 at 11:56 am
I agree that it’s a capitalist ploy – ergonomics is just the frosting on the piece of sh*t we’re fed by the few who manage to scramble to the top of the heap in our society. Our whole way of “doing business” isn’t just broken – it’s built from the ground up specifically to be unnatural, inhuman, and neglectful, if not outright abusive. When gold is top priority, human beings become nothing more than a commodity, just another resource. I thought we resolved that kind of thinking with the Civil War. What’s it gonna take to break the shackles we put on ourselves?
~ hb33, clearly in a dark and cynical mood today ~
October 11th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
Honeybee: Well said!