Time for Tranquilizers?
How adverse are you?
Feel like strangling a co-worker? Company isn’t as warm and fuzzy as you’d like? Do you roll over and take it?
Life and work may be too adverse for you. To find out, check the answers in the following categories that apply to you. A score of 15 or more means there’s way too much “adversification” in your life.
Adversity in job leadership
You’ve worked well with your boss for 10 years. Suddenly, the following happens:
1. The boss gets a promotion and is transferred.
2. The boss “resigns to pursue other interests.”
3. The boss quietly liquidates all of his company stock, then “resigns to pursue other interests.”
4. The boss is indicted, then granted immunity to testify against co-workers.
Adversity in social settings
The following happens when you attend the company picnic:
1. You overhear that a co-worker is given a plum assignment on a subcommittee of a subcommittee of a committee.
2. You get food poisoning from the potato salad, then throw up on the shoes of your boss’ spouse.
3. You overhear a co-worker you dislike remark: “Gee, I thought everyone here got 10,000 stock options.”
4. You have to call AAA to jump-start your 1973 Gremlin while your co-workers laugh at you.
Adversity in career development
On a big push to increase the training and development of its workers, your company:
1. Asks you to train to use the Internet, even though you are tech illiterate.
2. Asks you train to use the Internet, not telling you some new software can record all of the adult Web sites you access.
3. Wants to send you to workshops and seminars for the next three years.
4. Tells you that in your case, training and development “wouldn’t be productive.”
Adversity in job environment
Your company decides to significantly tighten its belt. As a result:
1. A hiring freeze is implemented, making it harder for your team to get workers it needs to do the job.
2. Annual pay increase? What annual pay increase?
3. The best car you are now allowed to rent while traveling is a Lumina.
4. Your boss calls you in, asks if you know what “downsize” means.
5. All those frequent-flier miles you were counting on for the Hawaii trip now must be turned over to the company.
Adversity in health
You have increasing concerns about your health because:
1. As you grow older, you worry about whether you can afford to pay for your family’s health care.
2. Your company has steered you into that HMO led by executives under investigation in 12 states.
3. Human resources nixed your idea for a Deepak Chopra seminar.
4. The company health plan won’t pay for your Viagra prescription.
Adversity with co-workers
Work is growing more unpleasant because of a co-worker who:
1. Disparages your work behind your back.
2. Giggles when you mention where you went to college.
3. Can’t stop talking about the end of “Seinfeld.”
4. Can’t understand why you haven’t seen “Titanic” 12 times.
Adversity in self-image
You no longer feel loved by your company because:
1. Your invitation to the company retreat at Rancho Mirage arrived the Monday after it ended.
2. You’ve never won the office NCAA basketball pool.
3. Your company parking space is being paved over for a week, forcing you to park on the street.
Adversity from the outside world
When you read articles in the news media about your company, you learn:
1. Your company isn’t highly regarded on Wall Street.
2. For the sixth time in eight years the bank you work for will be swallowed up by a bigger bank, meaning you will once again be looking for a job.
3. Attorneys general in five states sue every company in your industry in an antitrust investigation.
Adversity in your home life
You are putting in so much time at work that when you finally get home at night:
1. Your son asks when you grew the beard.
2. You find out the next-door neighbor you were friendly with moved to Seattle 18 months ago.
3. The IRS owns everything you had because you didn’t get around to paying your taxes.
Adversity in trying to make an impression
Hoping to impress the CEO of your company, you suggest at a company function what you think would be a great new ad slogan. The response:
1. “You should go through the appropriate channels in marketing.”
2. “ ‘You deserve a break today’ sure sounds familiar.”
3. “We’re selling Koo Koo Roo chicken here, not Chryslers.”
