Reams of studies have spewed forth in recent years about the problems of bullying at school, work and home (probably because most researchers and reporters are all current or former eggheads who were forced to suffer the indignities of being woken up at 5:00 a.m. on an overcast Friday at age 14 by a red-headed terror of a high school senior, being denied the pleasure of brushing his/her teeth and instructed to ‘chew on this’ this being a wad of already chawed-on Wrigley Mint, being dressed in an adult diaper and t-shirt that read ‘I’m with Stupid’ with the arrow pointing toward his/her crotch, marched passed a cackling family who got up early to witness the spectacle, hog-tied and then thrown into the back of a sky-blue Jeep Cherokee and paraded around Fairfield County up and down the halls of various co-ed public high schools before being dropped back off to his/her single sex school to join the other members of his/her class for four years a day of ritual humiliation known as freshman hazing … not that I know anything about this sort of thing) … in fact, about 33% of people report having been bullied on the job at some point. And almost every stat shot is paired with 101 sob stories about how said bullying has shattered everything from Suzy’s mojo to Eric’s cherished collection of beautiful Lee Middleton Dolls!
So should we all stop whining, pick up the pieces of our various shattered parts, dig in and just take a bite of the shit sammy we’re all dealt at some point in our lives? Probably.
But good news for those of us who fear poop and want some more stats to wallow in / excuse our failure to even approach upward mobility into our late 20s and beeeeeeyoooooooooond: new research (out of Psychological Science no less) shows that merely being put in a “low-power” role may actually IMPAIR A PERSON’S BASIC COGNITIVE FUNCTIONING.
So having a stupid job makes you stupid … and that prevents you from getting a better job and getting less stupid because no one smart will hire a stupid.
That explains my entire career! Thanks, Psychological Science!
