There\u2019s a rather unpleasant yet widespread story that if a frog is put into hot water it will jump out, but if put into cold water and the water is very gradually heated, the frog won\u2019t notice until it dies of hyperthermia (i.e., too high temperature for life). I don\u2019t know that this is even true, but it does speak to a parallel problem in life: Many people move very gradually into a state of role overload, thinking that they should be able to handle it. Many managers and administrators ask of their subordinates just a bit more paperwork, an extra component to their expected job. The underlying myth \/ expectation is that if one is efficient, well-organized, and competent, this extra duty won\u2019t be too much of a burden.<\/p>\n
In fact, it is too much. Those extra requirements for “documentation” can be killers. There are only so many components a role can contain before it becomes overloading to most people\u2019s ability. You can stretch it a bit with coffee or other stimulants, with the fear of being fired, becoming jobless. (In the olden<\/em> olden days some people were pushed beyond their comfort zone by fear of the whip.) What makes it oppression is that most often even the managers don\u2019t realize that there are limits, or what is actually involved in implementing some seemingly benign ruling.<\/p>\n National and state legislatures and other governmental councils typically throw out some new \u201cmandated\u201d requirement without providing compensatory funds for staffing, overtime, or other ways: The implication is that good administrators can manage to integrate such new role demands—or they wouldn’t be very good, would they? And middle managers respond to this myth and demand by squeezing the sweat from the stones of their subordinates. I\u2019m reminded of a cartoon titled \u201cThe Dark Side of the Lone Ranger\u201d: He\u2019s in an office on the phone, saying, \u201cI don\u2019t care how you get those silver bullets, Tonto, just get them.\u201d<\/p>\n I fear that there are many governmental agencies that play this way, unconsciously asking their subordinates to fulfill the requirements of the higher-ups, and denying the reality that to do so would require cutting corners, often reducing quality. Often what tends to get sacrificed first in this form of systems-oppression is the time it takes for really listening and making contact with customers, patients, the people who are supposed to be served.<\/p>\n That many folks at all levels in the system can sustain the denial is due to the unwillingness of anyone to say that, in effect, the emperor has no clothes. The more literal translation is that moderately competent people can not and should not be invited to become overloaded in their role demands, lest they be pushed to compromise their work and\/or burn out. What is sad is that this madness is sustained by the way no one wants to speak up, protest, lest they be singled out as a complainer, thus revealing their own personal weakness or incompetence.<\/p>\n A complicating problem is that there are those few slackers who complain at even modest role demands.\u00a0 (Remember when you were eleven? Even being asked to do chores felt like an imposition by tyrannical authorities. This is because for that pre-teen era there is really a resurgence of an unwillingness to engage in the increased responsibility and discipline that goes with the increased prerogatives and status of being \u201colder.\u201d Unless this is made explicit, kids want to be able to hold on to the benefits of being a relatively carefree kid while still having access to what the other older kids get.)\u00a0 Good workers don’t want to be lumped in with the slackers, so that inhibits their more realistic complaints.<\/p>\n The problem is really part of the so-called \u201csqueeze\u201d on the middle class, not only economically, but also in terms of role demands. Part of this has to do with unrealistic expectations: On television situation comedies\u00a0 people are shown playing out their lives with a minimal of real work and a maximum of free time. Just as Hollywood made movies with stories set in the tropics, yet there was no trouble from insects and malaria, so too does the mass media underplay the actual amounts of required work, home maintenance in life; it also over-estimates the kinds of apartments that are affordable with an average salary.\u00a0 It drives greed and going into debt.<\/p>\n