Tag: Exit Interview

Brain Doping

Last week I read on the internet about an alarming trend:

Office workers engage in “brain doping” by taking ADHD pills like Adderall to enhance their performance. The drugs enable these staff members to achieve superhuman output on the job.

Just. Why. Not ever have I been a fan of getting a job in a corporate office. Unless you are like my friend Robin. He obtained an MBA and had a 20-year career in business.

A corporate career might suit you and other followers. I wouldn’t entirely rule out working in an office. Provided management treats employees right.

The fact that people are brain doping on the job shows how insidiously harmful late-stage capitalism is when businesses put profits before people. Then workers put earning money as their reason for working and brain doping. Getting ahead in corporate America should not come at the expense of our sanity.

About two or three years ago a former Amazon office employee published an expose of her time working at that company. The book was titled Exit Interview.

Amazon expects office workers to come in on Saturdays when their managers call them on the phone that morning.

This is unlivable. This is unworkable. The Exit Interview author wrote that after working at Amazon for 12 years she couldn’t recognize herself in the mirror.

In the coming blog entry I’m going to write in more detail about the insanity of businesses–and even non-profits–demanding total allegiance at the expense of our mental and physical health.

I urge followers not to engage in brain doping.

Offsetting Burnout

I attended a Zoom burnout session. In future blog entries I’ll talk about what I learned there.

While burnout is NOT the employees fault some things can help alleviate the stress that are person-centered as referred to in The Burnout Challenge:

Staying Healthy

Getting enough sleep

Relaxing

Understanding oneself

Developing new skills (on the job)

Getting away from the job

Getting social support

In terms of developing new skills on the job circa 2008 I took training to help customers create resumes and conduct job searches.

This made all the difference in sparking joy at work.

It can be tough when staff feel they can’t approach management to get things done in terms of the 6 causes of burnout. What if the upper echelon doesn’t see fit to change things?

A new 2023 book at the library titled Exit Interview was a memoir and expose of working in the corporate Amazon office. The woman author said she had in effect sold her soul: After 12 years working in that environment she no longer recognized the person in the mirror.

I buy things on Amazon that I can’t find locally or anywhere else. I admire Jeff Bezos for how he transformed Amazon from an online bookseller in 1997 to the Marketplace of the World. However I’m NOT a fan of how Amazon treats its workers. Warehouse staff are given health insurance precisely because their jobs in the warehouses cause ill health.

Sadly the cure for burnout is not job-hopping if you risk going “out of the frying pan into the fire.” The next job you get could be like reliving the old job.

I will talk further in future blog entries about visionary ideas for making the workplace a better place to work.