Traditional Views of Workplace Stress

Four traditional views of stress come to mind that are used to get a good day’s work from us. See what you think. I’ve noticed the moral view, the ego based view, the natural personality view, and the monkey always on our back so get back to work view.

The moral view works like this: we shame each other for not being able to handle stress, or we pride ourselves in handling stress, because it’s all in a day’s work. If you can’t handle the heat, get out of the kitchen. It’s the workplace, stupid. No pain, no gain.
Pros: most people will fall in line, to avoid negative labels and keep their job.
Cons: shaming is repressive; it works in the short run, going postal in the long run.

The ego based view of stress creates heroes and cowards. If you handle stress well, you’re great, if you don’t suck it up, you suck. Are you a hero, or a wimp?
Pros: Heroes are great. We can all be heroes once in a while. They take on more than their share of responsibility and you can always depend on them.
Cons: Heroism gets workers into raging doubles, back to back weeks, and managers come to expect 24/7 heroism, which is a recipe for burnout of your best talent.

The natural personality always handles stress well. Hire the right person, and all your worries are over, one less slot to fill, one less headache to worry about.
Pros: Hire every stress tolerant personality you can. They create a great workplace environment, they do their jobs well with few problems, and they endure hardship well.
Cons: They’re usually in high demand, and short supply.

The monkey on your back view says: get over it.
Pros: We learn from athletics to ignore pain, it’s an ever present aspect of life. Those of us who get good at ignoring stress can usually commit to anything.
Cons: Ignoring the problem increases likelihood of a problem later on, a recipe for injury. Repress the validity of stress, and reactivity and defensiveness to flourish. If I have to live with it, you’re going to have to live with it as well.

What perspectives operate most often, especially by key and exemplary employees, in your workplace?

What are the Statistics Telling Us?

A recently published survey by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health reported a whopping 14% of women, 5% of men, and overall 10% of restaurant and foodservice industry employees surveyed had experienced a major depressive episode in the last year.
(http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/2k7/depression/occupation.pdf)
A survey from fall 2006 done by Diamondpoint Coaching through a research intensive at Salt Lake Community College showed 75% of managers in restaurants polled worked in a high stress industry, 75% said they experienced moderate to high stress, and 50% said stress was a problem in the workplace (detailed review of the survey available in the fall/winter e-news Stress Awareness News).
A study titled "Work Stress, Substance Use and Depression Among Young Adult Workers", from the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology (2005, v.10, #2, p. 83-96),
suggested that while correlations between work stress and depression were easily confounded, the links were worth exploring and the generally beneficial findings were directly applicable to the restaurant and hospitality industry.
What is your experience?

Would You Leave the Cooking to Someone Who Was Naturally Good?

The restaurant and hospitality industry typically trains employees in service and production, but what about stress awareness and management? Business practice has hinged on 'natural' stress tolerance and stress resistant personalities, but how many of your employees and co-workers really know what stress is from a training perspective, has taken a stress management class that describes the different perceptions people have of stress, or the functional and dysfunctional ways that people cope? How many hours of stress management and awareness learning have you or your managers logged?
In my 26 years in the service industry, including a self owned business, no one offered me any information or training in how stress operates in the workplace, or how stressful customers and clients behave. We tend to treat stress management in the independent business community morally. If you don't manage stress well, you lose your job, you get reprimanded, etc. Getting stress management out of an employee in a high volume, high pressure situation like the restaurant and hospitality rush by repression and threat is asking for failure. Of the 9 restaurant and hospitality organizations I worked for from 1996-2006 as cook, delivery driver, server and manager, only one did not have a major catastrophe that could have been avoided with seasonal learning of stress behaviors and effective situational stress management.
What do you think?