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February 03, 2012 at 10:18 AM
The organizers of the Tea Party movement, the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the revolutions and mass demonstrations in the Middle East, Greece and elsewhere have communicated one common theme: Economic pressure has been making workers throughout the world feel miserable.
The makers of Conan, a cable talk show, recently tapped into that misery by making a mock Apple TV commercial that demonstrates a high-tech approach to bouncing suicidal workers back to work.
That parody was a form of gallows humor. But a beverage maker has a commercial on the same channel encouraging workers to use a drink full of caffein and other chemicals to get through the work day.
A friend, Rachel, spent so many hours on tasks that her managers assured her would take “just 5 minutes” that she looked into a mirror one night as she was still working and saw that her eyes were red as cherries. She’d worked so hard the blood vessels in her eyes had popped.
The same increase in stress is of concern in the individual market as well as the group market. The lawyers and architects who are lucky enough to jobs in their fields face brutal demands. For now, at least, it seems as if most of the savings achieved by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will be squeezed out of the flesh of physicians.
