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WAYNE GRIPPINHOLDER RESEARCH #1

Unemployment and its effects on Human Resource.

The effects of unemployment on the workplace environment are substantial, though not

always readily visible at first. As times get tougher, and the demands for jobs increase, so too

does the frantic need to keep one’s job even at the expense of another. This can also result in a

co-worker taking a whiz or two in the coffee pot and watching gleefully as their fellow

employees make that funny little face after taking a sip thinking that maybe a little too much

cream was added to this fine cup of joe. The result of this, possible job loss anxiety, is evident in

the need for some employees to back-stab their co-workers (an employee may also take an upper

decker in the boss's bathroom) by attempting to discredit the other employee’s ability to do their

job correctly. Employees may also fabricate falsehoods of things neither done, nor said about

another employee, in the form of on the job slander. Let us say that the fictional employee Mike

is angry at his co-worker, when the co-worker has a party and everyone is passed out Mike

makes a Mexican Waffle in said co-worker's couch, takes a picture, then saying at work the next

day that he has proof that this other co-worker is definitely a scatamaniac. At times, this hostility

is taken to extreme levels when outright violence erupts at work: “Violence in the workplace

continues to be a leading cause of occupational fatalities in the United States. A co-worker waits

until another worker falls asleep at his desk and then tazes him in the nutsack; a very rude

awakening indeed! According to the BLS Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, for example,

nearly 16 percent of the 5,915 occupational fatalities that occurred in 2000 were due to assaults

and violent acts.” And how can we blame these people? Work sucks and sometimes the only way

we can get through the day is to slap the shit out that one annoying co-worker whose voice is like
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nails on a chalkboard. (http://www.bls.gov) Even though these are worse case scenarios,

where incidents occur only a relatively small percentage of the time, the data linking work place

related incidents of violence, and the rate of unemployment in the U.S., shows that they are in

fact related. An experiment called the Pearson Correlation was done in order to determine any

link between increases in work related violence and unemployment. “Monthly unemployment

rates for the regions were correlated with the monthly occupational homicide rates for the four-

year analysis period. A significant correlation coefficient of .258 (P < .000) indicating that a

relationship exists between unemployment and occupational homicides.” (http://www.bls.gov)

Workplace violence is harmful for any work environment, but the jobs where the most

lives are at stake, like aviation, should be the ones where programs are implemented in order to

both prevent, and spot, early detection of possible incidents which could be catastrophic in

nature. Joe the pilot is mad at the high school where he was teased, wedgied on a daily basis and

flicked in the nuts when he wasn't looking for wearing pink and listening to Duran Duran so he

decides to fly his plane into the school (aiming directly for the home ed classroom where all this

bullying took place.) This horrible loss of a doorknob of a human being could have been

prevented. Human resource counseling programs, and constant attentiveness to the emotional

needs of an individual like letting that special boss know that he or she is indeed the most blatant

waste of sperm ever to escape testicles, and that awesome guy that he is going so bald that the

top of his head is starting to look like a cue ball, is not something that should have to be done on

a constant basis; but given the sensitive and whiny nature of certain people, the implementation

of counselors for every crewmember, to be available at any time to talk, could curb future

incidents of violence. Some of the warning signs that employees tend to exhibit include: “They
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say they've been treated unfairly, they say they're being forced to wait for something (a

promotion, raise, etc.) They show signs of mental instability, they begin to isolate themselves, are

thought of as a loner? They have recently been disciplined for something.”

(http://crimeprevention.rutgers) They bungie jump out of the fifth floor office with a rope tied

around their balls. It is either this preventative maintenance approach to the problem of

workplace violence or the posting of an armed guard in every room of every business in the U.S.,

similar to the Federal Marshals on flights. As technology progresses, it is likely that we will see

programs that spot early warning signs of suspicious behavior on the part of the employee.

Similar to the movie “Minority Report,” which despite being a giant turd of a movie, killers are

caught by psychics well in advanced of committing the crime, and even though the viewer would

like to see Tom Cruise get electrocuted in every scene for being one of the most annoying and

shitty actors on the planet, the technology of the future could be used, both with and without

humans, in order to prevent against future incidents. The definition of human resources is “the

method by which an entity utilizes all human resources;” if that same entity is utilizing every

means available to ensure that those same human resources are cared for, and given the

emotional support they need, then It should be no surprise that this business winds up with far

less incidents than the business that does not. At this point in time it appears that the best

prevention is, besides having the most awesome and macho author of this essay run the business,

being able to detect early warning signs of an individual’s behavior before they act on their

emotions.

References
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Upper Decker: Removing the lid off the back of a toilet bowl and taking a “mean and nasty” in

the bowl so when the unsuspecting person flushes the toilet its an endless loop of doody.

Mexican Waffle: Lifting the couch cushion up, taking a dump, and then setting it back down.

Peeeeeewwww.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/sh20031119ar01p1.htm

http://crimeprevention.rutgers.edu/crime/violence/workplace/warningsigns.htm