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Effects Of Occupational Stress On Mental Health
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Effects Of Occupational Stress On Mental Health
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A blue-collar worker’s job is primarily physical labor, and with it comes demands not only on the body but also the mind. In “Blue-Collar Brilliance” author Mike Rose explains how these workers overcome problems, physical demands and develop important skills necessary to perform to the best of their abilities without a formal education. I agree with Rose that with experience through observation, trial and error and applying quick thinking strategies, a blue-collar worker can excel and be very successful in life.
It is with these skills that Mike Rose’s mother, Rosie, became very successful in her blue-collar job. At a young age, she quit school to help raise her brothers and sisters. Without a higher education, she became a blue-collar worker by waitressing in coffee shops and restaurants and it was there where she excelled. He mentions how she not only worked as a waitress, but she also learned how to read body language and was able to learn how to keep her feelings and her customers feeling in check. Growing up and observing his mother waitressing, Rose claims “the restaurant became the place where she studied human behavior, puzzling over the problems of her regular customers and refining her ability to deal with people in a
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difficult world.” (275) By observing and learning what her customers needed, whether it be another cup of coffee or just someone to Harbin 2 talk to, helped her to excel in her field. According to Rose, he claims “The flow of talk at work provides the channel for organizing and distributing tasks, for troubleshooting and problem solving, for learning new information and revising old. A significant amount of teaching, often informal and indirect takes place at work” (281). Although these claims may seem trivial, it is, in fact, crucial in terms of today’s concern over on the job training. Throughout my working years, I came across a couple of jobs that were considered blue-collar jobs. I was hired to run several machines in warehouses. I had several trainers and it was important to observe and use quick thinking strategies to stay focused so I could excel and be the best I could be. In each position, I learned what it meant to work hard and to listen to my co-workers, who offered valuable information to help me excel in each position. If I made mistakes I pushed past them knowing it would only make me more efficient and strengthen my determination and my will to succeed. As a result, this brings me to share my admiration for my father, James, who at a very young age began his life working as a blue-collar worker.
Just like Rosie, my father was pulled out of school when he was five years old and was sent to work in the cotton fields in Mississippi to help bring in money. There he worked the fields from early in the morning until sunset where he would remove each piece of cotton by hand and place it in his sack, which was larger than him. His fingers became very sore from the hard, sharp burrs of the plant. It was hard work, but he did what he was told to do. Back then, going to school was not as important as having all the family members work to bring in money, therefore, he never
returned. Harbin 3 In adulthood, he applied for work at General Motors. He knew it would be hard to get in because he didn’t have a formal education. He showed up at GM’s employment office every Monday morning for seven straight weeks in a row until they finally hired him. They started him out with a labor intensive job as a panel stacker. In this position, he would take the pressed sheets of steel off of the conveyor belt and stack them on shelving carts next to the press. He listened to his trainers and co-workers who offered advice and soon he developed a strategy to help him work fast and efficient. Mastering this position, he was promoted to press operator where he would place the sheets of steel into the press where it was then pressed into the mold. From there he again was promoted to crane operator where he would move large stacks of steel and place them in front of the presses. He kept excelling and finally retired as a journeyman in industrial truck repair where he repaired gas, electric and diesel trucks. With a significant amount of on the job training, a person can excel by observing and learning the best way to perform the job and make themselves more efficient. Blue-collar jobs can, of course, be taxing, and repetitive, but people who work smart and are determined to think things through, overcome and conquer any obstacles. Experience and critical thinking skills that are developed on the job through observation, trial and error and pure determination a person can become very successful even without a formal education.
Mike Rose describes his first-hand experience of blue collar workers in his monograph “Blue Collar Brilliance”. Patiently, he observed the cooks and waitresses whilst he waited for his mother’s shift to end. He noticed how his mother called out abbreviated orders, tag tables and so on. Mike Rose describes how his mother, Rosie, took orders whilst holding cups of coffee and removed plates in motion. Rose observed how her mother and other waiters worked and concluded that blue collar work “demands both body and brain” (Rose 274). He describes that Rosie devised memory strategies and knew whether an order was being delayed. She was assiduous in sequencing and clustering her tasks and solved any technical or human problem simultaneously. Managing
In the article, “Blue-Collar Brilliance” by Mike Rose, he begins with an anecdote of his mother working her blue-collar job at a diner as a waitress. Rose vividly describes her common day that is packed with a constant array of tedious tasks she has to accomplish to make her living. The authors goal appears to be making the reader appreciate the hard work of blue-collar workers because society places a stereotype on them as being less intelligent than someone with more schooling or even a white-collar job: “Our cultural iconography promotes the muscled arm, sleeve rolled tight against biceps, but no brightness behind the eye, no inmate that links hand and brain” (282). I agree with Rose’s conclusion that if we continue to place a stigma on
Rose uses very detailed description of what his mother did on a regular basis to get a point across to his readers. He wants us to see that working a blue collar job requires a tremendous amount of brain power. And the reason he is so successful, is because of the detail he uses. When I read this specific paragraph I honestly can imagine what Rosie used to do while at her job. How she adapted to new situations. How she was able to remember what each person ordered out the nine tables she was in charge of. To being able to know if something was taking too long to cook and check-in with the chef to see if there was a problem. These are just some of the problems Rosie would face each day while working as a waitress. I believe that even today waitresses are looked down upon by most people. But they are hard working people and deserve respect for what they
“Intelligence is closely associated with formal education- the type of schooling a person has, how much and how long- and most people seem to move comfortably from the notion to a belief that work requiring less schooling requires less intelligence” (Rose 276). My Dad has worked blue collar jobs his entire life. Security guard, lawn service, woodworker, carpenter, plus anything else that involves his hands. He didn’t have any schooling past his high school diploma. But he’s always told me, “Yeah, I wish I went to college, but I’m sure as hell glad I was taught and forced to learn the skills I have now. Like doing things on my own and working with my hands, my work ethic, and my ability to absorb as many things as I could to get the job done.” Blue collar jobs can never be outsourced. There will always be a need for plumbers, electricians, machine operators, carpenters and many, many more
Until the child labor laws of the twentieth century came into effect, a child leaving school either temporarily or permanently, in order to work and help sustain one's family, was a rather common practice. For instance, Rondal is taken out of school because his father is unable to produce enough money to take care of the family on his own; therefore, Rondal is left to pick up the slack in the mine. This is only another step in the circle of ignorance. If one is taken out of a comfortable educational environment and thrown into a dark, cold, abyss first the ability to cope with life's simple problems is virtually nonexistent. This is later revealed in the book when Rondal cannot come to terms with how he feels about Carrie not to mention his "need" to keep moving and fighting for a better life for the coal miners' children of the future.
Mike Rose’s article “Blue-Collar Brilliance” talks about people judging other people’s intelligence based on their jobs. Mike Rose explains in his article that people with blue collar jobs are just as intelligent as people with white collar jobs because they both use critical thinking and multi task while they are working. The standard of their jobs might be different because of their different ways of learning. People who are considered professionals or white collared individuals learn by studying or reading reports where blue collared individuals learn by performing a task. They learn faster ways to perform the task after they have done it multiple times. I believe that Rose’s thinking is very effective as it tells us that we should not judge
Why does our society think people who have blue-collared jobs don't need intelligent to work there job? Thats a lie according to Rose:
This is an important comparison, as it shows Rose’s view on how scholars generally think of the American working class. “Our cultural iconography promotes the muscled arm, sleeve rolled tight against biceps, but no brightness behind the eye, no image that links hand and brain.” Here, Rose is trying to explain the fault that other scholars have made when analyzing and observing blue-collar workers. They analyze them as being physically strong, they consider them the backbone of the American people, but what most don’t realize is, there actually is a brightness behind the eye. A hidden intelligence that does link the hand to the brain, allowing these workers to possess a different kind of intelligence. The author states that on the shop floor, his uncle “lacked formal knowledge of how the machines under his supervision worked, but he had direct experience with them, hands-on knowledge,” and later generalizes this thought to that of other blue-collar jobs as well, “…the worker becomes attuned to aspects of the environment, a training or disciplining of perception that both enhances knowledge and informs perception.” Formal education is not the only way to learn. All jobs requiring a sort of “training”. From retail jobs, learning how to fold clothes and solve customer problems, to construction work,
Also, children of poor families dropped out of school because they felt obligated to help support their families financially. In To Kill A Mockingbird Scout describes the Ewell family, who only attend school the first day of every year because their family is poor: They come the first day every year and then leave. The truant lady gets’em here ‘cause she threatens ‘em with the sheriff, but she’s give up tryin’ to hold ‘em. She reckons she’s carried out the law just getting’ their names on the roll and runnin’ ‘em here the first day. You’re supposed to mark ‘em absent for the rest of the year (Lee 27).
This plummet’s Rose even further into a slump and deters him from his goals and makes him lose ambition or what ambition he did have. The story takes a big turn for the better on 165, Rose meets the teacher that saves him and turns his live around Jack Macfarland. This teacher unlike any other teacher he has had in vocational education. Macfarland follows a different set of principles. The teacher likes to encouraging his student instead of disciplining them and always strives for them to be better. On page 167, Macfarland even helps Rose get into college. This brought Rose back from the dark side because the grades in the last three years of high school didn’t reflect well for him. Macfarland helped him anyways and saw the potential Rose had and what he could to and that reflects on what Rose is doing today. This emotional appeal is different in tone, but similar in style to the story
The articles “Blue-Collar Brilliance” has an excellence style that is very organized that helps the reader understand and collect their thoughts. The author gives us many examples including the author’s mother and uncle. Further in the article the author also examines many other jobs that others may not respect in society, The examples are very effective and support the author’s point of view very well. The article states “Eight years ago I began a study of the thought processes involved in work like that of my mother and uncle” (Rose 910). We also learn that the author has been researching and studying his topic for many years which shows us that the information is credible. The author uses very good language and tone while addressing the reader, he may have his own opinion but he is not harsh and abrupt about it. The article also has a great amount of detail that helps the reader understand the author’s point of view clearly. An example of great detail is when the article mentions “ Planning and problem solving have been studied since the earliest days of modern cognitive psychology and are considered core elements in Western definitions of intelligence. To work is to solve problems. The big difference between the psychologist’s laboratory and the workplace is that in the former the problems are isolated and in the latter they are embedded in the real-time flow of work with
When you think of work, what do comes to mind? Perhaps a retail job in the mall, or even an accountant crunching numbers. Now, think deeper. What is the true definition of work? Is it the physical characteristics and capabilities that define work or is it the mental aspect? Typically, society tends to classify work as “blue-collar” (physical wok) or “white-collar” (mental work). In the article Blue Collar Brilliance, Rose describes his uncle and mother’s “blue-collar” jobs as both white and blue collar. I didn’t necessarily believe him. I was stuck in the narrow mindedness of “white vs. blue”. But something changed. When Mike Rose (author) states that “Our culture—in Cartesian fashion—separates the body from the mind, so that, for example,
If more people went to college, and less went the vocational route, jobs will take a momentous hit. Today, companies will not even touch an application that does not include a Bachelor’s Degree; even if the Bachelor’s Degree has nothing to do with the job being applied for. Attention is not given to whether the hopeful applicant qualifies for the job; all that matters is that the applicant has a Bachelor’s degree. Murray best sums up the American job market when he says, “Employers do not value what the student learned, just that the student has a degree” (Murray). However, if less people obtain a Bachelor’s Degree, employers will be forced to base applicants on their skills, and abilities. Furthermore, important vocational jobs that lie vacant will be filled. Good electricians, carpenters, and construction workers will always be in
The Blue Collar brilliance is a great example of why the white collar jobs are not always the most useful. Blue collar jobs are the people with not so much of the Intelligence but great social skills and other skills not exactly learned. These workers are not dumb at all but they are hard works the labor workers, the workers that did not go to college. The blue collar workers are equally as important to the workforce to make everything function properly. Just because they did not go to college does not take away from what they mean to the workforce.
A Higher Level of Knowledge Work. Kelley (1990) described an old distinction that divided the work force into blue-collar and white-collar workers. Blue-collar workers typically did manual labor in a factory for hourly pay, whereas white-collar workers did knowledge work in an office on salary. However, changes in the nature of work and the workplace have led to large growth in the numbers of a particular kind of knowledge worker—the gold-collar worker, whose most valuable assets are problem-solving abilities, creativity, talent, and intelligence; who performs nonrepetitive and complex work that is difficult to evaluate; and who prefers self-management. The gold-collar worker is, for example, the computer engineer as opposed to a lower-level knowledge worker such as an input operator. Kelley pointed out that even though the name is new, there have always been gold-collar workers like designers, researchers, analysts, engineers, and lawyers.