Stress relief in Singapore ‘rage rooms’

BAD day at the office? In high-pressured Singapore there is now a solution – a “rage room” that lets stressedout people take a baseball bat to items ranging from glass bottles to televisions.

The “Fragment Room” consists of a bare, cell-like space with concrete walls, where customers pay to indulge in an unusual form of destructive stress relief.

After being given overalls, helmets, gloves and shoes, people proceed to smash up items ranging from plates to printers.

The set-up opened six months ago and inhabitants of the citystate have shown they have an appetite for destruction. Anxious office workers have given it a go, as well as students and retirees in their 60s.

While Singapore is ultramodern and affluent, it is also notorious for the high levels of stress suffered by its citizens, from school children to adults, who are placed under a huge amount of pressure to do well from an early age.

“Everyone in Singapore – no matter where you come from, what your background is, whatever you do, whatever age you are – everyone is stressed out,” Royce Tan, the founder of “Fragment Room”, said.

The set-up, one of several such “rage rooms” in cities around the world, has two main offerings: half-hour slots with a limited amount of items to smash for S$38 (US$28), or the S$350 “annihilation pack” that lets customers smash as much as they can in half an hour.

And the most popular item to smash? Printers.