Snacks, slouching, stagnant wages: The office is making us miserable
Research has found we’re consuming 1,300 calories in office snacks per week. But it’s not just the treats that are bad for us
A study about US workplaces, released this week, contained some unappetising news: every time you tuck in the cake Janice for HR baked at home, or you help yourself to the buffet on bagel Fridays, you are in fact consuming calories. Hang on a second? Office snacks contain calories? Who would have thought? Thanks, science!
This pioneering discovery that food we eat at work is not calorie-free is delivered unto us by researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC). A study of 5,222 employees across the US, found that people obtain nearly 1,300 calories per week from foods and beverages they get at the office. Mostly these are empty, unhealthy calories.
“To our knowledge, this is the first national study to look at the food people get at work,” said Stephen Onufrak, the study’s lead author in a press release published on Monday. “Our results suggest that the foods people get from work do not align well with the recommendations in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.”
The CDC analysis, which was presented this week at the American Society for Nutrition’s annual meeting in Boston, found that more than 70% of office calories comes from free food, either provided by their workplace or brought in by other colleagues.
It’s not just the free office snacks that are killing us s l owly; pretty much everything about modern working life seems designed to send us to an early, anxious grave. Most of us spend large amounts of the day sitting, for example, and studies have found there’s a direct link between the time you spend sitting and early mortality. Even frequent trips to the gym can’t offset all the sitting. Experts say the best thing to do is get up every 30 minutes for a quick movement break.
Standing desks have become popular in recent years to combat the scourge of sitting, but some evidence suggests they’re not much better for you. Research in the journal last year advised that “replacing office work sitting with standing should be done with caution”. The study, from Curtin University in Australia, found, shockingly, that prolonged standing is not comfortable. Participants in the study (which, admittedly, had a tiny sample size of 20 people) experienced “lower limb swelling” and reduced reactions times. The treadmill desk has also been linked to , although it is somewhat miraculous that anyone is able to use a treadmill desk without being able to think about anything other than how insufferable they are.
Not only are we sitting and snacking all day, we’re doing it in the uniquely modern hell that is the open- plan office. A wealth of research suggest open- plan offices increase stress levels, and reduce your ability to concentrate on difficult tasks. In 2011, a conducted by neuroscientist Dr Jack Lewis found that the distractions inherent in open-plan offices can lead to a 32% drop in workers’ wellbeing and reduced productivity by 15%.
And open- plan offices aren’t just distracting. They’re sexist. A study published last year in the journal G e n d e r, Wo rk and Organization found that women are more likely to become hyper-aware of how they look in open-plan offices and start to dress differently. In a press release, Dr Alison Hirst of Anglia Ruskin University said: “When changing from a more closed, compartmentalised office space to a new open- plan [office] … office workers were more conscious of their visibility and often found this unsettling rather than liberating. Women in particularly felt anxious about the idea of being constantly watched, and felt they had to dress in a certain way.”
Exacerbating all this is the fact that wages have stagnated in America. Since the early 1970s, the hourly inflation-adjusted wages received by the average worker has grown only 0.2% per year. In May, inflation increased to a six-year high, further eroding wage gains.
It doesn’t take a business boffin to realize that what would make office-workers truly happy and more productive is fair compensation, greater benefits, and an environment where people can work in peace and go home at a reasonable time. However, management gurus seem inordinately obsessed with free office pizza and open-plan offices where people can bump into each other for outof-the-box ideation opportunities. As I believe Marie Antoinette, MBA, once said: “If your employee is unhappy, let them eat free office cake.” (Courtesy The Guardian,
UK)