Opinion : 233,499 ways to fight workplace violence

Danger-Workplace! Enter at your own risk!

"...a very real, clear and present danger lurks just beyond the consciousness of people who work together eight to ten hours a day, five to seven days a week. It is the potential for violence to occur in your workplace. ...," according to an Internet Human Resources expert.

The "expert" who was plagiarizing Tom Clancy was referring to the danger of being at work — specifically, in "your workplace."

It's so dangerous at your workplace that the U.S. government gave the University of Iowa $233,499 "for an evaluation of policies and procedures to prevent worker-on-worker violence."

The money is coming from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health; the study is one of many related to workplace violence that the federal government has funded in the past two decades.

Look around at your colleagues and ask yourself: Is it worth $233,499 to study ways to protect yourself from them?

The news release, about the funding, from Sen. Charles Grassley's office raised a couple of questions:

• Is going to work so dangerous that we need to spend government money in a time of record debt to find ways to keep employees from attacking each other?

• Why on earth does the U of I get $233,499, and not an even $233,500? It would seem, to me, that to avoid the stress that causes workplace violence, it would be easier on auditors, accountants and others to deal with $233,500 than $233,499.

But government does more to fight violence then spend illogical amounts of money it does not have. It also makes silly suggestions.

For example, a sample policy created by the Minnesota workplace safety office suggested that companies prohibit their employees from wearing slingshots and other weapons to work.

I think that policy is wrong— slingshots could be a valuable stress-reducer at work.. Think of how much more stress-free a workplace would be if every stress-causer in your office knew that if she got on someone's nerves she could get smacked in the back of the head with a marble or some other projectile fired from another cubicle. With a well-armed slingshot expert protecting office morale, the stress that leads to workplace violence would diminish dramatically.

Another expert suggests that to prevent an agitated person from causing violence, you should give him a glass of water — but only in a disposable cup, lest the angry person turn that glass into a projectile aimed at your head.

No, this expert did not say whether to make sure there is no ice in the cup.

"This is no laughing matter," you may say. Workplace violence and stress are serious issues.

You are correct.

According to one survey, one in 10 Americans say physical violence has occurred where they work; another 42 percent say there is yelling and verbal abuse at their work sites. Another 29% admit to yelling at co-workers because of stress, while 14 percent say equipment has ben damaged in workplace rage incidents. Only 2 percent actually admit to assaulting someone at work.

Another survey indicates that 2/3 of all workers says workplace stress is a problem at their office or job site.

And another one indicates that office stress leads people to smoke, drink, hit a colleague, yell at a colleague, cry or eat chocolate. Fortunately, most of those people choose eating chocolate over the other options.

Me, I do eat chocolate. But I prefer eating chips. The crunching can serve as a terrific sound barrier. Sure, it may cause some irritation among those sitting nearby, but hey, I don't need to worry — the government is paying to find ways to protect me from them.

The studies above were "based on "random telephone surveys"," but its authors did not indicate whether the phone survey called people at home or at work on a bad day.

I have only listed a few of the studies on workplace violence that have been done recently. There have been very many more.

But so far, nobody has conducted any studies about how to protect a workplace from grumpy writers who are irritated by the use plagiarism by people who claim to be experts.