6
University Daily Kansan / Tuesday, December 3. 1991
Job stress increases in U.S. workplaces because of economy
WASHINGTON — The staggering economy probably is fueling stress in the workplace. All the talk of mass layoffs and high unemployment makes people wonder whether their job is on the line. too, specialist says.
The Associated Press
Managers often tend to be tougher on employees during hard times, said Jim Green, a labor historian at the
"What you hear is boom, out the door, downsizing. Nobody's safe. There's that feeling out there," said Jennifer with the unemployed in Philadelphia.
University of Massachusetts. During the Great Depression, for instance, many supervisors were abusive to workers, because they knew that the employees were too scared to quit, he said.
"People are caught in a pincer. There is the fear of losing your
Up all night
job and the degradation of keeping it," Green said.
U.S. employees feel controlled by work and trapped in jobs that offer them little security.
Low morale was a complaint of employees at a post office in suburban Detroit where a shooting rampage two weeks ago left five dead. Just the week of the shooting, when a 31-year-old hospital worker shot himself before taking his own life, an employee was sent home for whistling, workers said.
The Royal Oak, Mich., shooting was the latest in a series of post office shootings and prompted management to expandwide hot line for worker complaints.
If it's any consolation, said management consultant Debra Benton, the boss probably frets just as much as you do if not more.
"Even the most successful, even the most accomplished, still occasionally wake up at 3 a.m. thinking, 'I hope I don't get found out,' said Benton, who owns a consulting firm in Fort Collins, Colo.
"Your boss and your boss' boss,
everybody has it. For them, it's just amplified. They have a much bigger mortgage, a much bigger ego. The older one happens higher when they fall, she said.
Besides feeling trapped economically, Green said, U.S. citizens probably feel hemmed in geographically.
In years gone by, frustrated workers could move to a booming region of the country, such as California or the Southwest, hoping to find a better job and living conditions. Those boom areas don't exist any more, he said.
"If they didn't like the foreman, they'd say 'Take this job and sove it'
and move to a new town. That illusion is ending,"he said.
"Life outside of work is less rich. People are less connected to their extended
families. People have postponed having children, they're less connected to other parents, to their community." Green said.
"It it used to be that work was something you did, but it wasn't your whole identity," he said. "With the kind of it they do today, the kind they are obsessed with their income."
Benton said that one of the keys to controlling stress was realizing that it was not just a bad idea.
"If your choice is to seek the corner office, you have to say, 'OK, there's going to be some stress and pressure that comes to it," the management said.
It's also important to accept that the pae might not always be there, she said.
With the advent of the holidays,
stress in general can deepen, Benton said,
because everything is exaggerated. s
"Thank God we have January to give us a breath of fresh air, so we can say, 'Hey, I've got a fresh start,' she said.
Atmosphere and limitless coffee draw students to late-night spots
Jim Danoff-Burg, Lawrence graduate student, works on his thesis
By Jennifer Bach Kansan staff writer
At 10:30 p.m. Nov. 25, Hedy Settar sat in a boat at Perkins Restaurant, ordered coffee, opened her notebook and settled down for the night.
"I'll probably stay until about 4 or 5 a.m.," she said. "I've been known to
Seitter's actions are not unusual
Perkins Restaurant, 1711 W. 23rd St., and other restaurants in Lawrence have become late-night study halls for many students at the University of Kansas.
About 10 p.m., students begin trickling in, books in hand, to spend the night studying and drinking coffee, a lot of coffee.
Seitter, St. Louis senior, said she liked the atmosphere of studying in all-nightrestaurants.
"It is distracting enough to make me concentrate," she said. "When you go to a restaurant not everyone is studying, so you don't have to feel like you are under all that pressure or have all those deadlines."
The silence that pervades libraries make studying too stressful for her, she said.
Studying in restaurants is something Seitler said she had done for a long time, even before she came to KU.
"I've done this regularly," she said, "but I found it strange that people here don't have too many all-night restaurants to go to."
The Village Inn Pancake House Restaurant, 821 Iowa St., and Muncher's Bakery, 925 Iowa St., also stay open all night.
Eric Cote, general manager at Perkins Restaurant, said that students came in to study all year long but that toward the end of the semester, when finals were beginning, more students would come in and stay later than usual.
However, employees sometimes cannot let students study for hours on end.
"If we are busy, we have to limit the students to study for just an hour at a time," Cote said. "But if we are slow then they can sit there all night. We
don'tcare."
Many students probably study in restaurants because it gives them an opportunity to get out into a fun environment instead of sitting at home, Cote said.
"The library closes at midnight," he said. "But the restaurants are always open."
Meredith Rubis, an employee at the Glass Onion, 624 W. 12th St., said that many students came to the restaurant, ordered coffee and sat for hours studying.
"We don't like to kick anyone out, but sometimes it gets to the point when we need them to leave so we let them know," she said.
Bart Smith, owner of La Prima Tazza, 638 Massachusetts St., said that a steady stream of students came into the coffee shop to study during the day, but that at night the restaurant usually was too busy to accommodate them.
"They come because they like a little background music," he said. "Here they can study and get served. If they stayed at home to study they would tend to spend most of their time walking back and forth from the refrigerator."
Although it is not open all night, La Prima Tazza serves students endless cups of coffee.
"Coffee just seems to go with books pretty well." Smith said.
tracey Jennings, Lenexa senior, said she had studied at 24-hour restaurants three times.
"I can study in restaurants pretty well," she said. "Sometimes it's more convenient. If you are working with someone, it's hard to study at the library without distracting someone else."
Jennings said that when she finished studying she always left an extra large tip for sitting at one server's table for solo.
Seitter said that being able to study in a restaurant was psychological.
"I can really study for my majors here," she said. "It just seems to flow really well for me here."
Possibilities for laser technology are unlimited, technologist says
Kansan staff writer
By Kerrie Gottschalk
Kansan staff writer
Mention the word laser, and one might think of Luke Skywalker dueling with Darth Vader.
Or maybe the word laser brings up images of Captain Kirk exploring the universe, firing phasers at enemies.
Whatever it brings to mind, the laser is not a mysterious, science fiction tool any more.
In the last 30 years, the laser has beamed its way into everyday equipment and household appliances.
Some of those things include bar code scanners in grocery stores and compact disc players.
duced by lasers.
Lasers also are responsible for speedy and clear long-distance telephone transmissions.
In medicine, lasers are used as surgical tools, and in the business world, lasers print letters, memos and spreadsheets faster than ever before. Light shows at concerts also are pro-
Ellison researches laser applications and constructs laser equipment.
"The possible applications for lasers are unlimited," said Wes Ellison, an electronics technologist at the University of Kansas.
Ellison said that 25 years ago, when he was in high school, laser technology became popular.
"Laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation."
"I was fascinated by the laser, and I've been working with them ever since," he said.
Ellison said he liked laser technology so much that he had his own workshop and thousands of dollars worth of equipment.
He explained that producing a laser was a fairly simple process.
or argon.
A laser is produced by sending an electric charge through a specific, light-emitting medium such as crystal or gases, like carbon dioxide, helium
Whatever material is used, it is encased between two mirrors in a tube-shaped instrument. One of the mirrors is 100 percent reflective and the other is about 98 percent reflective.
As electricity passes through the tube, it interacts with electrically charged atoms within the substance. The interaction of electrical charges creates light that intensifies and amplifies as the electrical charge is increased.
As the light grows stronger, it bounces between the mirrors. The light eventually passes through the 98 percent reflective mirror.
The result is a single-colored beam of light.
Helium produces a violet beam of light, krypton produces a red beam, and carbon dioxide produces an orange beam. Invisible and produces intense heat.
Ellison demonstrated a carbon dioxide illusion by placing a plank of wood
about 15 inches away from the laser.
Within seconds, the wood burned in the noot where the beam was aimed.
In a 1991 issue of Scientific American, Michael Burns, a professor at the University of California at Irvine, explained some medical uses of lasers.
Ellison explained that compact disc players rely on a small laser to read and relay digitally encoded information on the disc.
Burns reported that an argon laser, which produces a blue or green light, can destroy port-wirth markings and can be useful in removing tattoos.
Depending on the wavelength of the laser, the beam can heat and destroy an area. The laser is more accurate and results in less bloody surgical sites than traditional methods.
Lasers also can create shock waves that break apart mineralized deposits such as kidney stones. And a laser can cause an area injected with dye to fluoresce, which can help diagnose a problem like cancer.
Lasers have medical uses as well as everyday functions.
Burns said there would be many other medical uses of lasers in the future.
"Only time and good clinical studies will tell how these applications can be
expanded," Burns wrote.
Ellison agreed that laser applications were limited only by the human intelligence.
"The future is looking good for lasers," he said.