September, 1998

So, I'm kind of a numbers guy, I admit it. Numbers get my attention, but I don't think it's all that unusual in a numbers oriented society. There's a comfort zone in numbers, as if they were somehow more reliable than the people who put them down on paper. But what do they mean anyway? Sometimes they're freaky, at least for me and like I say, I'm a numbers guy.

A recent story caught my eye, something about stress in the workplace, as if it were a new invention. My grandfather was plenty stressed trying to run his 80 acre farm in Iowa and raise five daughters. Try to get the plowing done with five daughters. But never mind, this stress we're talking about was headline stuff with an attention-getting number right in the first paragraph. This particular stress cost companies an 'estimated' $200 billion last year.

Who's 'estimate?' A number like that is Pentagon-sized.

The estimate comes from a couple outfits called the American Institute of Stress and the American Psychological Association. The American Institute of Stress? Give me a break. $200 billion?

Why not $400 billion or thirty-nine dollars? How is the one number any more believable than the other? But believability wasn't part of the article---the number is real merely because it's there and we are left to shake our head, rattle the evening paper and call out to the wife in the kitchen.

"Hey Edna, get this. Stress cost us $200 billion last year."

"A dress cost how much?"

"No sweetie. Stress, I said it was stress! Probably why I was unable to do the husbandly thing last night. Just too stressed out. My share of what it cost down at the mill is almost two thousand bucks."

Which is the reason for another nice little number. The recently announced impotence drug Viagra is expected to top $10 billion in annual sales. The health insurance industry is going nuts over that figure, but it's merely chump change by comparison. Have they looked at the stress bill lately? Has anyone looked at the stress bill? Is there a stress bill and does anyone pay it?

The Year 2000 Bug, that critter that's supposed to make all our computers worthless, cause the planes and the stock-market to crash is causing its own stress levels among corporate executives and pundits. One estimate is that it will cost industry as much as $300 billion worldwide just to fix. Who cares?

Stress costs two-thirds that much on an annual basis and hardly anyone even noticed until the American Institute of Stress told us. Wow, am I ever relieved. We can let the good times roll, fix all those computers and still send a few extra bucks to Asia while we're at it.

Numbers are dehumanizing.

At least that's what I've always been told, but I think maybe that's why we love them so. Fifty thousand a year dead on the highways is a horrible fact but it's a manageable number. Something that we can congratulate ourselves about when it drops to forty-five thousand and purse our lips over at fifty-five thousand. What are the dynamics in that? Why is it that 250 dead in an airline crash is devastating and 500,000 killed with machetes in a far-away country is just sorta sad? Why is it that the one triggers international embargoes and the other international apathy?

Maybe it's because the numbers are faceless and the faces aren't. A kind of featureless totality in the place of individual humanity. I can't imagine personally watching a hundred deaths, much less half a million. I can barely struggle with my own computer's craziness, much less reprogram those of a corporation or a world of corporations. I survive because of the numbers. They make me safe, the numbers are a bedtime story like the stockmarket over 9,000 and Michael Jordan's salary.

I don't demand accuracy or even ask who makes up the membership of the American Institute of Stress. I nod, my eyes glaze over, I turn the page and accept the unacceptable, account for the unaccountable. It's all galloping hooves and a hearty 'hi ho, Silver.'

Who was that masked man, anyway?

Get out of the Archives and read what Jim's writing today