Ranting away stress

Jun 01 2007 by Print This Article

If your job has you stressed, rather than snapping at colleagues, try venting some steam over at Workrant.com, a site that claims to be the place to "rant away all your work related stress."

Having a good rant about work is obviously something that transcends national and cultural boundaries. A quick looks ay Workrant's rants find "ranters" from England, South Africa and Australia as well as plenty from the USA. In fact the link to the Top 10 rants shows the top three are (currently) all from the UK.

Most ranters, of course, are complaining about micro-managing supervisors. And most posters are rather young. So Generation Y seems particularly upset with the way managers do their managing.

Workrant is also one of the websites where cursing seems to be the norm rather than the exception – something that has some scientific basis as a means of reducing work stress, as researchers who studied the colourful conversation of workers in a New Zealand soap factory found out a few years ago.

"Long or repeated expression of discontent not necessarily intended to change or improve the unsatisfactory situation," – is both a useful emotional release and a good way of building a rapport with others, researchers at New Zealand's Victoria University found.

Whether or not letting off stream online can also relieves stress, remains to be seen. But anyone who wants to quick and dirty insight into the mind of Gen-Y could do far worse than take a look.

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