Burnout

Two weeks into her job as a crime victim advocate in Kensington, Lula Scott stood frozen in fear as a man ran past her on the street, gun raised and aimed at another man. The gunman looked at Scott and the others standing around, then lowered his weapon. Scott wanted to help people when she accepted the job at East Division Crime Victim Services after 28 years of nursing, but she didn't know she would witness violence on the job. "I said to myself, 'I'm not going back.

Penny Reuss remembers vividly the weekend corporate America finally pushed her too far. She worked in her office at Unisys Corp. until 9 p.m. Friday, went home and grabbed supper, worked through the night, slept from 5 a.m. to 8 a.m., worked all day Saturday, worked all day Sunday. Monday morning she handed in three projects. Wednesday morning she handed in her resignation. "There was so much pressure and so many projects," says Reuss, who until a year ago was director of product management for Unisys' U.S. Information Systems group.

Many office managers and supervisors become good candidates for job-related burnout in the first five years on the job, according to a nationwide survey conducted by Administrative Management Society (AMS) of Willow Grove. The study indicated that 57 percent of office managers had experienced burnout at some point on their current jobs. The majority of such managers - 55 percent - were women. "Burnout is indicated by apathy and disinterest in things a worker used to be interested in," said Joseph E. McKendrick of AMS. "Someone who is burned out will suffer a drop in performance and won't be as sharp and creative on the job. Someone who is burned out just does enough to get by. " The best way for a supervisor to help an employee who shows symptoms of burnout is to communicate, McKendrick said.

The problem is obvious: Late in every season, Chase Utley becomes tired, and his performance suffers. So what can the Phillies do to address the issue in the future? Manager Charlie Manuel said that rather than try to change anything about Utley's intense approach, he would like an upgrade in the utility infield position, a player who can fill in for Utley and shortstop Jimmy Rollins when those two need a rest. Two members of this winter's free-agent class would fit that need: Mark DeRosa of the St. Louis Cardinals and Marco Scutaro of the Toronto Blue Jays.

Every cook should come with a warranty against burnout, because sooner or later, it'll hit us all. Any career is vulnerable to the doldrums after 10 or 15 years, so the home cook who has prepared 20 meals a week for 20 years is certainly cooking on borrowed time. Is it any wonder that "What's for dinner?" has become the death knell of culinary creativity? Files of untried recipes and shelves of unopened cookbooks testify to our good intentions, but after a decade or two of uneaten experiments, most of us settle on 10 or so well-tested dishes that have proved themselves acceptable to our families and friends.

He remains the consummate workaholic, still sleeping three nights a week in his office. He spends more time with his football team than he does with his family. He is simply a driven man. And now that coach Joe Gibbs seems headed toward the grim and uncustomary experience of a Washington Redskins football season that ends before the playoffs begin, some inevitable questions have been raised. Is there a parallel between Gibbs, whose stock in trade is hard work and long hours, and Dick Vermeil, the former Eagles coach who followed the same work ethic before he quit after the '82 season, contending that the unrelenting demands of the profession left him a victim of "burnout"?

Faking your feelings at work, especially if your boss pressures you to do it, is an important factor in burnout, according to new research from the University of Pennsylvania. Call-center employees were more likely to feel "emotionally exhausted" - a major component of burnout - if their supervisors stressed strict rules of telephone behavior, such as expecting workers to be nice no matter how rude the caller. While good phone manners are clearly important, companies can pay a high price for requiring perfection.

The words "disability burnout" have been creeping slowly, almost unnoticeably, into the conversations of some of those who fight to secure the rights of handicapped persons. "Disability burnout" occurs when the obstacles placed before disabled persons begin to exceed the number of individuals and methods for their removal. The phenomenon, I think, is ironic, since 1987 marks the 10th anniversary of the signing into law the Rehabilitation Act and Section 504. Some advocates who work on behalf of the handicapped report that numerous social barriers have been removed, but others remain deeply rooted.

Dave "Lefty" Ervin, citing the "burnout" syndrome that felled Eagles coach Dick Vermeil and 76ers coach Billy Cunningham, resigned as the basketball coach at La Salle University yesterday. Ervin had a 119-87 record in seven years at La Salle, ranking him behind only Ken Loeffler (145 victories in six seasons) and Paul Westhead (142 in nine seasons) in victories at the school. The Explorers finished 14-14 this season - their worst record since the 1975-76 team went 11-15. They were eliminated from the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament in the first round for the second straight year and failed to get past the second round for the third straight year.

Dick Vermeil, considered one of the best Eagles coaches ever, walked away in 1982 after just seven NFL seasons because, he said, he was "burned out. " He was 45. Eddie Bond, a senior-to-be at Eastern High School, wants to walk away from a year-round life of basketball, because of burnout. "I definitely have it," Bond said. "I guess that's bad to say. " Especially if you're 17. Unlike Vermeil, though, Bond has not quit. His father told him that he either needed to play or, gulp, get a job. The 5-foot-9 guard from Berlin chose hoops.

For years, as hospitals cut costs to survive ever-increasing financial pressures, nurses argued that inadequate staffing harms patients. California's controversial and, so far, unique response was to mandate minimum nurse-to-patient ratios, which, if applied locally, would prevent 222 surgical deaths annually in New Jersey and 264 in Pennsylvania, researchers here calculated in 2010. Now members of that same University of Pennsylvania team say they have figured out a key reason for that.

Three years after the recession's "official" end in June 2009, about 12 million people remain unemployed, with more than three jobless people for every opening, the U.S. Labor Department reports. So why do employers constantly whine about their inability to find the talent they need from an applicant pool that they say lacks skills, rudimentary educational abilities, and even a willingness to work? Sitting in his office at the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton management professor Peter Cappelli asked himself the same question.

The problem is obvious: Late in every season, Chase Utley becomes tired, and his performance suffers. So what can the Phillies do to address the issue in the future? Manager Charlie Manuel said that rather than try to change anything about Utley's intense approach, he would like an upgrade in the utility infield position, a player who can fill in for Utley and shortstop Jimmy Rollins when those two need a rest. Two members of this winter's free-agent class would fit that need: Mark DeRosa of the St. Louis Cardinals and Marco Scutaro of the Toronto Blue Jays.

Even if you're less impressed (or more exasperated) with Paul Vallas than the folks who gave him a standing ovation Wednesday, here's one reason to be glad Philadelphia's schools chief has a new contract. A hidden secret of school reform is this: Whatever you're doing, you've got to stick with it to get results. The annals of school reform are littered with examples of the "man with a plan" who rides in on a white steed, announces revolutionary change, then a couple of years later slinks away amid burnout or outrage, long before reforms can take root.

Two weeks into her job as a crime victim advocate in Kensington, Lula Scott stood frozen in fear as a man ran past her on the street, gun raised and aimed at another man. The gunman looked at Scott and the others standing around, then lowered his weapon. Scott wanted to help people when she accepted the job at East Division Crime Victim Services after 28 years of nursing, but she didn't know she would witness violence on the job. "I said to myself, 'I'm not going back.

Faking your feelings at work, especially if your boss pressures you to do it, is an important factor in burnout, according to new research from the University of Pennsylvania. Call-center employees were more likely to feel "emotionally exhausted" - a major component of burnout - if their supervisors stressed strict rules of telephone behavior, such as expecting workers to be nice no matter how rude the caller. While good phone manners are clearly important, companies can pay a high price for requiring perfection.

Dick Vermeil, considered one of the best Eagles coaches ever, walked away in 1982 after just seven NFL seasons because, he said, he was "burned out. " He was 45. Eddie Bond, a senior-to-be at Eastern High School, wants to walk away from a year-round life of basketball, because of burnout. "I definitely have it," Bond said. "I guess that's bad to say. " Especially if you're 17. Unlike Vermeil, though, Bond has not quit. His father told him that he either needed to play or, gulp, get a job. The 5-foot-9 guard from Berlin chose hoops.

OK, tomorrow is the big day, the one some of us have been awaiting impatiently for 24 years! So excuse us if we're crazy-pumped here in Eagles nation. But remember, the Super Bowl and its attendant hoopla seem to last longer than a Jerry Lewis telethon. The important thing is, you don't want to peak too early. Otherwise you'll fry out on adrenaline and end up on the floor, curled in a fetal position, hoarse and exhausted, drooling nacho flavoring just as David Akers or Adam Vinatieri is teeing up the kickoff (about 6:18 p.m.)

Indicating that the job pressures drained him emotionally, Butch Davis stepped down yesterday as coach of the Cleveland Browns. Ironically, the news came on the day another coach known for an earlier career burnout, Dick Vermeil, said he wants to come back for another season with the Kansas City Chiefs. Davis never wanted to abandon his dream job, but all of the last-second losses, freaky injuries and intense scrutiny on his family changed his mind. "My sense of it is that the whole environment had become very difficult to manage emotionally, and it was his sense that enough was enough," Browns owner Randy Lerner said.

Why were the Beatles' Let It Be sessions so troubled? After the project sat shelved for more than a year, a frustrated John Lennon turned over tapes from the band's January 1969 recording sessions to legendary producer Phil Spector, who applied his wall-of-sound technique and created the Let It Be fans have known since May 1970. Fellow Beatle Paul McCartney, who was incensed by what he considered Spector's manhandling of the work, is pleased with last week's release of Let It Be . . . Naked (Apple/EMI)