Trying to Figure Out Exactly What the Problem Is

I'm actually a very industrious person. I thought about trying to become a slacker, but I didn't feel I was very good at it. It's possible some slacker-type jobs might work for me- I'd have to identify what they are and find out about them. There must be some video store jobs left.

Interestingly enough, there is a clothing company called Ergophobia. They sell clothes for skaters and surfers. (There's that slacker image again.)

I think my fear is not connected to all types of work, but specific types of work, and in particular, certain types of work environments. The other part of the fear seems to relate to certain types of interpersonal interactions.

I am seriously phobic about office work and office-type environments, especially high-rise buildings. The picture you see above is making me feel queasy.

I've been in clinics and medical buildings with several floors, and they don't usually bother me. I've never worked in one, so maybe this is why.

High-rise hotels are a little weird for me, because of business travel associations. Ditto for airports.

Workplace Phobia Articles, Research

There's a Wikipedia entry on Workplace Phobia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_phobia

In 2009, German researchers B. Muschalla and M. Linden published a study on Workplace Phobia entitled "Workplace phobia--a first explorative study on its relation to established anxiety disorders, sick leave, and work-directed treatment." Here's one link to it: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19844838

And, an article in the UK Telegraph (mentions one of the same German researchers, Michael Linden):http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1561309/Work-phobia-an-anxiety-disorder-not-laziness.html

Here's a better link to the PDF of the article from Beate Muschalla from the German Journal of Psychiatry:http://www.gjpsy.uni-goettingen.de/gjp-article-muschalla.pdf

And here's one from allaboutcounseling.com: http://www.allaboutcounseling.com/library/workplace-phobia/

This amused me- From Wikipedia, a list of "Aspects of Workplaces" (look 'em all up when you have the time!) Wow, I can relate to a lot of these....

• Absenteeism
• Aggression
• Bullying
• Conflict
• Control freak
• Counterproductive behavior
• Coworker backstabbing
• Cyber-aggression
• Democracy
• Deviance
• Discrimination
• Diversity
• Emotion
• Employee silence
• Employee surveys
• Empowerment
• Evaluation
• Feminisation
• Friendship
• Gender inequality
• Gossip
• Happiness
• Harassment
• Health surveillance
• Humor
• Incivility
• Intervention
• Jargon
• Listening
• Micromanagement
• Mobbing
• Morale
• Office politics
• Performance appraisal
• Phobia
• Privacy
• Probation
• Profanity
• Queen bee syndrome
• Relationships
• Revenge
• Romance
• Sabotage
• Safety
• Spirituality
• Staff turnover
• Strategy
• Stress
• Surveillance
• Toxic workplace
• Training
• Violence
• Wellness

Just for fun, let's find the Wikipedia link for "Toxic Workplace": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_workplace