No to politics

Psychiatrists in the capital have been receiving cases of people who cannot cope with the stress that follows gossip at workplace. Neha Sharma finds out...

Twenty six-year-old PR executive Rajesh Singh* wants to quit, take a two month break and think of a different career option. Why? Because he cannot take office politics anymore. “What is happening in the next cubicle?”, “Do you think boss favours her more?”, “I think X told Y that you told X that Y does no work, yet draws a higher salary.” These are just some things that led him to bid adieu to the office environment. Psychiatrists and career counselors say that an increasing number of people are opting for work-from-home careers to escape the unhealthy politics.

Psychiatrists in the Capital have been receiving cases of people who cannot cope with the stress that follows gossip at workplace. Psychiatrist Deepak Raheja says that office politics has always existed but off late people have started taking psychiatric help for it. “This is because of decreasing tolerance and the inability to adapt to an unsuitable environment. This is high among people in the middle and upper management level.”

He says that his patients are people who put up their papers due to trivial reasons like gossip, and a workload that was not part of their profile. “Relationships with employers and colleagues go through a rough patch but people are not able to withstand such a phase,” he says.

Rupa Sethi*, 22 left her job as a staff writer in a magazine and is presently freelancing because she could not put up with the favouritism, loose talk and link-ups that were engineered in the office.