Introduction
The assignment is focused on analyzing a piece of text to better understand what factors can influence a person’s work efficiency and well-being. The story discusses concerns of a hospital worker, Carla’s, job at a new workplace (Chiu School of Business, 2017). Throughout the story, it appears that Carla is dissatisfied with her work and life environment, utilizing ineffective coping mechanisms to solve her problems. Analyzing her condition from the perspective of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, one can see that her psychological and self-fulfillment needs are not being met properly (Mcleod, 2020). One of the basic desires of an individual is to feel love and a sense of connection. Unfortunately for Carla, she has not managed to make friends or establish personal relationships with her co-workers. She feels distant from her peers at college and does not find her place at work, with her colleagues only using her for their benefit. Another need that is left unfulfilled is her desire for recognition and a sense of self-respect (Mcleod, 2020). Carla, in hopes of gaining affection from those around her, makes an extra effort to help them, while completely disregarding her condition. The woman also often gets scolded and yelled at by her boss, which, in turn, further decreases her self-worth. Finally, Carla’s desire for self-actualization is also not being met. The woman is unable to pursue her goal of working at a front desk and is forced to do menial tasks that she finds confusing. These factors create a deep sense of dissatisfaction in Carla, making her quality of life worse.
Interference with the One’s Needs
The inability to fulfill her needs negatively impacts Carla’s lifestyle and health. Judging from her thoughts, she is deeply dissatisfied with her current position at work and finds it hard to fulfill her duties. The stress accumulated from trying to accomplish her tasks impacts her health, “she had begun to grind her teeth and woke with a headache and a sick feeling in her stomach” (Assignment 1 [PDF file]). Other colleagues and the manager have a low opinion of her, making her feel inferior and develop a need to earn their love and respect. The inability to achieve self-fulfillment also negatively impacts her well-being and contributes to her insecurities about her performance.
A few maladaptive coping strategies can be spotted in Carla’s behavior, including denial, self-blame, and venting (Semel Institute). After her first day of work, Carla has a breakdown, airing her frustrations in an unsightly manner. This was a way for her to process the negative emotions she was experiencing due to work complications, which only exposed her for being unprofessional. She also calls herself useless after failing to regulate the patients and manage her work, blaming herself for the events that transpired. Self-blame puts more stress on Carla instead of helping to dissipate it and does not solve the core problems. She also expresses denial of her current situation in the form of drinking, opting to forget about her work and colleagues instead of confronting them.
Time Management Issue
Time management can be considered an issue for Carla, as displayed by the difficulties she faces with her job. During her first day at the front desk, she gets overwhelmed due to scheduling errors and cannot assist the patients in the hall and receive calls at the same time. Her failure at managing the patients and answering calls leads to trouble for the hospital and its reputation. Later, when Carla is reassigned to do a list of tasks during the day, she does not have enough time to complete them because she keeps trying to help other people. Carla’s inability to correctly determine the priority of her tasks leads to her not being efficient with her work.
The presented problems could be solved in a variety of ways. To start, the issue of not being able to receive calls and manage patients at the same time could be solved by calling other, more experienced staff members to help her deal with the situation. Though Carla states that she could not find anyone, she should have called them using the work phone. Alternatively, she could have asked her manager to make somebody help her on the more difficult days or develop a better schedule, as the current one seems to contain errors that hinder the work process. This would have both provided Carla with more experience and solved the issue of not being able to tend to many tasks at once.
The problem with not handling her daily tasks properly can be easily resolved as well, by first handling the tasks she must complete, and then helping people in her spare time. This approach would make her workload manageable and more organized. Not to mention that she could have freed up her schedule by refusing to do the extra tasks for her colleagues or asking her manager to lessen her workload.
References
Mcleod, S. (2020). Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Web.
Semel Institute. How Do You Cope? Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. 2020, Web.
Chiu School of Business. (2017). HUCL1101 Role Concepts in Health Care. Bow Valley College.