CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE: WHY WORK WHEN YOU CAN WHINE?

A Norwegian study says depressed workers are better at their jobs than happy people.

All over the world, personnel directors who have been foisting perky, chirpy, cheerful co-workers on the rest of us are banging their heads into walls in dismay.

Studies like this are what make the work place so interesting. The little guy in the next cubicle who never smiles or talks to anyone may not be plotting how to bring a submachine gun into the office. He's just figuring out a better coffee program.

Nobody has to pay for it, and when a pot empties, it's automatically refilled with fresh, hot java. And there's always sugar, and the creamer never gets stale or clumpy.

And Santa gave everyone just what they wanted for Christmas, and they all lived happily ever after without any ugly water weight gain.

Work place stress is a hot topic these days. Fewer people have to do more work for less money.

Pretty soon, all that stress will lead to depression, and American workers will be on top of the world once more.

This is like that supply-side economics theory. You gotta be cruel to be kind.

Newsrooms are fun, because reporters like to think we thrive on stress. We're wrong. We thrive on drama. And caffeine. And junk food.

Oh, and don't forget the antacid.

The problem with newsrooms is we have these little things called deadlines. Finish the story by such-and-such time or you're dead.

Or you'll wish you were dead, because you'll be writing about flower shows and vegetables that bear eerie resemblances to celebrities for the rest of your career.

Reporters like getting stories. We like digging out facts and digging up dirt and learning things before anybody else.

It's writing the stories --- putting all that information into a cohesive, readable format the average reader will give a rip about --- that we hate.

Digging is easy. Writing is work. So we put it off and put it off and put it off.

Instant communication makes this harder. E-mail, voice mail, the Internet. ... You can lurk the information superhighway, but you can't hide for long.

We conference a lot. Translated, that means we clump together and whine and moan. Whining and moaning are specifically protected under the First Amendment. Call the Supreme Court. They'll confirm it.

Then toward the end of the day, we start typing, because the editors (or worse yet, The Editor) are making noise about not having any stories to read.

That's when the stress kicks in, because we've essentially spent the day picking daisies and hanging out at the water cooler.

So we very quickly write our copy and then we disappear before the editors can complain about what we've done or assign more.

Our time-management skills may stink, but our survival skills are tops.

Every now and then, someone suggests some improvement to make the newsroom more comfortable. Higher partitions, lower partitions, no partitions. Chairs with arms. Chairs with wheels. Some of the places I've worked didn't have chairs with seats.

A former editor of mine once pointed out that happy reporters don't get any work done. No stress-related drama, no competitive spirit. I whine, therefore I am. That's our motto.

And by the way, get your own antacid.

~Peggy O'Farrell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.