The key objective of the experiment was to determine my readiness to undertake some form of regular employment. Target occupations included mail-room clerk, grocery store restock clerk, and fast food counter service person. The outcomes of the experiment have yet to be discussed with my doctors but I view the results as largely negative for the following reasons:
- There was a significant degradation in task performance over the duration of a simulated 4 to 5 hour shift.
- The work was sedentary. Counter staff, restock clerk, and mail-room clerk positions, are all non-sedentary and would impose a higher level of physical demand. Since there was a noted decline during sedentary performance, it is expected there would be increased difficulty in delivering acceptable performance in an environment demanding greater physical exertion.
- Counter staff need to undertake positive engagement with customers, match customers with their orders, and perform a diverse set of tasks to fulfill the range of orders for different customers. My experimental task was highly routine and fixed. I expect I would experience increased problems in a setting with significant task variation.
- My inability to make positive social response would create problems in all positions with direct customer contact.
- Occupations demonstrating greater levels of cognitive demand would likely exhaust my cognitive reserve fairly quickly. I anticipate becoming more easily confused and mixing up customer orders when faced with a variety of demands. The type of job I would be good at is exactly the type of job best performed by a machine; such highly routinized jobs are likely increasingly rare due to automation.
- Not only was there evidence of decline in the course of a single shift, there was a further general decline over the course of the experiment. The onset of fatigue and headache came earlier as the week progressed. Rather than learning to cope or making a positive adaptation, I appeared to burn through, or use up, the cognitive resources available to me.
- My prior experience in workplace training is that most trainees exhibit improved performance over the course of the initial week whereas I demonstrated a performance decline. I would have difficulty masking this decline from an employer. Employers are sensitive to the long term potential of an employee. I suspect that any inability to demonstrate accommodation to the work routine within the first week would result in termination.
- When I arrived home I was exhausted to the point that I had difficulty performing ordinary tasks such as meal preparation. I retired by 2030 and would sleep through the night waking spontaneously early in the morning. I was getting 9 to 10 hours of rest. I felt fully rested at the start of a shift but noted cognitive decline in the course of a single shift.
- There was a significant psychological burden associated with continued performance. I felt all other aspects of life were set aside in the attempt to complete a full week of effort.
- On day after the exercise (my first day of rest), I was overcome by a need to sleep at 1200 and slept soundly until 1800 and was still able to retire and get to sleep at 2200. I normally find it impossible to sleep during the day and suspect this make-up sleep addressed a fatigue deficit.
- Each day of the experiment included at least 3 hours of walking. I felt this exercise had positive effect. On first return home in the evening I felt stronger than I did on departure from work although this effect quickly dissipated. My hunch is that were I to shift to using public transit I might save an hour of travel but the loss of the exercise effect might prove negative to my performance.
- There was one advantage to the experimental setting which would not be present in a real-world job environment. I had complete discretion to depart when I experienced the onset of fatigue or headache.
—————————————
This is Section 4 of a four part series of posts. The other posts may be found here: