Assignment 2-Managing Stress and the Work Life Balance
Case Study
Stress Takes Its Toll
Larry Field had a lot of fun in high school. He was a fairly good student, especially in math, he worked harder than
most of his friends, and somehow he ended up going steady with Alice Shiflette, class valedictorian. He worked
summers for a local surveyor, William Loude, and when he graduated Mr. Loude offered him a job as number-three
man on one of his survey crews. The pay wasn’t very high, but Larry already was good at the work, and he believed
all he needed was a steady job to boost his confidence to ask Alice to marry him. Once he did, events unfolded
rapidly. He started work in June, he and Alice were married in October, Alice took a job as a secretary in a local
company that made business forms, and a year later they had their first child.
The baby came as something of a shock to Larry. He had come to enjoy the independence his own paycheck gave
him every week. Food and rent took up most of it, but he still enjoyed playing basketball a few nights a week with his
high school buddies and spending Sunday afternoons on the softball field. When the baby came, however, Larry’s
brow began to furrow a bit. He was only 20 years old, and he still wasn’t making much money. He asked Mr. Loude
for a raise and got it—his first.
Two months later, one of the crew chiefs quit just when Mr. Loude’s crews had more work than they could handle. Mr.
Loude hated to turn down work, so he made Larry Field a crew chief, giving his crew some of the old instruments that
weren’t good enough for the precision work of the top crews, and assigned him the easy title surveys in town.
Because it meant a jump in salary, Larry had no choice but to accept the crew chief position. But it scared him. He
had never been very ambitious or curious, so he’d paid little attention to the training of his former crew chief. He knew
how to run the instruments—the basics, anyway—but every morning he woke up terrified that he would be sent on a
job he couldn’t handle.
During his first few months as a crew chief, Larry began doing things that his wife thought he had outgrown. He
frequently talked so fast that he would stumble over his own words, stammer, turn red in the face, and have to start all
over again. He began smoking, too, something he had not done since they had started dating. He told his two crew
members that smoking kept his hands from shaking when he was working on an instrument. Neither of them smoked,
and when Larry began lighting up in the truck while they were waiting for the rain to stop, they would become
resentful and complain that he had no right to ruin their lungs too.
Larry found it particularly hard to adjust to being "boss," especially since one of his workers was getting an
engineering degree at night school and both crew members were the same age as he. He felt sure that Alfonso
Reyes, the scholar, would take over his position in no time. He kept feeling that Alfonso was looking over his shoulder
and began snapping any time they worked close together.
Things were getting tense at home, too. Alice had to give up her full-time day job to take care of the baby, so she had
started working nights. They hardly ever saw each other, and it seemed as though her only topic of conversation was
how they should move to California or Alaska, where she had heard that surveyors were paid five times what Larry
made. Larry knew his wife was dissatisfied with her work and believed her intelligence was being wasted, but he
didn’t know what he could do about it. He was disconcerted when he realized that drinking and worrying about the
next day at work while sitting at home with the baby at night had become a pattern.
Case Questions
What signs of stress was Larry Field exhibiting?
How was Larry Field trying to cope with his stress?
Can you suggest more effective methods?
