We’re #1! Or #50: Georgia ranks first (or last) in happiness of employees, according to rando website, then reported by WSB
Considering the fact that I have very specific brog tags for “ohatlanta” and “ohgeorgia” I’ve been critical of my home state since basically, I moved here. It did not take too long for me to recognize bullshit when I saw it, combined with the age in which I moved here, really growing up into bullshit recognition and as my generation is often liked to be labeled, as woke, there is an odd sense of ironic satisfaction at seeing Georgia win, or tank at employee happiness.
It validates a lot of criticisms I’ve had and witnessed throughout my life living here, and there’s a part of me that likes to pawn off my own struggles with depression as having reason on account of working.
But back to the data aggregation itself, the rankings were based on criteria such as quit rates, commute times, working hours, injuries, paid time off and state positivity levels. Considering the fact that Georgia has turned into a battleground state politically, it obviously has a very high rate of contention in general state happiness, as at any given point, nearly half the state is pissed about the color of it. But if I had to guess what is really anchoring down the state’s general workforce happiness, has got to be the commute times, in which is further anchored down probably by Atlanta itself.
According to GPS, I’m barely six miles from my office, but I still need to give myself an entire half hour in order to traverse home to work, and I don’t actually have to touch a highway either. I’m usually below the median commute time of 28.7 minutes according to this study, but barely, and any little divot such as a fender bender or some rando school bus being late easily pushes me past it.
And to think there were varying times in my life where I had commutes of 70+ minutes and 55 miles each way, and I was living my life then, I couldn’t imagine going back to such hellacious commuting conditions ever again.
But again, I’m just going to assume most of Georgia’s ranking is weighted heavily by Atlanta since lets face it, outside of pockets of civilization in Augusta, Macon and Savannah, there ain’t shit else in Georgia that could muddy up the picture of the state, and even those pockets are merely blips of population compared to the five million-plus that live in the Metro Atlanta area. And most are innately aware of the escalating cost of living in the Metro Atlanta area, with obviously the wages not rising commensurate to meet them, which would of course lead to a lot of unhappiness. I’m sure this is nothing different than lots of other major cities across the nation, but based on this study, it’s very apparent in Georgia, more so than everywhere else.
Honestly though, when I came across this article, I thought I’d have way more to say about it than I apparently do, but continuing this post any further would just be parroting things already said. Georgia is apparently full of a bunch of unhappy people in the workforce, and although I don’t necessarily think I’m one of them, I’m definitely not really in the happy camp on a daily basis, but I don’t think a lot of these correlating conditions really help either. I know my general sense of happiness wouldn’t mind some extra wage to help alleviate a lot of my anxieties and issues.
