(Ecns.cn)—Over 60% of white-collar workers are suffering from social dysfunction and feel uncomfortable communicating or cooperating with their coworkers, revealed a survey conducted by the Qianjiang Evening News in Zhejiang Province.
Many of the polled office workers admitted feeling uneasy when joining group activities in the workplace. Instead, they prefer working alone and, compared with having a traditional face-to-face conversation, they have a stronger desire to communicate online.
Experts compare such a phenomenon to autism, though there are fundamental differences. Mounting pressures, as well as cultural norms, have both led to the situation, pointed out the newspaper.
'Mr. and Ms. Misfit'
"I just want to be invisible in the office," complained Liu Xiaobin, a media company employee in Chongqing.
This shows one of the most common mentalities among "autism office workers" who avoid eye contact, especially with bosses.
Afflicted by such an agony, 30% of white-collar workers label themselves as "the misfit" who is afraid of invitations to Saturday night parties. Other symptoms include reluctance to join colleagues for lunch, to raise any questions during meetings, or to spend after-work time with people from the workplace.
As one of the methods for employees to bond together, many companies now organize dinner parties or weekend trips. None of these, however, helps the misfit group. They mostly just put them on edge.
"It starts to terrify me. I don't know what the proper words are on such occasions," Liu told the local Morning Post.
Internet only, please!
What will happen when communication in the workplace becomes necessary?
43.75% of polled white-collar workers claim to prefer telephones and 28.13% of them opt for using online communication. Only less than 30% of office workers would choose to have face-to-face conversations to deal with job-related problems.
Little Xiao is one such worker who has long been used to communicating with her coworkers only via the Internet. "We have MSN, we have email, and we have QQ, that's more than enough," Xiao said. However, after awhile, she realized the habit had deprived her of the capacity to have real face-to-face conversations in the office. "It just feels awkward," Xiao added.
Surely, such social dysfunction will affect the job as people tend to solve all work-related problems by themselves rather than seek the solution by discussing it with others. Eventually, they get cast out of the social circle in the company.
No matter how capable they are at their jobs, as one of the results of their social autism, Mr. and Ms. Misfit will sooner or later fail to win the trust of their team or even the boss.
