The-Conquest-of-Happiness-by-Bertrand-Russell

inhibiting it is that they feel a general diffused rage
against all the strangers with whom they are
brought into this involuntary contact. Then there is
the hurry to catch the morning train, with the
resulting dyspepsia. Consequently, by the time the
office is reached and the day’s work begins, the
black-coated worker already has frayed nerves and
a tendency to view the human race as a nuisance.
His employer, arriving in the same mood, does
nothing to dissipate it in the employee. Fear of the
sack compels respectful behaviour, but this
unnatural conduct only adds to the nervous strain.
If once a week employees were allowed to pull the
employer’s nose and otherwise indicate what they
thought of him, the nervous tension for them would
be relieved, but for the employer, who also has his
troubles, this would not mend matters. What the
fear of dismissal is to the employee, the fear of
bankruptcy is to the employer. Some, it is true, are
big enough to be above this fear, but to reach a
great position of this kind they have generally had
to pass through years of strenuous struggle, during
which they had to be actively aware of events in