I hope a lot of money wasn't spent to make this amazing discovery...
French workers biggest whiners
Don't worry (or complain), the US came in fourth (it was France, Britain, Sweden, then us). I now plan to launch a multi-million dollar international study to prove that excessive pay and benefits cause workers to be unhappy. Do you know which workers have the lowest morale? The Japanese (according to this study) and just a notch less depressed than them are the Germans. Apparently, they are unhappy, but they won't express their unhappiness - still it's consistent with my hypothesis.
If my hypothesis is true, it would stand to reason that dismal pay and zero benefits would make people happy. As it turns out, the happiest are the Dutch - and they have a pretty good deal from what I understand, but guess who is second happiest - Thai workers!
A few years back, a group of UD students picketed the GAP on Main Street to protest the horrible plight of the company's Thai workers. Ooops! Turns out they should have been picketing Daimler-Chrysler.
Seriously though, I have often felt that unhappiness is amplified when people have the illusion of control. If people have control, they make changes to be happy; if people have no control, they accept what they cannot change and work around it. When people have the illusion of control, they constantly petition, vote, argue trying to make changes only to have their efforts repeatedly thwarted. I can tell you from personal experience that it's pretty miserable to be in this position.
If I ever decide to get my PhD in Management, I guess this would make for a nice thesis.
(Don't tell me it's already been done. All I have to do is add a twist, "Illusion of Control in Higher Ed", "Illusion of Control in Higher Ed Institutions in the Mid-Atlantic", "Illusion of Control in Higher Ed Institutions in Northern Delaware", you get the idea...).
Here's another study that didn't need research to discover:
$%^#!! Miami drivers have the worst road rage
Well, duh!
Wait, more revolutionary news:
Airlines rank below the IRS in new customer satisfaction index
It's not news if you have been on a plane in the last 5 or 6 years.