Welcome to the most depressing week of the year. Photograph:Action Press/Rex Features
Good grief! Will this month of misery never end? Still January stretches on, with more than a week of bad weather, broken resolutions and scary bank balances before we reach the comfort of February. No wonder the office is full of people with cross, tense lines where their smiles used to be.
But at least we're all allowed to be annoyed. Because according to a very complicated (and not necessarily strictly accurate) formula worked out by psychologist Cliff Arnall, this is the most depressing week of the entire year (a sum that was done before yesterday's global crash in share prices). Which not only means you're allowed to wallow in the sheer horror of being trapped in said worst week for the next three days, but also that better times are just around the corner.
Or so you'd think. You'll be spectacularly unsurprised to learn that your office is unlikely to turn into some kind of blissful retreat just because there's an F in the month. Mainly because, according to the wildly ill-named Happiness at Work Index commissioned by Badenoch & Clark, one in five of your co-workers is unhappy at work, and almost half the workforce anticipate changing jobs this year.
Obviously, 48% of people are not actually going to move to a new role within the next 12 months - HR would go into meltdown (although, incidentally, HR are the unhappiest profession among those surveyed, which doesn't exactly give one confidence in their morale-raising abilities). But could the figure of 6.1 million people being unhappy at work really be right? Are you among them? And if so, what could make you love your job just a teeny, tiny bit more?
