Since January, Lisa, 45, has been walking on eggshells at work. This would be fine if she were a chicken farmer. But Lisa is a hospital research assistant in Columbus, Ohio, and the people in her small department periodically end up tiptoeing around one particular staff member because he’s so stressed.
“He won’t ever tell us what’s stressing him out,” says Lisa. “He just becomes sullen and snappish and seems about to come apart. It’s hard not to absorb his tension. At the end of the day, I’m emotionally exhausted.” Lisa and five coworkers have each tried to talk to the “dark cloud” as well as to their manager about the problem—but to no avail. “We’ve reached our breaking point, we’re so frustrated. He won’t let any of us help him and our supervisor, while sympathetic, says she can’t require someone to be cheerful—or pleasant, even.”
To be sure, dealing with someone else’s stress is, well, stressful. While at first you may try to be understanding, eventually, if there’s no improvement, you may wind up like Lisa, feeling the strain yourself. In effect, another person’s stress can spread like secondhand smoke: It becomes your problem because you’re there.
“Other people’s excessive or ongoing stress pollutes the environment,” says Brad Gilbreath, PhD, associate professor of organizational leadership and supervision at Indiana University—Purdue University at Fort Wayne. “It erodes civility and causes anxiety. A stressed person is a loose cannon. You never know what is going to set him off and when, and that’s enormously unsettling.”
It seems counterintuitive: You would think that being once removed from the source of stress would help to blunt its harshest effects. But secondhand stress is often just as corrosive, since you’re powerless to deal with it directly. With firsthand stress, after all, you can act—confront your problems, attempt a resolution, count to 10. With secondhand stress, often you can’t do much more than stand there and take it.
Why has Lisa been walking on eggshells at work since January?
walk on eggshells可以理解为“如履薄冰”，这样理解的原因是第一段最后一句话，“the people...end up tiptoeing around one particular staff member because he’s so stressed.”他们团队里的一个成员压力非常大，非常 沮丧，所以周围的人全都小心翼翼的。
What is NOT true about Lisa and her coworkers?
定位第二段，文中只提到了他们团队的每一个人都试图和那位压力很大的成员谈谈，并且也向他们 的管理者反映了这个问题，但是都没用。言下之意是manager是帮助他们了的，但是没有成功，因此C项 manager没有帮助他们不符合文意。
What is the similarity between secondhand stress and secondhand smoking?
由第三段最后一句“...another person’s stress can spread like secondhand smoke: It becomes your problem because you’re there.”可知，二手压力和二手烟的共同之处在于旁观者避无可避，势必会受到影响。
What does the phrase “a loose cannon” most probably mean?
根据该词后面的一句话推测。“You never know what is going to set him off and when, and that’s enormously unsettling.”即你永远也不会知道什么时候，什么原因会引爆它，这让人一直处于心身不宁的状 态下。cannon大炮。
What makes secondhand stress more difficult to deal with compared with firsthand stress?
最后一段“But secondhand stress is often just as corrosive, since you’re powerless to deal with it directly”， 说明二手压力的痛点在于我们没有办法直接应对处理它。