A study first published in The American Journal of Medicine finds that your boss’s bad breath may be shortening your life.
The year long study that concluded in late 2018, conducted by Dr. Dalvin McGregor and Professor Shane Alton of The University of Minnesota, was originally intended to see if there is a correlation between overall life expectancy and work related stress. However, a more narrowed focus was quickly developed once the glaring culprit emerged.
According to research that reviewed several white collar businesses near the U of M campus, 84% of employees studied had experienced some type of elevated stress when having face to face meetings with management. With stress being a contributing factor to life altering medical conditions, the team decided to dig deeper.
“It was obvious that something about these meetings with management was causing stress,” explained Professor Alton, “But after months of offsite research and thousands of dollars in grant research funds, we still weren’t able to pinpoint the exact cause of these elevated levels of stress.” With more grant money in the pipeline and all the time in the world, the team decided to begin attending these face to face meetings. And the results were staggering.
“In our very first meeting with management, the very first thing I noticed was the alarming number of coffee cups in the room,” described Professor Alton . “It was like a 3 cup to 1 executive ratio. It was crazy! The second thing I noticed was the horrifically bad breath all that coffee was producing. It was terrible!”
With a shake of the head and emphatic hand gestures he continued divulging his observations. “Imagine walking into a room with 3 or 4 executives spewing coffee laden breath all over you! Of course you’re going to be stressed! We felt we had seen all we needed to see and began backing our hypothesis with data.”
While some have argued these initial observations were nothing more than speculative evidence, the team deliberately focused on screened statistics to back their theory. In turn, their hard work ultimately got the study published and justified their questionably spent grant money. What was the most damning statistic they mined you might ask? 91% of the stress inducing members of management were coffee drinkers.
“It’s pretty clear what’s happening in the workplace,” stated Dr. McGregor. “Coffee breath is causing undue stress on employees, which is leading to a whole host of greater health issues that plagues our communities.”
When asked if there was a solution in sight, the Doctor replied, “I think the COVID-19 pandemic has introduced a potentially permanent solution. While masks were initially intended to protect against germs, they may also protect us from the bad breath of leadership.” He then shifted heavily before a final ringing of his bell,” However, we’ll definitely need more grant money to fully investigate this hypothesis.”
When confronted by critics on whether or not breath mints had been factored into the study, neither the doctor nor the professor elected to comment.
