It confirms your weakness and powerlessness. It promotes the idea of expecting someone else to solve your problems. And more often than not today, that someone else is the employer, the source of the problem in the first place. As a consequence, there is a peculiar new form of paternalism in some workplaces, where strong, coping bosses gently soothe their employees furrowed brows. No, they throw the problem back at them.
Management theorists are keen to explain how to deal with 'work overload'.
If you do this you will feel in charge and have control'. In other words, you have to manage the work your employer demands of you so that you do more in less time for the same money. If there is too much work and not enough staff to do it, the real solution is not writing lists and shuffling paper into priority piles, but more staff. And the employers control that resource. Cooper is right to identify taking control of working lives as the solution to workplace problems.