My days as a rookie reporter were full of panic. I was interviewing people who worked in complex places -- city government, local industry, hospital administration. I wanted them to trust me; I wanted them to think, This kid understands what I’m saying, and will accurately report it. But of course, I didn’t understand them. I didn’t even understand their language. A local mayor would say “RFP,” and I’d nod and make a note to google the letters when I got back to my desk. If I asked what it meant, I figured, the mayor would consider me a clown. 

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One day, however, an older reporter gave me some liberating advice. “Don’t be afraid to ask d

We spend the majority of our lives at the office, and Americans get a deserved reputation for being workaholics. Last year, 54 percent of workers in the U.S. didn’t take all of their allotted vacation days.

But a new study conducted by the think tank RAND Corporation, Harvard Medical School and UCLA illuminates how particularly fraught employees' relationships are with their workplace, beginning with the statistic that one in five workers deal with a hostile environment -- which the researchers characterized as being “disturbingly high.”  

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The researchers polled 3,066 working adults across the United States. Among the key findings, the study found that jobs in the U.