Teaching- any other jobs that make you cry regularly?

Healthcare. The lack of support from up high and the level of individual responsibility. It makes you feel really vulnerable.

It’s the same for most of them! The animal cruelty, risk of injury and constant death side is depressing enough. Then we have the awful clients and the pressure from huge corporates to think about nothing but how to make them money or how much debt is created when clients don’t pay.

Our large corporate is also making redundancies at present which mean those who are left will be expected to work even harder to cover the shortfall.

I also used to work in a call centre, coincidentally dealing with Teachers pension AVCs (NHS and local government too) and was on the receiving end of some awful behaviour by teachers calling. I cried a couple of times. Not on the calls, but after.

I’ve read quite a few books about teaching from the last 150 years or so and in all of them the teachers get emotionally involved with the life of the school and often upset about incidents. So it’s certainly not just modern teachers who are fragile little snowflakes.

What is amu?

Working in Child Protection dealing with child abuse. Full on daily stress.

OMG. My friends DH is a vet and cries all the time, she says! Borderline suicidal but won’t leave as it’s all he’s ever done.

I think the thing I find hardest about working in education is that it takes over your whole life and you can never really get away from it. Even when you are at home there is always loads that needs to be done and no time at school to get it done. Then there's being constantly on edge waiting for the next parent email or even Ofsted. Not to mention trying to balance the vastly varying and incompatible needs of everyone in a classroom.

This couple have convinced themselves that this all for their children and that the children are better off in institutions ( posh ones but institutions) so that the parents can make the money for them all to go posh ski-ing in half terms or to Thailand for Xmas. Where of course, nanny still comes along because the parents still have to work part of it…

This is a real eye-opener -had no idea so many people were distressed at their jobs I’ve had very stressful
jobs-including teaching for several years and rarely cried. I did have a really horrible boss who drove me out of a job I’d enjoyed for years, but I left rather than be subjected to more bullying.
If every job is making you cry though it indicates you are the issue rather than the job and you need to look at a different career.

Agreed :(

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Myself and all my friends feel overworked in a variety of careers. My parent and inlaws don't understand why. There is no off switch any more. Everything is expected instantly due to email, everyone works outside of working hours. I can remember when I began teaching if you wanted to send a note to someone you would have to write it on a slip, walk to the staffroom and you might get a response in 2 days time. Now everyone can send a message instantly so instead of maybe one or two notices a day in my pigeon hole I get about 20 emails per hour whilst I'm busy teaching. I am sure this is part of the issue in many jobs...that and underfunding in other public services so staff are expected to do more and more. Then there's just the way people communicate these days, people (who are probably all very stressed out by their own jobs and workload) are more impatient and used to instant gratification (from the internet) so can become very disgruntled, very quickly if things aren't going their way. I think we all just need to slow down...not entirely sure how we achieve that though.

Veterinary.
Someone in the team cries most days.

Friend who’s a BIG lawyer at a BIG 4 firm cries everyday. Works ridiculous hours for demanding clients and has no time to spend all the money made. They’ve now sent their kids to boarding school ( for the very BEST education) because neither parent has time during the week to do any kid stuff, even with a housekeeper and nanny to hand.

Tv/film industry - at one famous festival HQ there was a place in a nearby building where staff would go to cry… the people at the top were/are fucking awful and demanding.

I doubt the nuns had the same requirements of modern teachers. They were allowed to use physical reprimands and there wouldn't have had a barrage of new initiatives each year, an overcrowded curriculum, ofsted, uneccesary admin or modern entitled parents to deal with. I would imagine as long as they put the fear of God into their students they could spend the day doing and teaching what ever they deemed appropriate and that would largely just be chalk and talk which requires a bit if knowledge and no preparation.

I had a friend who worked in corporate law. She developed an addiction to codeine, started self harming, and had a complete mental breakdown.

When I was just starting out in life 30 years ago I did a lot of retail jobs. I cried over that. But since I've worked for London Underground I've cried buckets. Physical assault, mental & emotional assault, one unders, terrorist attacks, the general stupidity of the public, incompetent management, unsympathetic bosses, and the fact that some stations in a state of disrepair. I'm with a good team now but external to that there's another staff restructure and that will put more pressure on us. Luckily I have access to counselling pretty quickly and in 24 years have only suffered one breakdown but that was also partly down to my marriage breaking up too. Also, I'm very well compensated for it all. If only people in the NHS, social work and legal profession had similar back-up.

I’m old so am shocked to hear that you all are so stressed and overloaded with work.
yes, ‘work’ should be challenging and demanding, but only to the point that you feel worthwhile and needed. Is there no mechanism built into modern day employment where you are allowed to say no more clients, no more patients, my list is full. Also are you not allowed to have a diary, if your day is full that’s it, nothing else can be booked in.
it sounds as if lots of well qualified and experienced professionals are leaving their careers due to mismanagement of day to day events. Seems to me there is very short term thinking in the workplace.
I can see that when people can’t cope with a toxic workplace anymore they vote with their feet and leave, but surely alarm bells should be ringing, this can’t be good for business.

I can’t say I ever cried due to work in all my working life.

No, s/he does not. Humans need to get some manners. Or find the ones we used to have as a society

GP, SS, health care, education, when you work with a vulnerable public you will always be subjected to emotional stress. The more you care the more you burn out.

What intrigued me is the posters saying corporate law. Is it the workload/hours put in or is it down to toxic environment in the workplace?

Yes, I’ve just moved jobs into a very micro managed team. I’m not going to last long.

Social work. As well as the awfulness of what you are seeing and the limitations of how you can support families/the resistance to engagement. It’s the work load, I had to have 20 kids on my caseload. I was supposed to see each child weekly , see the parents at tleast once a month, attend meetings with school, facilitate support/referrals for families. Attend training/ CPD, weekly team meeting, deliver a parenting class once a week. Write reports/action plans after every meeting. Do half a day on duty every week. Plus answer emails, have 1;1 with line manager.

i was employed 37 hours, to do all the above properly took 55 hours and that’s assuming there was no emergencies (there was loads) and no new cases requiring an assessment . If there was that 55 easily became 75 and then once you start to get behind and god forbid you take a holiday you just never catch up.

makes me feel ill just remembering it. I was on30k but for the hours I worked I earned less than £8 a hour.

Working in Buying and Merchandising in high street retail.

I’m actually very good at my job and despite what I’ve written, I’m polite and helpful to every patient. It’d just be nice if people used a bit of common sense and realised I’m asking them to fill in a form for a reason, not because I think it’s a laugh. And I am not the reason your healthcare provider is running late, shouting at me won’t get them here any quicker.