Have you ever reached a burn out in your job?

[Merrychristmasyoufilthyanimals]

Exactly that?

I think I have, i'm ready to crack.

In a nut shell - I work in a high demand job, little pay and I often have to cover for other people (whom earn more money than me), its also customer service based and the demands are just sole destroying.

Its getting so bad that when an inbound call comes through I feel like i cant even speak, we have meetings today for the 2019 horizon and I can even bring myself to go. I just have no interest. My heart pounds when I have cover the front desk as nearly every customer we get is a complaint or speaks to me like utter shit.

I feel like crying before going to work and on a Sunday I'm a mess. I have never had this before in a job. has anyone else? I feel like I have just hit a wall with the job and.

Fairly much feeling the same as all you guys, I’ve been in the NHS for 25 years, recently palliative care specialist nurse (old Macmillan nurse role), now I have carved a role within a GP surgery as an advanced nurse practitioner, doing the same as I was as a Mac nurse, and some doctor visits, I’m stressed to the eyeballs, but also I can not afford to leave, I would love to have a job where I dont’t have to constantly reflect on decisions I’ve made during the day, and the lack of resources to let us do our job properly, but definitely I’m at burn out stage. Needing to rebalance in the new year!

Another NHS worker. Before mat leave I was in an understaffed office with colleagues who had a lot of sick leave. When one person is off the other has to do all the phone calls and essentially 2 jobs. One person went part time and management struggle to find someone to fill the days so that was even more covering for me.

Also way more patients on the books than we could realistically cope with so literally every single week we had to go through clinics and phone loads of people to cancel appointments. Sometimes we could only leave answerphone messages that would be ignored, patient would turn up anyway and we would be blamed.

I went on mat leave as soon as I could and I'm not going back.

Yes. As one person in team of four with other three on maternity leave and no cover for them.

I had to take all my annual leave in one block at the end of the holiday year as there had been no other time to do it. I was off for six weeks in one block. It was long enough to realise I had to make a change.

Took me about 3 months to find another job, then 3 months notice.

But so glad I did, as all three came back already pregnant with their second children. They started going off on maternity leave about the time I was going to my new job.

I did. On paper, my last job wasn't too bad but to me it was soul destroying. I developed terrible anxiety and was signed off a couple of times.

I then feel pregnant and went on mat leave. Every waking second i had that the baby was asleep I was job hunting. I eventually was offered the position I'm in now and started when my DS was 6 months old. I have no regrets as the last job was destroying me slowly. I'm valued where I am, paid better and have job satisfaction.

I hope you can find a place more suitable,

I've had two jobs which gave me suicidal thoughts. Too much pressure and things build up on me for months, and it gets to a point where I can't do it any more. In my last job I was comfort eating and had gained weight to the extent I was in the obese category. One day I thought I was having a heart attack but it turned out to be anxiety. The anxiety attacks happened probably once a week or more. Obviously it affects my sleep and moods. I think my adrenal gland must have been shot to pieces.

And it's not me to be unhealthy. I have always exercised and eaten properly. Work made me stressed out, depressed, anxious and ill.

Now I have a lovely job, less pay but I can now make it work financially. I am much healthier and a more relaxed person.

I think the way you're feeling is also very common in the teaching profession, hence the recruitment/retention crisis.

But, what is happening to us? Why has everything become so stressful and target/sales/results driven?

I have to work on my won on friday doing 4peoples jobs, no one else will cover and its my usual hours of work so it's all be left to me. Its pay day friday and then i'm off to xmas and then Italy. i so need this break. due back in on the 3rd jan.....I'll suprise myself if I go back

Merry, I hope it's not too dreadful a day. Covering multiple jobs while no one cuts you any slack is truly shit.

In my previous role if someone was off you just divided up the work between the team and did their answerphone twice a day. This trend for one person having to cover multiple jobs is shit. Sometimes people need to accept that a department won't always be running at full capacity and have some patience.

I'm sorry to say that I have found my people.

I've been in a senior public sector role that I love for the last 15 years. The work is very challenging, high volume, and adversarial, but I really enjoyed it. I got a new line manager earlier in the year who is a misogynistic thicko. He's had me well and truly in his sights after I made a whistleblowing report about a male colleague and I submitted a complaint about bullying, which wasn't upheld.

I found out 2 weeks ago that the day after I made the whistleblowing report he initiated an anti-corruption investigation into me, which was entirely without foundation. I only found out because I submitted a subject access request. I haven't been able to sleep since, am crying a lot, can think of nothing else, and am stress eating and drinking. I think I am having panic attacks, as I get to the point where I can't breathe. I'm going to the GP to see if I can get signed off. This has just tipped me over the edge, and I never really thought that my mental well-being was so precarious. I've got a legal consultation tomorrow to sue the fucker.

Hope everyone else is doing ok.

NHS. I like my immediate colleagues; I viscerally loathe our new Senior 'Leadership' Team who are making absolutely no secret of the fact the changes they are imposing on the staff via a pastiche of a 'consultation' process will reduce staff income to such a level that they have had to offer six months of pay protection; that will force people in their sixties onto night shifts, that impose 13 hour day shifts on people already struggling with 9-10 hours of no-break, high-stress, heavy-lifting shifts; that impose 1:2 weekend duties, that re-introduces 'lone working' in potentially dangerous situations, that force people who have specialised back into all duties while maintaining their expertise.

While they themselves work 9-5 Mo-Fri.

The 'new proposals' require there to be 15 participants. It 'goes live', no ifs, no buts on March 1st. There are 4 of us. But it's all okay because they're recruiting very strong 'international' candidates. Who will presumably join the six they most recently recruited in being 'performance managed' because it transpires they aren't actually qualified in the profession. They can't do the job. They're dangerous and you absolutely wouldn't want them anywhere near you, your child or your mum. But this appears to be no barrier to their employment.

Currently 1/2 of my team are now agency.

The only 'good' thing is that the pay cut will make it much easier for me to walk away.

I didn't want my HCP career to end this way but I can no longer do my job under the staggeringly poor middle management the NHS increasingly favours.

Beryl well done. I wish you every success.

Hello, another who has found her people.

I work in the heritage sector so feel a right-lightweight compared to the front-line jobs some of you do in the NHS and teaching etc. Whenever I tell people where I work/what I do, it’s all ‘OOhhh, amaaazing, I’d looove to do that’

I worked in different sector and decided to go for it and five years ago started working for a well-known heritage charity. It was my dream job. Loads less money but I leapt out of bed in the morning to go off to work. Loved it.

I hate it. I am about to break. I have been held back and blocked from advancement over the last four years, openly treated less-favourably. Its not just me though, in a team of six, two have left before me and I’m now desperate to get out. We have an incompetent, insecure, nasty, snide manager – anyone who she sees as a threat to her – as in, really good at their job, works hard, and the real killer - is popular with other teams, etc, is managed out. She is excellent at doing this, her M.O is ‘death-by-a-1000-cuts’, the constant, drip-drip of undermining, criticising and generally slowly doing you down.

I am extremely well qualified to do the job (transferable skills and four years’ experience) but I have been blocked from advancement – everyone knows, but management never deals with the bullying, which is rife across the whole organisation. They just pay people off. It’s a competitive industry so they know someone else will be along soon to pop into your place.

It’s been a life-long passion destroyed by a small-minded, insecure bully who is backed by a pair of chocolate-teapot team members, who only have their own back. Every one talks about our department and the turnover of staff - been happening long before I arrived – and it’s just impossible for management NOT to see the common denominator. I give up.

Dear god Miljah. I'm NHS too and it honestly does feel like no-one gives a fig about frontline staff anymore. It's insane

'I didn't want my HCP career to end this way but I can no longer do my job under the staggeringly poor middle management the NHS increasingly favours.'

I hear you

Yes, NHS, emergency services

Not public sector, but I’m leaving my area completely. So upset that I can’t carve out a career I’ve worked so well at, because the men above don’t want a woman here. This sounds cliche but it has happened to me and yes will happen to your daughters.

Have worked in the City for ten years. Not as important as public sector and obviously not as honourable as NHS!! Two of my best friends are NHS nurses and I’m genuinely very privileged but being pushed out of a job women should have access to as much as anyone else.

Always had great reviews, always great feedback from clients. But I’ve had the death by a thousand cuts approach and by just a wall of blokes who see you as unnecessary competition and seem genuinely baffled as to why I’m still here. It’s a barely hidden attitude now.

The amount of sexism I’ve been up against has been insane. This is what I’ve noticed:

1. You are opportunity-starved. The amount of times work has gone to male colleagues, business development opportunities to them, funding for training or social events... I have fought for the same at every turn with funnily enough no “luck” each time

1. Lack of active support. My male colleagues have informal social support from the men above us (and yes they are all men). I’ve tried the same so much but they won’t bite. So because I’m not in those informal get togethers, I miss updates/ tips/ help on queries.

1. Outright sexism. Jokes about maternity leave, one colleague who spread rumours about me loving anal (I never discussed anything like this at work!!), one of my bosses outright asked why women bothered with work when we were just going to go off and have babies, jokes about my sexual preferences generally (very very explicitly and in front on the whole team... that’s happened too many times across my career to count), married men getting drunk and trying it on despite me saying no repeatedly... god it’s so boring

I’m an outlier in an outdated industry. It feels like I’m in the 1970s and I’m so ashamed/ disappointed in them, I hate telling women older than me about it as it feels like nothing has changed

Fyi lots of women on mumsnet will be married to these men. Ask your husbands some time how many women are at their level. Those women don’t disappear by choice, it has been engineered

Oh god. You all seem to work in really useful and important careers.

I'm currently experience huge burnout and I have a stereotypically 'perfect' job that many people aspire to - think author, works from home.

I've been doing this job for 25 years. I've been successful but I'm not rich. I have a fairly recognisable name within my own industry, however these past 18 months gave felt like working through treacle. I have no energy, no enthusiasm, no drive, no interest and no ideas. I'm barely hanging in there.

I'd love to do something else but am not sure what.

Now if I feel like I'm moaning about nothing compares to the other PP who are dealing with public complaining all day.

I’m shocked changes in the NHS aren’t discussed more openly in local papers etc - if only on the pretence of patients knowing what’s going on.

Can’t believe the things they ask people to do when you’re potentially doing life-saving work, under constant pressure, with little/no support... and management think this is safe? I mean safe for you, physically and mentally, and patients. How do they think that’s safe or a long term solution? Crazy and awful :(

You’re allowed to hate a job that sounds ideal, sometimes tricky as no one offers to ask how you’re doing and they assume that because it’s in a field you love you must love the job too :(

I had this at a very well known bank, I was working from 7-7 every day and sometimes later if I had to. The workload was unrealistic and the manager didn't give two poos if you were struggling.
I came home nearly every night and cried to my now husband. I was so ill at one point from lack of sleep and no food. I couldn't eat let alone even use the loo. You had to be by the phone or email and complete spreadsheets galore it just wasn't feasible.
I broke and I ended up getting myself to the point a back issue ended up in surgery and they think stress, long days and just general eating was all a contribution. I couldn't get a job anywhere because when someone called they just wanted to hear the badness about it not actually care about you!
Now I managed to get a wonderful job who have been nothing but fantastic. It does get better and you have to think of yourself. No job should make you cry or feel depressed xxx

Around 2006 I had a burn out in social care.
Just far too much responsibility and risk being put on staff. I was signed off for a few weeks and went back with supportive management who adjusted my conditions.

I’m still in social care, supervisory, in an amazing, very small and dedicated team. It’s not true that all social care is horribly pressurised and crappily paid. I’m paid well for what I do and absolutely love it.

Every one talks about our department and the turnover of staff - been happening long before I arrived – and it’s just impossible for management NOT to see the common denominator. I give up.

Has anyone told them?

floribunda18 yes! I personally put myself out there and told our most senior member of staff. They made all the right noises and then.......nothing.

Hahaha I've just had a customer speak to me like utter shit over something i cant do a thing about. HAD. ENOUGH!! Fri must be my last day here. i cannot come back to this after new year

NEVER work in customer service either, especially for a prestige car dealership it fucking drains the life out of you. and I tell you what, its made me respect other customer facing roles so much.

Yes, I ended up talking to my boss and having a very open and honest conversation. He was great about it and moved me to a different role which helped. Voluntary redundancy was on the cards 6 months later which I applied for and got. I’m now in a slightly less stressful role, doing something I love and working from home.

Yes. My work load temporarily doubled, but I had two extra hours a week to do it in. Essentially I was doing two full time jobs in just under full times hours, and it was relentless. I was waking in the night having panic attacks, just in a constant state of high anxiety for the best part of six months.

tbh I think something in me broke, because it's been about eight years now and I've never managed to get back to how organised and methodical I was before that.