To wonder if there are jobs that are reasonably paid and not stressful, and if so, what those jobs are?

[Jinsei]

Have had a shitty day at work, and have concluded that I just don't want the hassle of managing other people any more. I know that stress comes with the territory, and that's why managers earn more, but I want out. I don't mind taking a pay cut but I am the main breadwinner in our family and need to pay the mortgage.

Are there any jobs out there where you can earn a living wage without being stressed all the time? And if so, how do I get one??? The other day I was stressing about a potential redundancy situation in a few years time, but now I'm almost wishing it would happen...

See, I don't mind difficult customers at all. Years ago, I worked in a busy frontline role and we had all manner of weird people coming in with lots of unreasonable expectations, but I rather liked it. It's the difficult members of staff I have problems with.

Don't mind managing money, either marshmallow. I find excel infuriating at times, but I'm actually quite happy messing around with a spreadsheet and trying to get everything matched up. :)

I want to know how you freelance journalists get paid for it? I've had a fair few articles published, but have never been paid. How do I get someone to pay for it?

I don't write articles at the moment autumn, I'm an editor, so I do regular work for one magazine at an hourly rate.

autumn - why are you working for nothing?

Did you go to uni OP? At the university I went to they offer lifelong access to their careers advice service for free.

I've often thought being an optician would be relatively stress free but reasonably well paid.

Once the studying is over, it looks pretty easy!

Sheesh - my dad was an optician...believe me, it is not stress free at all - or it wasn't in his day. Mind you, if you can get locum work the money is crazy :)

Love the way all the "stress free" jobs are suggested by someone who's probably never tried them :o

Working in IT can be pretty stress free if you find the right role and company, and pay quite well too. It's probably some people's idea of hell though ;)

After years of high pressure jobs managing people who were doing the job I'd trained for, I'd had enough of the travel, stress and general grind. I took a step back down the ladder to do the job I'd originally gone into and loved. I have no management meetings, people issues or politics to worry about and because I'm qualified and experienced in the job I do, everything's a doddle. The managers think I'm working really hard to achieve what I do, but really I can do it with my eyes closed and then go home on time not thinking about work at all.

I don't earn what I did, but I have enough to be comfortable. I've realised how much of my old higher salary I used to blow on "treats" like massages, magazines, wine, coffees for the commute etc. to compensate myself for the stress and relentlessness of my old lifestyle.

I'm another one who deals with databases and information gathering and reporting. I work for an oil company, school hours, with plenty of hols as required. The next step for me would involve managing others and recruitment, so I avoid that.

I'm freelance and invoice just under £120k a year.

Hahahahahahahaaaaa at HE admin being stress free.

Nothing is stress free in HE since the 9k fees came in. Its cut throat and dog-eat dog now.

Rather than downgrading, you could try climbing. All the research shows that middle management is the most stressful position to be in. Higher managers suffer less stress because they have more authority and tools at their disposal, which actually allows them to take better control of a situation and so reduce stress.

Im pretty certain that the admin people at my university would disagree about it being stress-free too. They admin staff at old university were always off sick with stress. I always felt dreadful when I had to ask them to do something.

I think Dahlen's idea is brilliant and could apply to a lot of people. It's also true imo

Dustbinmen/refuse collectors (never known a female one around here) earn on average 42k when you include overtime. Seems very unstressful to me because they don't work when it snows, rains, if the rubbish is too heavy or overflowing, or if their union says it is too heavy to pick up. The rubbish here currently lies uncollected in black sacks on the streets and they haven't been sacked for gross misconduct. And then they work double time over Christmas and New Year to "catch up".

Sounds like a dirty job but all they really do is wheel a wheelie bin to a lorry, the mechanism on the lorry picks it up and then they simply discard it by the side of the road. Not too early a start and finished by lunchtime!

The climbing thing is true, I agree. DH is trying to climb the ladder as a teacher and his mentors are telling him that being the head teacher is so easy compared to being a deputy head, because the deputy is trying to teach and be management, whereas the head just gets on with managing.

There's a saying about restaurants that I think can be applied (sort of) to jobs - that food can be two of fast, cheap and tasty, but never all three. I think jobs can be stress free, satisfying or well paid - usually just one, sometimes two, very very rarely all three!

Out local refuse collectors sound a lot better than yours. They come out in good and bad weather, and they take all the rubbish away. I generally think their job looks tougher than mine. I couldn't do their job. I bet they are given targets and stuff by the council, and probably live in fear of their job being outsourced/their hours cut. I doubt they get paid £42k too.

I've heard that being a dustman is very sought after, I wouldn't mind it for that pay!

Yes, the average wage of refuse collectors in my city and indeed in several big cities is 42k, taking into account overtime payments. Of course its a scam, they ensure there is enough work for overtime to be maximised. Its like that in quite a few public sector jobs, generally male dominated, which are far better paid than the skills required would imply.

I certainly could do their job; as a student I did manual labour work ie I worked with horses, getting up at 5.00am to start at 5.30, mucking out, carting heavy loads of manure to the muck heap, then riding several horses, etc. No machinery to pick up the wheelbarrows and empty them for us, no colleagues to stand around "encouraging us". So I feel I can safely compare the two and I really don't think refuse collectors have a very hard job.

It's tricky really to find something that has low stress levels but doesn't bore you senseless.

I find specialising in something i.e. sitting in a corner with little or not interaction with others is the least stressful kind of work.

Being self employed can reduce stres levels massively too. There are other stresses like filing accounts etc but on the whole, it's much nicer to be able to do things as and when you want to and pick and choose your clients. You need something saleable really though - a skill or a product. You will always get difficult clients but you don't have to work for them again.

That does sound nice LaQueen.