To be mildly irritated by most tiring job ever?

[brasty]

A friend who is a teacher has been saying how exhausted she is, and that only other teachers would understand. She is not joking. AIBU to be mildly irritated by this? Yes teachers do a hard job, but there are other jobs that are also exhausting.

YABU your friend is perfectly within her rights to complain she is exhausted and maybe, if her friends are all like you, she might be right about only others in the same job get how tiring it is. I moan all the time about how knackered I am and my friends are sympathetic regardless of whether they think they work harder than me or not, because that's what friends do. (I'm not a teacher btw).

But anyone who can teach 30 four/five year olds to read, write, and understand numbers in a matter of weeks whilst keeping them in order, doing all the paperwork and extra duties they are expected to do gains respect from me.

Add to that the chaos that is getting their own children up, dressed, fed and to childcare before they start work at 8am and collecting them at 6 before doing the nightly food, play, bath and bedtime before settling down to marking and planning before bed with maybe a bit of housework thrown in for good measure and I'd say she has every right to feel knackered.

And yes all working parents do this stuff, and they have just as much right to moan about how tired they are as any other person.

So yes, yabu and a pretty crap friend to boot!

I work in the voluntary sector, one of my newest staff has just come out of teaching and never stops telling me how stressed and tired they are in their current role - I think it was a culture shock after teaching!

The OP's friend didn't say she had the most exhausting job in the world though according to the OP.

I used to work in the pp's real world. I worked in a really high pressured and exhausting job where I travelled and often worked all night in the office to meet deadlines. Pay was great, perks were good.
I left the real world to be a teacher in the really real world. My previous job was a doddle compared to teaching. It is a different type of exhaustion, hence the comment 'only teachers understand'. Physically from being on my feet all day, dealing with individuals etc,. Mentally it is draining - from the second the pupils arrive at school we are there for them. There is no respite. Breaks and lunches are given over to dealing with kids. After school detentions, clubs etc. What is the most exhausting is meeting the demands of both children and SLT. It is not a job to switch off from - wondering if little Sophie is going to be ok going home to granny as mummy has died, or knowing that Johnny will be peddling drugs for his dad later that night.
It is a different type of exhaustion that is all consuming and reaches every part of me. And I have 10 years worth of experience in other pressured jobs to compare it too.
All jobs can be exhausting but only a teacher/TA can understand the type of exhaustion a teacher feels.

Well this is all very tiresome....obviously not the most tiresome in the world though. Goes to check out vagina dresses

I couldn't teach. I've seen the crap they deal with. Even the TAs have some shit to deal with. My DS's TA was forcing a polite face to a woman having a go at her for something that was in no way her fault this morning. (It was in fact the parents fault for not reading the information sent home on a printed letter and also sent in 2 weekly newsletters. Apparently she "doesn't need to read those things" I did wonder how else she expected to gain information from school, by osmosis?)

However there are many other jobs that I imagine to be equally exhausting and relentless.

There are an awful lot of threads moaning about teachers at the moment.

It's certainly not the most physically exhausting job and I'm sure most people that work long hours get tired. This time of year does leave you drained though. It doesn't help that the kids themselves are obviously all exhausted. Add into that rehearsals and performances, end of term assessments and the general fevered excitement about Christmas, after this I genuinely feel wiped out.

It wouldn't occur to me in real life to mention this to anyone other than colleagues or my DH though. I certainly don't go round moaning about it on facebook.

However,until you've experienced something, you can't really comment on it. I've never been a nurse, hairdresser or brain-surgeon so I wouldn't feel I would be in any position to understand how tiring their work might be. I can only compare to some admin jobs I did pre-teaching and it's definitely more tiring than those.

It's the combination of physically and mentally demanding work ( like a nurse) coupled with having to work outside of 'office hours'. Work is never finished. Add to that, it it the lowest paid of the professions.

My dm was a teacher. There was no way I was going to be a teacher. I suspect there's something isolating about teaching. When things go wrong in my job I can mutter FUCK at my computer and go to the toilet to bang my head gently on the wall.
When I had dc I valued my hectic operational part time job as 'me time'

I once spent an entire day moaning about how much teachers moan so much. I found that really tiring. If teachers didn't moan so much then I wouldn't be so exhausted.

toldmywraath I was going to review your post history and tell you how great you are. But I'm worried it may wear me out.

Boundaries, just seen your post. I am sure you share the frustration of those stat visits dragging you away from the computer. After 15 years I should be over it but still!

Dixiewishbone I'd never thought of it like that. I'm fucked

Do you not, all of you who complain about your intense jobs, get weekends off (or equivalent) and holiday? What about regular breaks? Part of your contract I expect?
None of you, unless you have a disabled child you have responsibility for day after day, with no break, no respite, have any idea what actual exhaustion is. You can go home and switch off right?
How about going a year with ZERO time out? Yes, then complain, seriously.....

Who is winning on MN top trumps tiredness? I'm losing track of who is most knackered. Is there a medal for the winner?

I worked in a school for a few years in a junior management role. My opinion of teachers changed dramatically during that time. Sure there were situations that drove me crazy (teachers who couldn't spell or punctuate a 2 sentence comment in a school report or the very senior and experienced geography teacher who gave every single student he taught from KS3 to A Level the exact same report grade for effort, attainment, behaviour and ability regardless of how it affected their chances of moving on to college or uni).

But on the whole I left that job awestruck at the dedication and commitment of teaching staff. I couldn't do what they do if they paid me in rubies and gave me 38 weeks off every year. Since then I have worked in the NHS, in a prison and in the third sector, all of which have their challenges, but I really don't think there is any paid job as hard as being a teacher in an inner city comp.

I've done a lot of different jobs - admittedly not including coal mining - and some that have been a lot more physical than teaching and teaching was still the most exhausting in every way. It's extraordinarily mentally draining in a way you probably won't get unless you've done it. A lot of teachers won't quit because they feel a responsibility to get their kids through a certain point and because there are other parts of the job they like. Something being exhausting doesn't mean you should or that you want to stop doing it. Maybe they feel like they're spending their time in a worthwhile way or they haven't reached the end of their tethers yet. Teachers do talk a lot about teaching. In hindsight I can't believe how utterly life consuming it was.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11931692/The-most-stressful-job-Waitressing-say-scientists.html

I think the most stressful job I ever had involved lobsters

and Jayne Mansfield

www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/teaching-among-top-three-most-stressed-occupations

Whatever55

Thar must be incredibly hard, and far beyond what most people have to. endure.

I wonder if you'd get more sympathy if you expressed it slightly less aggressively? "None of you" is a bit unlikely: even just in my immediate family, my grandmother cared at home for her husband for 20 years of his battle with Alzheimer's, and I care for a parent with Motor Neurone Disease except for during my 20 hours working (contact) time, having moved into their home to look after them. I'm not saying that either of those are just like your situation, but I think it points to the fact that you're not alone in having a incredibly heavy burden.

I do hope circumstances get easier for you, and you get more support.

Giraffe, yes it depends what criteria you use. The article I posted is about research on risks for heart disease because of stress of jobs. We know that not having control at all over your work, and shift work, are both very stressful, and very bad for your health. Teaching does not feature very highly on risky jobs in terms of physical impact on health caused by stress.

The article you posted was about a study from Chinese scientists who found that low paid workers were more likely to suffer heart problems. Without any details (I couldn't find the study) about whether this was about Chinese waitresses versus Chinese professionals and therefore not comparable to the UK, or whether they'd controlled for factors such whether low paid menial workers are more likely to smoke/drink to excess regardless of what job they do, I'm not sure how much value can be placed on that article.

I think a lot of teachers assume that people in other jobs gets breaks and lunch and can go to the toilet when they like. That's not true of many jobs - I often will eat my lunch at 6pm because it's the first chance I've had all day, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

Teachers also sometimes think they are the only ones that work with an audience, and are 'on display' and on their feet all the time. Again, not true.

And many of us work evenings and weekends for no additional pay, for no more money than teachers get, and a fraction of the holidays.

I have family in teaching, and close friends in teaching. I've lost count on the times my teacher friends have gone out without me in an evening, because I'm still working. Many work very hard and very long hours, but some are very successful with less. Yes its tiring, but no more so than many other jobs.they don't have the monopoly on tiredness.

Personally, when I've done teaching (of adults or children), I found the prep quite intensive, but the actual teaching not very stressful at all.

I do talk for a living though, so an audience doesnt phase me.