To think working in 'the professions' is not all it's cracked up to be?

[malificent7]

I think the major professions do a fantastic job by the way.
Teachers, doctors, nurses, police, social workers etc are amazing.
Im an x Teacher ...now retraining in health care and ive been passionate about both roles. If course the benefits are great...pensions, regular wages, holidays...cannot fault it.
But omg...the stress, accountability, hatred from public, politics.
Is it worth it?
For me probably yes for stability but I am not a natural.

I'm sure plenty of shop assistants, care assistants
etc get hatred from the public with bad manners whilst receiving NMW. There is stress in non professional jobs too. YABU.

@ZaraW there is a big difference in terms of responsibility though between a shop assistant and a teacher.

I said dealing with hatred from the public not responsibility. As you say with responsibility comes a decent wage, pension and holidays.

I don't care if the public hate me.

I'm a teacher. The public hatred /gaslighting from government of teachers during the pandemic has definitely had an effect on my MH. I feel like I have an overwhelming responsibility to be all things to all people that I can't live up to (perfectionist). Would love an 'anonymous' job that nobody has an opinion about.

@ZaraW I understand the public can be rude across the board. Responsibility holds a different level of stress. It also comes (in the professions) after years of studying and expense at university.
The care assistant in our hospital will sometimes have patients or families being rude. That can be stressful. The. Doctors also have to deal with rude members of the public but are ultimately responsible for their lives. It’s different. OP I hear you.

I’m a lawyer - people purport to hate lawyers, but we’re the ones sorting stuff out when they’ve tried everything else.
To be fair, it’s never occurred to me to be worried about the idea that some people don’t like a job I do.

I find the responsibility overwhelming sometimes. I also often found myself in conflict over what's best for me/mine & what's best for 'the service'. I've had to put some very firm boundaries in place to stop work encroaching on my personal life. I don't doubt that all public facing roles are difficult, but there's an unspoken expectation in the professions that you're 'job role' first & everything else second. I simply won't do that anymore. I am human being & mother first. My duty towards my children is more important to me than my duty towards the public. Took a lot of soul searching to get there but I'm much happier now I've drawn the line.

@GarlicMonkey I agree. It's a job that's how I see it now. Bollocks to vocation. It used to be but it has trampled me in its enormity. I think schools 'closing' has shown how massive the job is that teachers do.

I wouldn't agree that the list it provided is ever 'cracked up to be'. That phrase suggests that the consensus is that they are considered to be coveted jobs with lots of positives and held on high regard. I've only ever heard them described as horrific but worthy. In a 'im glad there are people who are willing to do them but I'm glad its not me' way.

Why have you only mentioned public sector? Lots and lots of professions aren't public sector and still have to deal with the same problems, i.e. stress, accountability, but also the risk of not being paid!

Your post says public sector which id agree is shit except civil service and council type roles which are fairly cushy and don't require hard work. Pay and pension Can be amazing in those roles and you don't have to kill yourself working.

However being a solicitor or accountant is a good job if you can do it.

At least a doctor gets good pay and respect, people love nurses but its suuuuch a hard job and the pay can be poor. Teaching looks awful but its a comfortable lifestyle compared to many jobs.

I’ve done a job similar to those on your list. I’ve also had minimum wage service jobs in the past. In the min wage jobs, yes it could be a slog and sometimes you had to deal with difficult people but your working day ended when it was supposed to and there wasn’t much thinking about work outside of work.

In the professional role there was this sense that the job came first, as a pp said. There’s been quite a few occasions where I’ve had to cancel plans because something needed dealing with just before I was due to finish for the day, and just leaving was not an option. I had many colleagues who would take work home at weekends to stay on top of things (something I refused to do). Time off was often spent thinking about what was going on at work.

I started that job when my DC were teens, I couldn’t imagine doing it with young DC because of the fact you might have to stay late at any time. But also because I would come home and I needed time to decompress from the day as it was so stressful. Doing an evening routine of baths, stories etc would have just wiped me out completely (I didn’t have a partner to help).

Now as I’m getting older I can’t deal with the pace anymore. I want a quiet, stress free life. I took a job below my “grade” because it was wfh and zero stress. I think some people do “thrive” in a stressful, fast paced environment. I’m not one of them!

@ZenNudost Don't require hard work?!!! Profoundly ignorant comment there. I worked as a council employed older people's social worker for years and regularly worked well over my hours, evenings weekends and in my leave to keep people safe. And was often roundly abused by other professionals and family members for doing so. Several colleagues had heart attacks or breakdowns. On their behalf of not mine, you owe an apology.

I’m in a public sector profession but also employ non professionals in another area of my life.

The non professionals face general working crap but can just walk away at the end of the day or leave and get a similar job easily. They vary in commitment and attachment to their role.

The professionals are by the very definition accountable which usually goes beyond 9-5. I am obviously responsible for every fault at a national level caused by govt decisions in the sector that I work in. I hate waste. Despite the public perception of NHS budget management, at ground level we didn’t waste much. During the pandemic the waste and costs have become monstrous and I find that really difficult to reconcile. I’d have earned more in the private sector with my qualifications and the hours put in ...but the knowledge of intervening in someone’s life at a critical point and being able to help is something I value. I’m not cut out for valuing money making.

@ZenNudist
Big fingers small phone

It’s the same in corporate roles...you may find the stress (and constant threat of redundancies) even worse.

Those aren’t really “The Professions”. The learned professions, originally, were doctor, solicitor, and the priesthood. You could probably add in academia, maybe chartered engineer, etc. As a professional you worked for yourself and charged your clients fees to access your knowledge applied to their particular situation (bit different for the priesthood, but still not a typical employee role). You had autonomy to decide who you served and how.

Even these have, in some ways become less “professional“. They are governed by external rules to a much greater extent and members don’t have the same standing as experts in the field that they once did. More people in those roles are directly employed. So there has been a general lessening in the status of professional for a long time.

But if you’re going to stick teacher, social worker and police officer in there you are talking about entirely different sort of role. These are roles that work with lots of people on a more day-to-day basis. Dealing, often, with relatively trivial matters that are not really the “client’s” priority. They involve cajoling and criticizing and a lot more craft rather than just applying knowledge. And theIr agenda isn’t that of the individual client they are serving, they work, generally, for the state with the goal of pushing the states agenda, not their client’s. Of course people don’t like them as much!

[quote toconclude]@ZenNudost Don't require hard work?!!! Profoundly ignorant comment there. I worked as a council employed older people's social worker for years and regularly worked well over my hours, evenings weekends and in my leave to keep people safe. And was often roundly abused by other professionals and family members for doing so. Several colleagues had heart attacks or breakdowns. On their behalf of not mine, you owe an apology.[/quote]
Perhaps @ZenNudist was referring to the bureaucratic roles rather than public facing? I would agree that civil service is generally better paid and more control over workload (maybe not since Covid)

@BoomBoomsCousin. I think HCP (Health Care Professional ) suggests nurse, radiographer, physio...endless list are professionals. They are all registered with professional bodies. They can also all work for themselves in the way you describe. Most choose to be employed for stability

Almost everything is stressful in one way or another. If you have a low paid job you have the stress of paying bills and getting by. If you get paid more in the public sector roles you describe there is security and decent pay but a sense of overwhelming responsibility. If you have a job like my dh which is neither of the first two then there is the stress of financial targets and looming redundancy. You just have to pick which stress suits you best.

I agree, I trained as a lawyer a decade or so ago only to find myself on 14k a year with 80 clients and all my actions dictated by a computer. I would have earned more if I stuck it out but all the experienced lawyers hated their lives too. I left.

It's worth putting it into historical context - the cost of living is much higher now. You used to be able to live respectably enough on one wage, buy a house in your twenties, have kids without worrying about the money so much.

Free markets and neoliberalism just chipped away at everything so you are a cog in the machine with umpteen managers trying to extract maximum profit for some fat cat who works one day a month and golfs the rest of the time.

Austerity is a symptom of it, you always have to grind down the people at the bottom so those a few rungs up on the social ladder don't complain about their lives being shit because they're not as bad as that.

I really hope the whole economic system changes but don't hold out that much hope, to be honest. We need to prioritise people and the planet over extracting maximum value for a few ultra rich capitalists.

I don't think the 'hatred' is limited to those professions. Imagine being a Hermes or Yodel delivery driver and reading Mumsnet! In fact long before those jobs existed or were commonplace my DH worked for Royal Mail. Every time someone asked him at a social gathering where he worked he would receive a barrage of stories about undelivered/mis delivered items (and he wasn't even a postman). I also worked for a High Street bank in a previous life - similar tales of woe and abuse about Banks most of which were far removed from my day to day job.
People like to moan and complain about anything and everything that impacts their lives - it's not reserved for the 'professions' .

@bigbluebus I take your point to a certain extent but blimey I don't think I've seen 1/100 of the threads about delivery drivers than I have moaning about schools or teachers.

DH knows a lot of accountants/actuaries/financial advisors (did an economics degree). They all have lovely houses and the worst I've heard them complain about work is that it's a bit boring and some of the exams are hard.

High street solicitors sorting out conveyancing and wills probably is ok too.