Does your job stress you out?

[HesGotHisTrombolyse]

If you work full time because you need the money (not because you want to for whatever reason besides needing to bring home the money), does your job stress you out? I'm also going to say not because you worry about losing it (again, for whatever reason). But because you have harsh (and hard) deadlines, because your clients (if you work in a b2b environment) are demanding but you can't just say 'stuff it' to them, because you have so much on and it simply must get done, and just generally the pressure you have on.

I know there will be people saying you don't have to do so much but in some jobs, especially senior management and/or corporate, it comes with the territory. Same with working beyond your contracted hours - it's expected. And no, we are not suckers for doing that - we have our reasons.

But - once all is said and done. Does your job stress you out? Do you think about it when you're not working? Mine stresses me out most of the time (I run my own company) but overall I enjoy it. So I'm using AIBU as a poll:

AIBU: my job does NOT stress me out on a regular basis (i.e. more than half the time)
AINBU: my job DOES stress me out on a regular basis.

Definitely stressed.

I work with clients, but waiting lists don't exist in my role. So if a new client comes along, I'm expected to magic up the extra 2-3 hours a week I need to work with them.

The expectation is that if I need more time, I just extend my working hours, which sounds great, but with a job that's pretty brain taxing, I don't really want to do more hours (you need a break from it!), so I end up cramming in as much as I can into my current hours.

It's a shame really, as I can see me burning out in the next 6 months or so. I don't really know why the company don't have a waiting list policy, doesn't have to be anything extreme, just enough time to have moved a client on to make space

It is not the job itself that stresses me out, it is the office environment: backstabbing colleagues, chaotic environment, poor senior management, people needed to be chased all the time so I feel like I can never get anything done...

My company has a huge staff turnover because of it.

I am job hunting to get out of that place.

Yes, another teacher here. I wake up at 4am panicking about workload and things I ran out of time to. Constantly worried I'm going to be judged. Recently moved schools and the resources across 7 year groups need updating which feels overwhelming and I have a department of part timers who don't have much investment in making changes so it's all on me. Slt keep adding extra requirements to the pile of things we should be doing. I love the school, the kids and the teaching but do not have time to do it all.

Not now, I have a supportive boss, I'm senior so make my own decisions, our work is structured.

Previously I worked with unpredictable unprofessional people in environments where decisions where made on the hoof and with terrible blame cultures. I dreaded work.

My job is demanding and stressful, yes.

I am a head of a core department in a secondary school. I love teaching- my school is nice and we have very high standards so behaviour is very good.

There's no escaping that it's stressful though. To give an example, yesterday, I only actually had 2 lessons plus form, but the day was hectic. I'll do a brief run down;

I arrive at about 7.20am to log on/set my day up/make sure my form ppt slide is ready with the notices on/organise kids books for my lessons.
I had a team member out on a planned absence yesterday- she had left her cover, so that helped.

Except, I then realised that she had mistakenly thought she had Y9 in room X when in fact, they were in room Y. Not her fault - she's new to us and finding her feet. So, I quickly adapt the seating plan so that it matches room Y.

At 8.05am, I am worried the office have not sent the cover list round. The bell goes at 8.10am and so far, no one knows who is covering my absent team member. I ring the office who say they will send it. I then dash round the heads of year to ask them to announce at line up that teachers need to check the cover list during form.

I then have my form group.

I have a meeting P1 about a trip I am running. Only, we have to start late - colleague's lesson that is being covered can't find the books, I hunt round the dept to no avail and ultimately find paper for them to work on. Meeting goes ahead and I then have more on my to do list.

I supervise the corridor at lesson changeover.

P2 I am still free but a parent wants me to ring them, so I do that. I observe my newly qualified teacher as well and realise they are going to need increased support- fine, I add that to the list.

Break duty

Then I am teaching Y9, down the stairs again to collect them from line up (I am on the top floor in a 4 storey building!).

P4 I am free again - I have a Y7 practical P5 and Friday lessons are shorter so I get that set up with the help of my technician. I send an email to trainee teachers I am delivering CPD to next week with information on. Organise stuff for my PM form time, finally nip to the toilet and refill my water.

P4 is over and I am on lunch duty so go there and eat lunch while on duty.

Collect my form from line up - only there's a last minute change to what we are doing in form, I need to read the email when I get back to the room, but I also need to do my register and supervise 28 kids. Form ends up being stress.

I teach P5 - I have to go down again and collect the kids from assembly (did I mention I am on the top floor?!). As I am teaching, 2 children from absent colleague's lesson appear - the books should be in the room but they can't find them. I can't go looking so give them some paper an relay a message to use that.

P5 ends and I have no gap before I need to be in the hall for a meeting, followed immediately by CPD.
Deputy head wants to talk after about the newly qualified and what we are going to do to support.

I left work at 4.45pm - not late but I had literally not had a minute all day and was exhausted and in bed before 9pm!

So yes, it's stressful but I do enjoy it most of the time 😂

I’m senior (ish) and have a team of 100 or so under me across the U.K. Yes at times it stresses me out, but not to the point it makes me unwell etc. Lately less so as they realised I was doing way too much and brought in 2 more people same level so my responsibilities were shared by 3 people not just myself. It has made a big difference but sometimes the pressure builds. I am used to it I guess now, and it always sorts itself out. I have a good senior management team around me, which helps.

I worked as a University housing officer for a number of years. I was repsonsible for housing students with disabilities. That part of my job was fine. Now there was genuine concern for some students, suicidal ones, ones with serious illness and financial issues. Plus there was also the awful side of campus life with rapes and attacks on students or housing being burgled as student houses are massive targets. A house will have multiple sets of electronics for instance.

But the side I hated were the helicopter parents and these tended to be people who just wanted little Johnny to have a certain type of accommodation when that person had no specific need it was just a preference. They were usually spoilt kids who couldn’t cook so the thought of self catering was too much for the parents, they had no specific disabilities they were just idle. When you’re having to move someone immediately because their housemates had set their room on fire and the police are involved, this did actually happen in an awful incident of bullying gone crazy versus a Mum complaining about how her child was used to a cooked breakfast and couldn’t cook, it did my head in.

Sounds like you do a similar role to me, I'm also then responsible for supporting and managing other staff involved. I'm in the process of setting up a brand new provision and regularly wake up with pains in my face from clenching my teeth in my sleep. So yes, my job stresses me out

Mine does. I’m not very senior but I work with very senior people who do think highly of me but put a lot of demand on me. I struggle to say I haven’t got time because they all obviously work much longer hours than I do as they are senior mgt. I often think people at that level don’t really understand how long work takes to get done or the challenges us mere mortals have in getting the info and support we need from peers. I would be less stressed if I cared less about my professional reputation but I can’t help myself unfortunately.

Retail store manager. Not really, only at Christmas.

I am a Learning support assistant, 1-1 in main stream primary.

The child I work with is Autistic, they are pre verbal makes some sounds but no words, they stim, which presents as running back and forth, flapping hands, staring at their hands, staring out the window at the trees which are waving in the wind, throwing things in the air.

There is very little eye contact, doesn't respond to his name, doesn't have any real interest in activities, if they do it's over and done with within minutes.
When they don't get their own way or someone says NO,
( not me I might add I say stop/stop throwing or similar, there is very little consistency with other staff)
they throws objects, pushes other children, or anything left on top of a resources unit, is swiped on to the floor.
This can be stressful, as it feels like it's your fault for letting these things happen, sometimes I'm able to distract them, but mostly there's no warning and things like the above mentioned happen.

They aren't comfortable with the class room 'noise' so we sit outside the classroom a lot of the time, on our own.
It's lonely and dare I say it, boring 😔

I used to love my job, working with children, but it's beginning to wear me down.

So, no. Not stressful as such. Just different.

This all sounds so familiar 😅😥

I'm also a teacher but left a large MAT when I moved cities and jobs last year and while it was extremely stressful moving to a new department where all the SOW, exam board and lesson expectations were different but they had extremely minimal department resources so I was regularly working 12-14h a day on a full teaching timetable + creating resources from scratch at home... There is much better consideration for teacher's quality of life in the smaller MAT I'm now in, and it's much more evident this year now I have a bank of resources I can actually use and convinced the department to have everyone save theirs from last year so we could borrow from each other going forward.

Things like, form is once per day only and there's no line ups except once a week taking kids into assembly. Kids make their own way to class without issue.

Yes, quite a lot of the time. I do enjoy my job and love who I work with. I think I just need to figure out how to manage the stress better. I work in a junior management role within a college and line manage 70 staff members with one other manager. Line managing is the most stressful part of the job.

Yes. The clients are lovely but the admin and computer system is complicated and never-ending.

Sometimes. Primary school. Herding 30 6 year olds can be stressful, dealing with needy parents, also. Then the added stress of jumping through hoops for Ofsted.

I don’t do stress! I don’t have the extra energy for it (menopausal).I have just about enough energy to get me through the day, none spare for stressing about things I can’t change 🤷‍♀️

At times yes. I work in education albeit not as a teacher. Part of my role involves timetabling and exam results analysis. I genuinely dream about the timetable when it's in progress it's so full on. That said, the stress is very peak-and-trough and working full time in education means I get some very stress free periods throughout the year.

I used to do the timetable at my place. The grid of coloured squares from the software we used still haunts my dreams!

I was a surgeon and did work for the NHS as a consultant through an agency. Looking back, I didn't have the skill or patience required to tolerate carrying out the work which involved staying in awkward positions at a time. On top of this, I was under pressure from the patient's families hoping not to make errors during surgical procedures. Other staff had to intervene when I argued with other surgeons during an operation. I also was running a side business and drank alcohol at the time. I did make mistakes and external investigations were carried out. I eventually quit because I was making easier money from my other businesses. Looking back, I was younger, I didn't mentally develop to deal with pressure and my other business took my concentration away from my job.

My dreams are more about staffing allocations. I'm fortunate we have some staff that can operate in 2 or 3 departments (eg PE and food) but then I'm always having dreams that I haven't put enough checks in place to stop me allocating them to a lesson of each at the same time. Or random ones like halfway through the timetable process the head changes which year groups go for lunch in which period. Which sort of happened once but luckily wasn't as problematic as it could have been!

My job does stress me out.

But

a) It’s also interesting and well paid so worthwhile
b) It doesn’t stress me out anywhere near as much as being unemployed would
c) I thrive on stress

I feel that pain, @FrivolousKitchenRollUse

Once we recruited very late (TT nearly complete) and the head offered a part-time job to someone on different days to the person they were replacing. 😱

Yep-I’m a teacher. I have constant stomach-churning stress about work which stops me from sleeping and continues and builds even throughout the holidays to a ridiculous crescendo by the end.

The workload is unmanageable (and much of it unrelated to the needs of the pupils), the micromanagement makes you feel like an incompetent child and the constant observations, book scrutinies, learning walks and threat of Ofsted makes you feel that nobody trusts you. The fact that virtually everyone I know over 50 has either left, retired (when you could go early) or been hounded out on a ‘support plan’ and that is probably my future is utterly terrifying as well.

Oh, and I didn’t even mention budgets or SEND.

Anyway, yes, am stressed. It’s become a horrible job that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Luckily none of my kids, or my friends’ kids (many friends are also ex-teachers) want to do it either.

Yes my job stresses me. I'm very aware that I'm a "single point of failure", ie there is no-one else there who could do my job currently. Difficult home life over the last 18 months has left me working at crazy times to get everything done. Yes, there are plans in place but it takes time to train people and in the meantime I am overwhelmed and not doing my best work and constantly worried I'm going to mess up something big.

Worked as an Executive Assistant in corporates for a long time. It just got harder and harder in terms of workload, office politics and difficult bosses.

I ended up burning out and haven't worked for a while. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to go back to that so currently hatching a plan to do something else on my terms.

Jobs have got harder. A nice, interesting semi-stress free job would be a dream.