What's the lowest stress / easiest minimum wage job?

[MegBusset]

If you were going to step down from a stressful professional career and could afford it, what would be an easy / low stress min wage role to fill a few years until retirement?

I've worked low pay jobs before and they've been tedious and / or hard work. Obviously there are many shockingly underpaid jobs that are really hard and stressful (carer, TA etc). But are there ones out there that are straightforward and don't take up much mental effort?

I hear you Mooncup I guess it’s about where your stress is coming from.

For me the source of stress when teaching was the woefully underfunded budgets we had to work with, my own pressures I put on myself to help my pupils, the lack of support, the shortages of staff, the mental load when you finish work and can’t switch off.
I wasn’t trapped by the salary I was earning rather that I cared and wanted to teach but ended up disillusioned and burnt out.

I changed direction completely and my earnings aren’t much different from a teacher’s starter salary.

Anyone who thinks working in retail at Christmas is stress free obviously has never worked in retail at Christmas.
Also working in libraries is very low paid and definitely not stress free. A lot of libraries plug the gaps that social care no longer provides, so you are dealing with homeless people, people with addictions, young people with no where else to go and many others on the margins of society. It's a very difficult and under valued job.

@NeverDropYourMooncup

Sounds awful. Can you go to citizens advice? But def look for another job.

Oh, I got out of the creepy boss one in the end, thank you, and I'm now a few roles along in one that is technically far more stressful (better paid, too) - but I'm fine with normal work pressures because whether I stay or whether I go, the bills are covered by DP and I've already built up some savings.

The moment I knew I had another job to go to and wasn't trapped in a toxic workplace indefinitely, the stress evaporated almost instantly every single time.

I nearly buckled when working out a redundancy notice period at one because I wanted that money, but I knew I wasn't going to get fired and I only had to make it through another three weeks if I refused to do anything over and above my actual hours or job description - finding out that I'd got another job lined up to start one day after the cutoff point for having to hand the payment back (public sector rules) was the icing on the cake; all I had to do was not tell them until after the payment had hit my account on my last day and then, the second it hit my finish time, I dumped the equipment on the floor, handed my keys and security pass to the site manager and walked out the front gate as I'd fantasised about doing a hundred times before.

I was once told that posties have the longest life expectancy - combination of regular exercise, fresh air and low stress apparently.

@NeverDropYourMooncup

Glad to hear.

Costco? Very physical work, good pay.

Yes you are right about Dinner Lady job being in the middle if the day. To make ends meet I work weekends in a Factory too which is stress free aswell.

of*

if stress free means people free (it does to me) and you fancy getting fitter stronger losing weight gaining a six pack and getting paid for it then become a school dinner lady it’s physically gruelling but zero stress

I actually think slightly above minimum wage jobs are less stressful- low level office work, etc. Less busy and demanding, less likely to have to deal with the general public. I’ve enjoyed most of my minimum wage jobs but generally they were harder going than stuff like data entry where I just stuck my headphones in and sorted spreadsheets all day

An old friend of mine loved his job as a bin man. Early starts driving around with your mates picking up bins and then the rest of the day is your own. Think they're paid about £30k these days in London. I've also seen several bin women recently.

I did bed and breakfast , one spare double bedroom with its own bathroom. Easy money for minimal effort.

Bookshops are great. You tend to get lovely customers. Actually, book lovers are generally nice people, so anything that involves books would be good.

Other than that a job in a small shop, preferably in a small town or village. The best job I ever had was serving customers in a village Co-op.

Handiest job I ever had was the packaging department in a factory.

It was set up like an assembly line and we used to rotate to relieve the boredom. Printing labels, make the boxes up, they were all flat, insert the instructions, insert the product, seal and then move to shipping.

Zero stress.

Do you really think that all office jobs are stress free? Makes you sound like the equivalent of all the idiots who think teachers go home at 3.30 ......... think about it.

Define "stress free office job".

I work in an office but it took years of training to do my job and I have to put my decades of experience into my work every day.
Looking forward to my early retirement and (hopefully) getting a job as an early morning picker at my local Sainsbury.

@shinynewapple22 I never said ALL office jobs are stress free did I ? I said I would like an office job.. and some office jobs certainly are easy (at least compared to teaching 30 teenagers). I see the office staff at my school so I know what it's like and what they do.
And I don't really understand your point about teachers going home at 3.30 but oh well.

Haven't seen any dinner ladies with a six pack but it is probably hidden under their clothes.

To those that consider working in a shop as stressfree etc……

In Morrisons today. 8 diy basket tills, 2 diy trolley tills. All on a go slow, card reader not working 100% of the time.

1 member of staff supervising them all.

A blue arsed fly has an easier time.

Who you work with can matter just as much. Even a high stress job can be fun if you are with lovely, kind, supportive people. Equally, a job running a little village shop would be a nightmare if the manager was an obnoxious bully.

Retail is horrendously stressful - I have no idea why anyone thinks it isn’t, you’re also dealing with the public all the time - that was a nightmare ime 30+ years ago.I suspect people are even ruder these days.

i have heard horrendous things about supermarket picker jobs as well - but that does explain some of the bizarre substitutions (basically not given the time to make a sensible one).

At the start of Covid the local authority my daughter worked for asked anyone interested in learning how to be a dustman volunteer for training, because that was a service that had to carry on even with high sickness levels, she went on the course and the leader said that refuse collecting has the highest death rate of any council department, all those nutty drivers not prepared to wait and staff getting into the back to the truck to clear blockages

Same! Working so hard for a pittance of a salary. It's disgusting when I think about it.

Yeah I'm really struggling at the moment. Desperately trying to think of what else I can do.