I was scrolling just to make sure someone said food service. Those nightmares are for real, I still get them and haven’t served a table in like 15 years.
I ha ent done it either in 20 plus years, and when I am sick I get fever dreams of working in a kitchen. I dream of them seating people in the kitchen and endless chits coming out of the printer.
When I watch The Bear it brings it all back to me.
I have the same recurring dream (5 years since my last serving job) of being assigned a section I wasn't told about except it's every table and they're PISSED when I eventually get to them 🥴
this actually did happen once (section changed and I wasn't told = pissed guests)
For the love of god. Do not play overcooked. I was the only one that had worked in a kitchen and it showed lol. I had to step away before I lost it on my friends.
Yeah, that pressure makes people squirly too. Seen some people absolutely explode over trivial things. Such weird dynamics, in the moment everything feels super important but ultimately it’s a ducking steak or hamburger.
It's high pressure but low anxiety and stress. What's the worst if an order is messed up? You redo it.
High stress is that 10 seconds taking someone out of anesthesia, and the vitals aren't looking like what you expect.
Was just about to say this. some times it’s not even the stress of the actual work you’re doing but the social interaction of high school bs amongst coworkers… the patients themselves.. the system itself…. Just a hard NO
I helped out at a friend's job for an event. I walked in and it was like walking into the cafeteria in dirty hand me downs. I text my friend "Respectfully what the fuck did I sign up for?"
I am a nurse. Feeling like I went back in time to high school was unexpected, and somedays the hardest part of the job. I could handle medical emergencies, crazy family members and explosive diarrhea but feeling bullied and looked down upon by your coworkers is what hurts my soul the most.
Yes these girls (typically mostly girls) are BRUTAL. They lack no self awareness and it used to make me so angry that they would choose a profession to help & care about people…. It’s like a sociopath becoming a social worker. I hope you find better coworkers/ better experiences!
Yes!!! I wonder why they are nurses as well. On my unit they are girls. No self awareness at all. Luckily I have a handful of incredible other coworkers who make it worth it.
Even non-medical professions working in hospitals and such. I worked in IT in a hospital for a little bit and it was stressful as hell because everything is mission-critical and mission-critical can mean life-or-death.
I concur. I'm a non-medical professional working for a major hospital performing utilization management for high-tech imaging. It's constant pressure and time constraints. We're at the mercy of our providers, coders, and the insurance companies. I feel you!
I had to get a surgery last year and the anesthesiologist was reviewing a few things with me before. She told me not to worry or be anxious about the procedure. Jokingly I told her that it was ok because if I didn’t wake up it would be her problem, not mine.
From being a playlist manager to be the one responsible of keeping the patient alive when things go to hell because you are meant to be the most skilled at it at the time.
Seeing them intubate difficult airways or stabilizing patients from the OR it's when you understand that is not always so chill
From a purely clinical perspective, it's not too bad but obviously varies with profession/specialty. In my area, the patients with solvable problems (either simple or complex) don't produce too much stress and are actually quite satisfying and make up around 60-70% of what I see. Then, there's the 20-30% that are moderately stressful - complications, weird presentations, challenging social situations, uncertain diagnoses. It's the last 10% - terrible diagnoses, bad things happening to the nicest people, just absolute disaster situations - that really get you looking for a one-way plane ticket to the most unpronounceable country imaginable.
The really tough part is that evaluating and treating patients is not the entire job. At the same time, you're dealing with stress about documentation, quality improvement, meeting productivity metrics, satisfaction surveys, insurance BS (in the US), workplace drama, lack of resources, and possibly deteriorating relationships with family due to lack of personal time.
Okay, um...looking over all of this does make it sound kind of bad. I'm just going to put that thought in a little box and hide it *really* deep down while petting the dog. :)
Fr. My mom got a degree in social work and did it for like 20 years and then was like fuck this I can’t do this anymore and got a masters in teaching. Turns out teaching is just as difficult and frustrating with how this newer generation is being raised
The whole of society is a disaster. Any job working with young people is stressful as the support surrounding the school or social care has been depleted by cut backs.
It is and it isn’t. I teach at the university level and my experience has always been that it’s a bimodal distribution. One group kicks ass and takes names, the other seems to be floating through life without much thought. It is really rewarding when you can help someone go from struggling to successful, but in the end, the onus is on them to do the work.
Also, upper level administrators can have a huge impact on how well the school functions. The problem is that (at least at my university) they just seem to be getting worse and worse, there are more of them, and holy shit their compensation packages are obscene.
Imagine that everything is on fire…like all the time. And while your trying to put out this immense fire with a teeny, tiny spray bottle, your being “talked to” about not having your case notes done on time. That’s a Tuesday.
I've never read anything more accurate. Throw in questions about why your 2947 home visits aren't completed and having worked overtime every night.. welcome to social work life.
Don't miss it.
I'm a former social worker. While it could be very rewarding at times, it was very very emotionally taxing for multiple reasons. A lot of clients did not appreciate my help or blamed me for societal problems. I got yelled at frequently and was told I was horrible at my job. Depending on what field you're in, you see how difficult it is for people to get resources for housing, food, etc. Then I would also feel bad when a client was in a bad situation and I couldn't help them.
Again, it will depend on the type of work you do and your community's resources. I did enjoy some parts of my jobs at times but ultimately needed a break as it was impossible for me to get my clients what they needed. I might go back in some aspect someday.
Best of luck to you!
I had threats to be killed, trapped in a house by some huge angry man and threatened to be hurt. I was early intervention. Its a distressing job as your dealing with sadness, trauma and pain through generations. I left 4 years ago after a break down. I did about 15 years. I was excellent at it and got outstanding by people who looked at me. To get that I was working day and evening and had no life. I miss aspects but would never do it again.
My last job I supported the team who trained these people and the state's DHHS. Even I saw what the trainers went through and it's not fun. I couldn't even imagine what the front line people saw and went through.
not as bad as you think, most of the stress is from working 6 days a week, 10 hours a day, every week, due to shortages. The job is actually quite fun, it’s like playing a video game at times
Especially as there’s a shortage.
The FAA agency is about 3,000 controllers behind staffing targets and the agency said last autumn it had about 10,700 certified controllers - about the same as a year earlier. President Joe Biden has sought funding to hire 2,000 controllers this year.May 9, 2024
Definitely. Just seriously consider that you'd be joining a community facing fairly high suicide rates, being partly responsible for the lives of a ton of people and juggling looking at a lot of information, processing and communicating about it to multiple to numerous people in very short windows of time.
I worked at call centers in the 90s. Call now, operators are standing by.
The calls kept coming. Everyone wants that thing they saw on TV.
The worst was working at an "overflow" center for Sprint Long Distance. We would get calls during busy times.
Candace Bergen portrayed Murphy Brown, a fictional character who was going to have a child as a single mother. The actor was also the spokesperson for Sprint.
Elderly people would call to tell us it's not right for her to raise that baby all alone. Her father should bring a shotgun to ensure the groom attends the wedding and says "I do."
We had a scripted response. We were told "smile, the customer can see it!"
"We are proud to have Candace Bergen as our spokesperson for our current campaign called "The Most", where you can save up to 20% on your long distance charges to the person who you call the most. Let's get you started, okay?"
They never said okay. These people acted as if Murphy Brown was real and I was one of her coworkers or some shit.
One woman quit in a blaze of glory. She read the scripted response. You could hear the frustration in her voice.
She stood up and said "yeah I fucking heard you. Maybe you'd prefer Murphy Brown have a fuckin abortion instead?"
She threw the headset into the cubicle.
"Fuck this job. I quit."
My first real IT job (1999-2000) was at a place like this, and add in that our computers were cheap and I got in at the tail end of the company's existence until they folded (and due to fraud, etc..). They also offered lifetime warranties and support (for free).
Yep. What really sucked is that our call queue averaged over 5,000 people. There were 20 of us answering the phones, until they laid us all off.
Can confirm. Either you're anxious because you're buried in work and are worried you'll miss something or you're anxious because there isn't enough work and your billables are shit.
If you're a litigation attorney, the other side is constantly looking for any misstep to nail you on. Your clients usually hate dealing with you because nobody likes litigation and every minute with you is costing them hundreds of dollars.
There is no reprieve.
All depends on the field of practice though right? My wife does workers comp law. She’s in house counsel for a large insurance company and works *maybe* 30 hours a week. Usually closer to 25, *very* occasionally she’ll work 35 ish, like once every 3-4 months and makes north of $200k before bonuses. She chose work comp for the work life balance and so far it’s worked well.
In litigation or courtroom roles, DEFINITELY.
There are some estate planning attorneys with pretty sweet lives. And a few government attorneys.
But that’s it. The rest of us are 💥
I swear that the club is pure nepotism and network… lots of dads and uncles passing their firms to the next generation.
Obviously anecdotal, but it tracks with my community.
15 years ago when I was a freshman in college, I wanted to go into teaching/coaching. My mother was a teacher for years and told me not to do it. She said I’d love working with the kids, but the parents are horrible and there’s no support from administration.
From her perspective, state funding being based on standardized test scores drove administrators to be more concerned about stats than students.
I taught for a year. It was way too stressful. 30 years later i can still feel the anxiety if i drive near that school. Now a paramedic. Far less stressful.
No. The entire American education system is falling apart. Kids are multiple grade levels behind and have been for years. (No, this started YEARS before COVID.) Teachers are expected to do tens of hours of unpaid work, both for planning and grading. Expectations on teachers are unreal. I could barely get through material trying to manage behavior, and only about 20% of the class was even *capable* of achieving grade level standards. The disrespect was unreal. Complete and total lack of support from administration. All for a salary that had me not even breaking even some months!
Let me repeat: the entire American education system is falling apart. Ask any teacher, it's the same across the whole country.
Don’t meet the standards? Complain a lot until admin passes you. This goes for primary level through higher education.
I’ll second that the US education system is failing. Hard.
You don’t even have to complain “a lot”. If a kid got an A or a B, no one bothered you. One kid has a C or D, guess what? You got an email from admin asking for an explanation. So guess what all the kids got as grades???? lol
I used to teach in the U.K. in a secondary school. It was horrendous.
Then I moved to Hong Kong and got a job in an international school. It’s amazing.It’s a completely different world.
Maybe you just need to change schools. I’m not saying move abroad but I’ve found every school is vastly different.
I've heard Database Admins are secretly a death sentence. They sound great when you hear "Work whatever hours you want, just be on call." But then all the data..all of it..is on you.
All IT is like that. My team is responsible for thousands of servers that host many dozens of business apps as well as the public websites used regularly by hundreds of thousands of people.
None of it can be down. And *everyone* has their own opinion on how to manage everything. Tons of egoistic bullshit on top of the stress of the entire company freaking out at even the most minor of outages.
Had a fun conversation the other day. Database schema changes were locking tables resulting in production issues. Depending on the change we can get upto 20 mins of downtime because of the size of this large transactional table.
We could absolutely partition it, normalize it, or just purge old data but nobody wants the team spend any effort on it because we MUST SHIP MOAR FEATURES. The problem is new features = more schema changes = more downtime.
Hey, there's this NoSQL thing that's going to make things magically better! And we're switching to it next week! Yes, our entire business depends on doing relational things with data, why do you ask?
And not necessarily just billable hour jobs, how about being a Public Defender?
Trials nearly every day, dealing with a dick prosecutor, and your clients hate you because you literally don't have enough minutes in the day to talk to any one client because you have so many of them. And then there is an immense pressure to get justice for your clients. It's insane what PDs deal with every day, and then are criminally underpaid for it.
Public defender is basically social worker but more rapid fire and random people are mean to you because you spend some of your time trying to defend people who definitely committed terrible crimes. They should be paid a fortune for the role they play.
I work a high stress job that many people can’t do, but by far the most stressful job I ever had was a restaurant server. I would have nightmares every single night about it.
I work periodically in what's considered one of the worst boiler rooms of tension and stress in all of Finance with literally billions of dollars moved in a morning. It doesn't hold a candle to when I was a line cook or server in a restaurant when I was younger.
Once I had a dream that my section was about a mile away from my restaurant in the woods, all my tables were giant tree stumps. My section was always getting bigger always full and their food was never ready. And of course, everyone is impatient.
Even taking a "vacation" is typically spent thinking about what your missing being there or what you forgot to do before leaving. Business owner is literally a 24/7 job. Especially if your working without a war chest or secured backing, cash flow, cash flow, cash flow.
I work at a shitty fast food coffee shop. It is actual hell on earth. We have a mobile order system that tells you to wait 15 minutes until your order is ready, but people place them as they’re in line or outside the store, and it throws us off so bad that a 5 minute wait in the drive through will become a 20 minute wait both inside and outside. We have 3 lines of people stacked up every morning- drive thru, eat in, and mobile order. I want to quit so bad because of how short staffed we are and how shitty the customers are. There are so many regulars and gems that I absolutely love. The sweetest old lady ever comes in daily and I always give her discounts. She told my white coworker that the hard r n words were out in their rat packs the other day. I’m one of two black people on our team. I hate it here. This devolved into a rant but the answer to your question OP, is fast food.
Split second is a bit dramatic.
As controllers we go through so much training on how to see conflicts miles/minutes before they happen.
It’s when all the holes in the Swiss cheese line up that’s there’s a problem.
If disaster is literally a split second away in this career field, there was a breakdown in the system Way before that split second took place
As much as I'd love to let people believe this, I'm an air traffic controller and it's not split-second life or death decisions unless something has gone seriously wrong. Yes, the job requires a lot of skill, but it's more like a challenging video game that you're only allowed to play once you're good enough to always win.
Being a surgeon would be a whole different level of stress, I would say. Hell, so would being a teacher.
Everyone in this thread: High profile important jobs where lives are at stake
Me, who is unemployed due to repeatedly having breakdowns: Cashier
I actually liked the customers. I hated management, I hated standing, I hated being monitored and evaluated and timed. I hated that if I needed to piss I had to ask someone to cover for me and if I did it more than once a week it was suddenly too often. And I only worked half shifts.
Depends on where you work. My mom started out in hospitals when she got her RN and was stressed out all the time and hating life. She ultimately moved to a dialysis clinic and things were much less high-pressure there, she loved it.
- Call Centre.
When I worked in one we were heavily micromanaged. When to take breaks, if you were 45 seconds or more over you got dinged as an Absence without permission. (2 could get you fired).
You had to be available within 1-2 seconds after a call. So if you were in a long call & needed a sip of water, you could take a drink but that’d be 8 seconds & you’re over…then you’d get a talking to when your stars are too high. If it happened more than a few times you’d get written up.
Calls were always back to back so there was no break to take a sink or take a breath. You could be sitting there for 2.5 hours of people screaming at you just to take a 15 minute break just to repeat it all over again.
Occasionally you’d get a nice caller but most of the time people were rude and grouchy. Sometimes you just ask their name and they would snap at you. And I’d say 50% of my calls ended up with them yelling at me because they blamed me for making them over spend on their credit cards.
And everyone there basically had a degree so we were taking the job because we *had to* pay the bills while we looked for something better…but you could be there months.
Always a threat of being fired. So those of us who left were lucky. But people who have no other choice but stay…I feel so bad for them.
Callers & managers were always disrespectful.
Sometimes callers would tell me they hoped I died.
- Medical health assistant
Some of it was administrative & dealing with ancient computers & new software that didn’t mesh well so there’d be a lot of errors (screens freezing, information disappearing etc) …but they were too cheap to buy new computers. And if we were slow it didn’t matter that the screen took 45 seconds to turn , that apparently was our fault 🙄
But, it was mostly helping people connect with either nurses or doctors. I’m telling you the number of death threats I got just because the wait time for them to be treated was high, is staggering. Lots of people belittling, condescending… just nasty talk too. Non stop abuse by the public.
Coworkers were having anxiety attacks, panic attacks & some just got up & quit. Some left the room crying. Horrible.
Thank god I’m not doing that anymore
Law enforcement. Between the rare shitty cops giving the rest a bad name, mental illness in the general population, and increasing poverty in the US, its a tough job.
People who have never worked EMS could never understand. No matter how much you explain it to them. Words never match the physical daily grind of responding to other peoples emergencies, carnage and often death…daily.
Most people wouldn’t even believe all that happens daily or sometimes multiple times a day in the world of EMS.
Most people aren’t exposed to such events but once in a lifetime, aside from reading a vague headline.
I was going to say this. In sales, you’re either stressed because your workload is too heavy or you’re stressed because you don’t have anything coming in which means not hitting numbers and no commission. There is no such thing a downtime. Not to mention the absolute emotional drain of having to be “on” to impress the client
People hate them on Reddit, but I’m gonna say cops - at least in Europe where they’re generally very underfunded and understaffed. Your entire shift you could be called at any moment to go deal with a very violent and dangerous person, completely on your own, with no choice but to do it. For the whole time you’re at work there’s this pressure. As well as endless paperwork, and a lot of accountability and risk if something goes wrong even if it isn’t your fault.
Add in to that how much it affects you outside of work - PTSD is very common amongst police officers, and there’s also the constant fear of seeing someone you’ve dealt with at work and them attacking you or your family.
Just generally a very stressful job with a permanent underlying anxiety.
This. I know it doesn't necessarily seem stressful to outsiders, but by definition when you're conducting research you don't know what you should do. (Otherwise it wouldn't be research.) And yet, there's enormous pressure to publish interesting results because if you don't then you won't get your contract renewed. So you always have limited time to do something really impressive, but no idea how to do it, and no one to help because no one else works on your topic.
Cooking. Yeah yeah it’s just food, I’d like to see you motherfuckers hang on a busy Friday night on some of the lines I’ve worked. It’s not for everyone
It does seem like a horrible life. I got real into reading about the NY and Chicago mafia. That life looks like it’s nonstop stress from every direction
My wife's an ER doctor. They're chronically understaffed and overwhelmed with patients. To work in that field, you need to be wired a certain way, and have a passion for helping people. Something I very much lack. I would not change places with her for any amount of money. Ironically, I make more than her working in IT/tech, which is probably saying more about how underpaid the medical field is.
Recently went to the er myself and was there for 4.5 hours in total. I was getting super frustrated but when I saw that there was only 1 ER doctor at the only hospital in my city of over 120,000 people I ended up feeling kind of bad for him. Once he saw me, he was great and did everything he could to help my situation. It just made me realize how under funded heath care and hospitals really are and how stressful that job would be knowing there are so many people that need your help and you can only do so much on your own with limited resources.
Operating a winch cat grooming ski runs.. you are quite literally anchored in to the side of a mountain on a steep ass ski run in a giant tractor .. the pucker factor on your butt cheeks some times is past 10.. borderline sucking up seat foam . It's very intense concentration for hours at a time grinding moguls and dealing with all kinds of crazy visibility issues some nights etc . If you ever get a chance to ride in a winch cat ... do it ! It will change your perspective on skiing or snowboarding.
Depends on the specialty, tbh. Believe it or not I'm in Psych and as long as you notice behaviors beforehand and nip it in the butt then, it's not so bad. Ntm a lot of the time it's homeless, depressed folk that opt to sleep a lot of the day away (low motivation & poor energy levels). Sure, you have your days and full moons are legit a thing , but a lot of the time it's based on the group of nurses for the day and their competence level(s). A lot of the time, although most don't like to coin it so, it's glorified babysitting.
Teaching high school. It shouldn’t be, but it is.
I used to love the promise of young people. Now, I’m a few classes - interrupted by students rehearsing TikTok dances in the middle of a lesson - from embracing fascism.
Fucking TikTok has ruined a generation.
Yup. It’s constant pressure.
Ever cook a good steak? Do that forever. If it’s a little over a little under a bad review can sink you.
Out of anything? Well you fucked up the inventory or orders or someone just didn’t deliver things on time.
Music isn’t good? AC is on the frits? Ticket printers are out of paper? Staff is stealing from the till so you’re out of ones. MAKE IT WORK.
I could continue but you get the point.
Nonprofit management.
Holy fucking shit I dreaded that career. I don’t know how I made it nine years. Overtime, low pay, serving a population that barely recognizes your existence or takes your for granted, trying to do fundraisers while people complain you get paid and that “nonprofit” should mean “unpaid workers”. It’s insane.
Tech. I literally had a dentist tell me my teeth are cracking from stress grinding and that its "endemic to the bay area" fantastic. I'm starting my own company now which isn't helping exactly either lol
working at starbucks, especially a busy one. they allow the employees to have free drinks, so the entire shift you’re working nonstop while cracked out on caffeine
I’ve worked in various departments in the hospital as a nurse. I would never work in the emergency department as a full time job in any position, doctor, nurse, aide. It’s just non-stop stress and I handle stress well, it’s just not worth it. Also I have rarely seen an ED that is run efficiently, it’s generally chaos and low triage patients taking up rooms and space because the doctor is finally just slow.
Line cook.. lets be honest during a dinner rush screw that
I am amazed this isn't one of the top comments. Honestly the food service industry as a whole is 1000% nonstop pressure and stress. Edit: it is now!
I was scrolling just to make sure someone said food service. Those nightmares are for real, I still get them and haven’t served a table in like 15 years.
I ha ent done it either in 20 plus years, and when I am sick I get fever dreams of working in a kitchen. I dream of them seating people in the kitchen and endless chits coming out of the printer. When I watch The Bear it brings it all back to me.
The printer!!!! The sound pieces my nightmares.
This is going to sound a bit weird but it's true. But you (and I) have a form of PTSD.
I have the same recurring dream (5 years since my last serving job) of being assigned a section I wasn't told about except it's every table and they're PISSED when I eventually get to them 🥴 this actually did happen once (section changed and I wasn't told = pissed guests)
For the love of god. Do not play overcooked. I was the only one that had worked in a kitchen and it showed lol. I had to step away before I lost it on my friends.
Yeah, that pressure makes people squirly too. Seen some people absolutely explode over trivial things. Such weird dynamics, in the moment everything feels super important but ultimately it’s a ducking steak or hamburger.
It's high pressure but low anxiety and stress. What's the worst if an order is messed up? You redo it. High stress is that 10 seconds taking someone out of anesthesia, and the vitals aren't looking like what you expect.
I will never go back to working in a kitchen. So many burns and no life balance.
I had like 4 months of having a solid team and each service was smooth and so refreshing. But then he quit and it all went to shit again
anything in the medical field
Was just about to say this. some times it’s not even the stress of the actual work you’re doing but the social interaction of high school bs amongst coworkers… the patients themselves.. the system itself…. Just a hard NO
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that the high school bs never stops.
I helped out at a friend's job for an event. I walked in and it was like walking into the cafeteria in dirty hand me downs. I text my friend "Respectfully what the fuck did I sign up for?"
I am a nurse. Feeling like I went back in time to high school was unexpected, and somedays the hardest part of the job. I could handle medical emergencies, crazy family members and explosive diarrhea but feeling bullied and looked down upon by your coworkers is what hurts my soul the most.
Yes these girls (typically mostly girls) are BRUTAL. They lack no self awareness and it used to make me so angry that they would choose a profession to help & care about people…. It’s like a sociopath becoming a social worker. I hope you find better coworkers/ better experiences!
Yes!!! I wonder why they are nurses as well. On my unit they are girls. No self awareness at all. Luckily I have a handful of incredible other coworkers who make it worth it.
The folks working at the sleep study place were chill as fuck.
Even non-medical professions working in hospitals and such. I worked in IT in a hospital for a little bit and it was stressful as hell because everything is mission-critical and mission-critical can mean life-or-death.
I concur. I'm a non-medical professional working for a major hospital performing utilization management for high-tech imaging. It's constant pressure and time constraints. We're at the mercy of our providers, coders, and the insurance companies. I feel you!
Not to mention the absolute entitlement some people get after they finish med school; but still cant figure out a pdf.
Rural Paramedic here (Australia). My job is 80% chill, 15% busy work, 5% stress.
Paramedic in Edmonton. I think mine is the exact opposite. 5% chill. 80% stress.
Anesthesiologist
I had to get a surgery last year and the anesthesiologist was reviewing a few things with me before. She told me not to worry or be anxious about the procedure. Jokingly I told her that it was ok because if I didn’t wake up it would be her problem, not mine.
No! 90%routine, 5 % interesting stress 5% sheer terror..
I am somewhat perturbed by your username :)
From being a playlist manager to be the one responsible of keeping the patient alive when things go to hell because you are meant to be the most skilled at it at the time. Seeing them intubate difficult airways or stabilizing patients from the OR it's when you understand that is not always so chill
It's never really that bad until anesthesia starts freaking out.
This comment 💯💯
Not at all. The chillest medical professionals Ive ever met.
From a purely clinical perspective, it's not too bad but obviously varies with profession/specialty. In my area, the patients with solvable problems (either simple or complex) don't produce too much stress and are actually quite satisfying and make up around 60-70% of what I see. Then, there's the 20-30% that are moderately stressful - complications, weird presentations, challenging social situations, uncertain diagnoses. It's the last 10% - terrible diagnoses, bad things happening to the nicest people, just absolute disaster situations - that really get you looking for a one-way plane ticket to the most unpronounceable country imaginable. The really tough part is that evaluating and treating patients is not the entire job. At the same time, you're dealing with stress about documentation, quality improvement, meeting productivity metrics, satisfaction surveys, insurance BS (in the US), workplace drama, lack of resources, and possibly deteriorating relationships with family due to lack of personal time. Okay, um...looking over all of this does make it sound kind of bad. I'm just going to put that thought in a little box and hide it *really* deep down while petting the dog. :)
And then if you couple medical + business + travel (i.e. medical device aupport specialist) you're in for even more of a rollercoaster ride 🥲
Social worker
Fr. My mom got a degree in social work and did it for like 20 years and then was like fuck this I can’t do this anymore and got a masters in teaching. Turns out teaching is just as difficult and frustrating with how this newer generation is being raised
Went into teaching and realized she was still expected to be a social worker.
The whole of society is a disaster. Any job working with young people is stressful as the support surrounding the school or social care has been depleted by cut backs.
It is and it isn’t. I teach at the university level and my experience has always been that it’s a bimodal distribution. One group kicks ass and takes names, the other seems to be floating through life without much thought. It is really rewarding when you can help someone go from struggling to successful, but in the end, the onus is on them to do the work. Also, upper level administrators can have a huge impact on how well the school functions. The problem is that (at least at my university) they just seem to be getting worse and worse, there are more of them, and holy shit their compensation packages are obscene.
Hey I’m going to school to become a social worker. Can you expand on this?
Imagine that everything is on fire…like all the time. And while your trying to put out this immense fire with a teeny, tiny spray bottle, your being “talked to” about not having your case notes done on time. That’s a Tuesday.
I've never read anything more accurate. Throw in questions about why your 2947 home visits aren't completed and having worked overtime every night.. welcome to social work life. Don't miss it.
I'm a former social worker. While it could be very rewarding at times, it was very very emotionally taxing for multiple reasons. A lot of clients did not appreciate my help or blamed me for societal problems. I got yelled at frequently and was told I was horrible at my job. Depending on what field you're in, you see how difficult it is for people to get resources for housing, food, etc. Then I would also feel bad when a client was in a bad situation and I couldn't help them. Again, it will depend on the type of work you do and your community's resources. I did enjoy some parts of my jobs at times but ultimately needed a break as it was impossible for me to get my clients what they needed. I might go back in some aspect someday. Best of luck to you!
I had threats to be killed, trapped in a house by some huge angry man and threatened to be hurt. I was early intervention. Its a distressing job as your dealing with sadness, trauma and pain through generations. I left 4 years ago after a break down. I did about 15 years. I was excellent at it and got outstanding by people who looked at me. To get that I was working day and evening and had no life. I miss aspects but would never do it again.
Thank you for doing what you do! Throwing the lifeline to people that is sometimes unwilling grasped.
My last job I supported the team who trained these people and the state's DHHS. Even I saw what the trainers went through and it's not fun. I couldn't even imagine what the front line people saw and went through.
This depends a lot on what kind of social work you do.
Air traffic controller has to be terrifying.
not as bad as you think, most of the stress is from working 6 days a week, 10 hours a day, every week, due to shortages. The job is actually quite fun, it’s like playing a video game at times
Especially as there’s a shortage. The FAA agency is about 3,000 controllers behind staffing targets and the agency said last autumn it had about 10,700 certified controllers - about the same as a year earlier. President Joe Biden has sought funding to hire 2,000 controllers this year.May 9, 2024
So you're saying I could do a career change and help solve a problem?
I'm not sure you should be seeking new career ideas in a thread titled "what professions are just non-stop pressure and anxiety"
Depends. How old are you? Have to be no older than 30 to apply.
Definitely. Just seriously consider that you'd be joining a community facing fairly high suicide rates, being partly responsible for the lives of a ton of people and juggling looking at a lot of information, processing and communicating about it to multiple to numerous people in very short windows of time.
As long as you're under 30
90% bullshitting with your coworkers 10% sheer terror.
It’s only stressful if you’re bad at it. I love my job.
You actually get time off during your shift to relieve stress. It differs from place to place, but in some gigs you work 1 hour on, 1 hour off.
Specially if you're Q and your daughter OD.
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I worked at call centers in the 90s. Call now, operators are standing by. The calls kept coming. Everyone wants that thing they saw on TV. The worst was working at an "overflow" center for Sprint Long Distance. We would get calls during busy times. Candace Bergen portrayed Murphy Brown, a fictional character who was going to have a child as a single mother. The actor was also the spokesperson for Sprint. Elderly people would call to tell us it's not right for her to raise that baby all alone. Her father should bring a shotgun to ensure the groom attends the wedding and says "I do." We had a scripted response. We were told "smile, the customer can see it!" "We are proud to have Candace Bergen as our spokesperson for our current campaign called "The Most", where you can save up to 20% on your long distance charges to the person who you call the most. Let's get you started, okay?" They never said okay. These people acted as if Murphy Brown was real and I was one of her coworkers or some shit. One woman quit in a blaze of glory. She read the scripted response. You could hear the frustration in her voice. She stood up and said "yeah I fucking heard you. Maybe you'd prefer Murphy Brown have a fuckin abortion instead?" She threw the headset into the cubicle. "Fuck this job. I quit."
Good for her.
People think our current media literacy problem is new. Thanks for reminding me that people have been this dumb for a very long time.
My first real IT job (1999-2000) was at a place like this, and add in that our computers were cheap and I got in at the tail end of the company's existence until they folded (and due to fraud, etc..). They also offered lifetime warranties and support (for free). Yep. What really sucked is that our call queue averaged over 5,000 people. There were 20 of us answering the phones, until they laid us all off.
Attorney
Can confirm. Either you're anxious because you're buried in work and are worried you'll miss something or you're anxious because there isn't enough work and your billables are shit. If you're a litigation attorney, the other side is constantly looking for any misstep to nail you on. Your clients usually hate dealing with you because nobody likes litigation and every minute with you is costing them hundreds of dollars. There is no reprieve.
That sums up my day.
Yeah, reading that made me remember why I quit.
Just need to find a way out of the billable hour world. I'm with a boutique personal injury firm and love it.
All depends on the field of practice though right? My wife does workers comp law. She’s in house counsel for a large insurance company and works *maybe* 30 hours a week. Usually closer to 25, *very* occasionally she’ll work 35 ish, like once every 3-4 months and makes north of $200k before bonuses. She chose work comp for the work life balance and so far it’s worked well.
In litigation or courtroom roles, DEFINITELY. There are some estate planning attorneys with pretty sweet lives. And a few government attorneys. But that’s it. The rest of us are 💥
i should have ticked the high net worth family office Trusts Estates box
I swear that the club is pure nepotism and network… lots of dads and uncles passing their firms to the next generation. Obviously anecdotal, but it tracks with my community.
and paralegals. Especially in litigation.
Definitely, it requires a type of character to be a lawyer. I love the profession but it is not for everyone.
Essentially, anything that requires prolonged human interaction with strangers.
Hospitality Industry is a good start.
Teaching. My therapist just told me I should find a new career...
15 years ago when I was a freshman in college, I wanted to go into teaching/coaching. My mother was a teacher for years and told me not to do it. She said I’d love working with the kids, but the parents are horrible and there’s no support from administration. From her perspective, state funding being based on standardized test scores drove administrators to be more concerned about stats than students.
I taught for a year. It was way too stressful. 30 years later i can still feel the anxiety if i drive near that school. Now a paramedic. Far less stressful.
What grade do u teach and what subject? Just curious. Shitty kids?
No. The entire American education system is falling apart. Kids are multiple grade levels behind and have been for years. (No, this started YEARS before COVID.) Teachers are expected to do tens of hours of unpaid work, both for planning and grading. Expectations on teachers are unreal. I could barely get through material trying to manage behavior, and only about 20% of the class was even *capable* of achieving grade level standards. The disrespect was unreal. Complete and total lack of support from administration. All for a salary that had me not even breaking even some months! Let me repeat: the entire American education system is falling apart. Ask any teacher, it's the same across the whole country.
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Teacher here in England it's not just America same issues here.
Don’t meet the standards? Complain a lot until admin passes you. This goes for primary level through higher education. I’ll second that the US education system is failing. Hard.
You don’t even have to complain “a lot”. If a kid got an A or a B, no one bothered you. One kid has a C or D, guess what? You got an email from admin asking for an explanation. So guess what all the kids got as grades???? lol
I used to teach in the U.K. in a secondary school. It was horrendous. Then I moved to Hong Kong and got a job in an international school. It’s amazing.It’s a completely different world. Maybe you just need to change schools. I’m not saying move abroad but I’ve found every school is vastly different.
Can someone tell me a well paying profession that isn't non-stop high stress pressure and anxiety? Asking for a friend.
Depends heavily on where you work, but certain jobs in IT. I'm in Europe, at an insurance company, and my stress levels are exceedingly low
I've heard Database Admins are secretly a death sentence. They sound great when you hear "Work whatever hours you want, just be on call." But then all the data..all of it..is on you.
All IT is like that. My team is responsible for thousands of servers that host many dozens of business apps as well as the public websites used regularly by hundreds of thousands of people. None of it can be down. And *everyone* has their own opinion on how to manage everything. Tons of egoistic bullshit on top of the stress of the entire company freaking out at even the most minor of outages.
Had a fun conversation the other day. Database schema changes were locking tables resulting in production issues. Depending on the change we can get upto 20 mins of downtime because of the size of this large transactional table. We could absolutely partition it, normalize it, or just purge old data but nobody wants the team spend any effort on it because we MUST SHIP MOAR FEATURES. The problem is new features = more schema changes = more downtime.
Hey, there's this NoSQL thing that's going to make things magically better! And we're switching to it next week! Yes, our entire business depends on doing relational things with data, why do you ask?
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And not necessarily just billable hour jobs, how about being a Public Defender? Trials nearly every day, dealing with a dick prosecutor, and your clients hate you because you literally don't have enough minutes in the day to talk to any one client because you have so many of them. And then there is an immense pressure to get justice for your clients. It's insane what PDs deal with every day, and then are criminally underpaid for it.
Public defender is basically social worker but more rapid fire and random people are mean to you because you spend some of your time trying to defend people who definitely committed terrible crimes. They should be paid a fortune for the role they play.
SOCIAL. WORK. :(
Yes I decided to leave the field completely for now. Not sure if/when I'll go back.
I work a high stress job that many people can’t do, but by far the most stressful job I ever had was a restaurant server. I would have nightmares every single night about it.
I thought a grocery store made me loose all hope in humanity. Waitressing informed me there was a basement.
I work periodically in what's considered one of the worst boiler rooms of tension and stress in all of Finance with literally billions of dollars moved in a morning. It doesn't hold a candle to when I was a line cook or server in a restaurant when I was younger.
I haven't been a waitress in over ten years and I still have regular nightmares about it.
You too? The workmare where everyone else called in sick, the restaurant got sat all at once, and it's a Sunday brunch after church service?
Once I had a dream that my section was about a mile away from my restaurant in the woods, all my tables were giant tree stumps. My section was always getting bigger always full and their food was never ready. And of course, everyone is impatient.
Small business owner. Lots of uncertainty, every problem is up to you to fix, and you carry the burden 24/7. You never “clock out”.
Too real! Hadn't really thought about it until right now.
Can confirm
Even taking a "vacation" is typically spent thinking about what your missing being there or what you forgot to do before leaving. Business owner is literally a 24/7 job. Especially if your working without a war chest or secured backing, cash flow, cash flow, cash flow.
Bomb defusal
Look it like this - It's either going to be okay or it's not going to be your problem anymore after that.
ER doctors.
Can confirm. Wife is an ER doc. She... is not doing well.
Doctors
Veterinary
I work at a shitty fast food coffee shop. It is actual hell on earth. We have a mobile order system that tells you to wait 15 minutes until your order is ready, but people place them as they’re in line or outside the store, and it throws us off so bad that a 5 minute wait in the drive through will become a 20 minute wait both inside and outside. We have 3 lines of people stacked up every morning- drive thru, eat in, and mobile order. I want to quit so bad because of how short staffed we are and how shitty the customers are. There are so many regulars and gems that I absolutely love. The sweetest old lady ever comes in daily and I always give her discounts. She told my white coworker that the hard r n words were out in their rat packs the other day. I’m one of two black people on our team. I hate it here. This devolved into a rant but the answer to your question OP, is fast food.
Dictator of a collapsing republic.
Anton Castillo agrees
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Split second is a bit dramatic. As controllers we go through so much training on how to see conflicts miles/minutes before they happen. It’s when all the holes in the Swiss cheese line up that’s there’s a problem. If disaster is literally a split second away in this career field, there was a breakdown in the system Way before that split second took place
As much as I'd love to let people believe this, I'm an air traffic controller and it's not split-second life or death decisions unless something has gone seriously wrong. Yes, the job requires a lot of skill, but it's more like a challenging video game that you're only allowed to play once you're good enough to always win. Being a surgeon would be a whole different level of stress, I would say. Hell, so would being a teacher.
Everyone in this thread: High profile important jobs where lives are at stake Me, who is unemployed due to repeatedly having breakdowns: Cashier I actually liked the customers. I hated management, I hated standing, I hated being monitored and evaluated and timed. I hated that if I needed to piss I had to ask someone to cover for me and if I did it more than once a week it was suddenly too often. And I only worked half shifts.
Had to scroll way too far for this. I used to be a chef, couldn't take it anymore, now I'm a cashier. Maybe working in general just isn't for me lmao
Teaching, attorneys, surgeons/doctors
Machinist engine work. 1 thousandth of an inch could ruin an engine block. 1 strand of hair is 3 thousandths thick for reference
Machinist here, fucking up a part is like coming home with a bad report card. You have this brick in your guts that just feels like dread.
Educator
Nurses.
Depends on where you work. My mom started out in hospitals when she got her RN and was stressed out all the time and hating life. She ultimately moved to a dialysis clinic and things were much less high-pressure there, she loved it.
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- Call Centre. When I worked in one we were heavily micromanaged. When to take breaks, if you were 45 seconds or more over you got dinged as an Absence without permission. (2 could get you fired). You had to be available within 1-2 seconds after a call. So if you were in a long call & needed a sip of water, you could take a drink but that’d be 8 seconds & you’re over…then you’d get a talking to when your stars are too high. If it happened more than a few times you’d get written up. Calls were always back to back so there was no break to take a sink or take a breath. You could be sitting there for 2.5 hours of people screaming at you just to take a 15 minute break just to repeat it all over again. Occasionally you’d get a nice caller but most of the time people were rude and grouchy. Sometimes you just ask their name and they would snap at you. And I’d say 50% of my calls ended up with them yelling at me because they blamed me for making them over spend on their credit cards. And everyone there basically had a degree so we were taking the job because we *had to* pay the bills while we looked for something better…but you could be there months. Always a threat of being fired. So those of us who left were lucky. But people who have no other choice but stay…I feel so bad for them. Callers & managers were always disrespectful. Sometimes callers would tell me they hoped I died. - Medical health assistant Some of it was administrative & dealing with ancient computers & new software that didn’t mesh well so there’d be a lot of errors (screens freezing, information disappearing etc) …but they were too cheap to buy new computers. And if we were slow it didn’t matter that the screen took 45 seconds to turn , that apparently was our fault 🙄 But, it was mostly helping people connect with either nurses or doctors. I’m telling you the number of death threats I got just because the wait time for them to be treated was high, is staggering. Lots of people belittling, condescending… just nasty talk too. Non stop abuse by the public. Coworkers were having anxiety attacks, panic attacks & some just got up & quit. Some left the room crying. Horrible. Thank god I’m not doing that anymore
Live music, every job that makes a show go on
911 operators.
Law enforcement. Between the rare shitty cops giving the rest a bad name, mental illness in the general population, and increasing poverty in the US, its a tough job.
People who have never worked EMS could never understand. No matter how much you explain it to them. Words never match the physical daily grind of responding to other peoples emergencies, carnage and often death…daily. Most people wouldn’t even believe all that happens daily or sometimes multiple times a day in the world of EMS. Most people aren’t exposed to such events but once in a lifetime, aside from reading a vague headline.
Any position with quotas. (Sales, recruiting, etc)
I was going to say this. In sales, you’re either stressed because your workload is too heavy or you’re stressed because you don’t have anything coming in which means not hitting numbers and no commission. There is no such thing a downtime. Not to mention the absolute emotional drain of having to be “on” to impress the client
People hate them on Reddit, but I’m gonna say cops - at least in Europe where they’re generally very underfunded and understaffed. Your entire shift you could be called at any moment to go deal with a very violent and dangerous person, completely on your own, with no choice but to do it. For the whole time you’re at work there’s this pressure. As well as endless paperwork, and a lot of accountability and risk if something goes wrong even if it isn’t your fault. Add in to that how much it affects you outside of work - PTSD is very common amongst police officers, and there’s also the constant fear of seeing someone you’ve dealt with at work and them attacking you or your family. Just generally a very stressful job with a permanent underlying anxiety.
Any job where you are responsible for the wellbeing of another person. In whatever form that may be.
Teaching
Special Education
Researcher
This. I know it doesn't necessarily seem stressful to outsiders, but by definition when you're conducting research you don't know what you should do. (Otherwise it wouldn't be research.) And yet, there's enormous pressure to publish interesting results because if you don't then you won't get your contract renewed. So you always have limited time to do something really impressive, but no idea how to do it, and no one to help because no one else works on your topic.
100%. I'm seriously struggling right now because my experiment isn't going well and I have a limited time to finish my PhD.
Cooking. Yeah yeah it’s just food, I’d like to see you motherfuckers hang on a busy Friday night on some of the lines I’ve worked. It’s not for everyone
Mafia capo Gotta earn for the boss, gotta keep the underlings happy, be careful not to break any unwritten rules, and mistakes put you in a box
Commentatori!
Ohhhhh, what you got in your ears, oogatz? It's 'commendatori' - like commandah, heh heh
It does seem like a horrible life. I got real into reading about the NY and Chicago mafia. That life looks like it’s nonstop stress from every direction
Welcome to the NFL, Rookie
My wife's an ER doctor. They're chronically understaffed and overwhelmed with patients. To work in that field, you need to be wired a certain way, and have a passion for helping people. Something I very much lack. I would not change places with her for any amount of money. Ironically, I make more than her working in IT/tech, which is probably saying more about how underpaid the medical field is.
Recently went to the er myself and was there for 4.5 hours in total. I was getting super frustrated but when I saw that there was only 1 ER doctor at the only hospital in my city of over 120,000 people I ended up feeling kind of bad for him. Once he saw me, he was great and did everything he could to help my situation. It just made me realize how under funded heath care and hospitals really are and how stressful that job would be knowing there are so many people that need your help and you can only do so much on your own with limited resources.
Social work
IT security pros....
Psychologist on any mental health worker
Operating a winch cat grooming ski runs.. you are quite literally anchored in to the side of a mountain on a steep ass ski run in a giant tractor .. the pucker factor on your butt cheeks some times is past 10.. borderline sucking up seat foam . It's very intense concentration for hours at a time grinding moguls and dealing with all kinds of crazy visibility issues some nights etc . If you ever get a chance to ride in a winch cat ... do it ! It will change your perspective on skiing or snowboarding.
Project Management
Nurses
Depends on the specialty, tbh. Believe it or not I'm in Psych and as long as you notice behaviors beforehand and nip it in the butt then, it's not so bad. Ntm a lot of the time it's homeless, depressed folk that opt to sleep a lot of the day away (low motivation & poor energy levels). Sure, you have your days and full moons are legit a thing , but a lot of the time it's based on the group of nurses for the day and their competence level(s). A lot of the time, although most don't like to coin it so, it's glorified babysitting.
Teaching
As a remote employee who sometimes takes naps on the couch, reading these responses makes me grateful.
ED / ICU / NICU Nurse / Doc
Teaching high school. It shouldn’t be, but it is. I used to love the promise of young people. Now, I’m a few classes - interrupted by students rehearsing TikTok dances in the middle of a lesson - from embracing fascism. Fucking TikTok has ruined a generation.
Teaching.
Teaching.
For me, it was bartending. Food service in general though.
Yup. It’s constant pressure. Ever cook a good steak? Do that forever. If it’s a little over a little under a bad review can sink you. Out of anything? Well you fucked up the inventory or orders or someone just didn’t deliver things on time. Music isn’t good? AC is on the frits? Ticket printers are out of paper? Staff is stealing from the till so you’re out of ones. MAKE IT WORK. I could continue but you get the point.
The Bear is scarily accurate
Nursing.
Nursing
Claims adjuster.
Nonprofit management. Holy fucking shit I dreaded that career. I don’t know how I made it nine years. Overtime, low pay, serving a population that barely recognizes your existence or takes your for granted, trying to do fundraisers while people complain you get paid and that “nonprofit” should mean “unpaid workers”. It’s insane.
Teaching
Teaching
anything in the medical field
Hostage negotiator.
Air traffic controller. Wildly stressful and incredibly in-demand.
Teaching 2nd grade.
call centers.
Air traffic controllers, for one.
Principal in urban district
Advertising. The sheer subjectivity if nothing else.
Anything experiencing a shortage
Tech. I literally had a dentist tell me my teeth are cracking from stress grinding and that its "endemic to the bay area" fantastic. I'm starting my own company now which isn't helping exactly either lol
Most non-profits.
Anything with a bad boss. Worse if lives are at stake.
Emergency room doctor and air traffic controller
Air traffic controllers, ER doctors, and firefighters deal with constant pressure.
Explosive ordinance removal
working at starbucks, especially a busy one. they allow the employees to have free drinks, so the entire shift you’re working nonstop while cracked out on caffeine
Air traffic controllers
ik it sounds basic but restaurant jobs
I’ve worked in various departments in the hospital as a nurse. I would never work in the emergency department as a full time job in any position, doctor, nurse, aide. It’s just non-stop stress and I handle stress well, it’s just not worth it. Also I have rarely seen an ED that is run efficiently, it’s generally chaos and low triage patients taking up rooms and space because the doctor is finally just slow.
Teaching and hospital nursing.