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Stress at work?

(55 Posts)
Nonnie Wed 25-Mar-15 09:40:58

Were/are you stressed at work? In the last week I have read about all the teachers and all the health workers who are very stressed at work. I didn't belong to a union so no one did any research on how stressed I might be.

I am not suggesting they are not, more that an awful lot of people are. It is possible that when you work with a lot of people doing the same job day after day you all talk about how hard the job is and wind each other up to become stressed. It must be easier to take time off with stress when you work with people who understand than it was where I worked. It would have been the end of career progression.

I sometimes think that those who have never done anything different have a somewhat blinkered idea of what other people's jobs are like. I never had a 9-5 job and was never paid for any of my overtime. I had an arrangement with the friend who looked after DS after school that she would feed him when necessary and keep him until one of us got home.

When on an IT project I had to keep my laptop on 24 hours a day and be prepared to take a call at any time as the IT problems would be solved in whichever country was working using a system called 'Follow the Sun'. That was stressful. DH's job was stressful, 2 DS's have stressful (but rewarding) jobs.

Should I now go and hide from all the teachers and medics? I only used them as the latest example.

Maggiemaybe Mon 30-Mar-15 13:16:37

And of course they are also employers, so subject to the other hassles you mention.

Maggiemaybe Tue 31-Mar-15 10:12:24

Whoops, sorry, I've taken the discussion back to schools again, following Nonnie's mention of Ofsted. What I really should have said is, the public sector is audited ruthlessly, and rightly so, being in receipt of public money.

Nonnie Tue 31-Mar-15 10:32:59

All I was trying to get across is that the private sector is the same, audited to death all the time. Not claiming it is worse, just saying schools are not alone. I do hear teachers complaining a lot about OFSTED and it feels as if they think it doesn't happen to the rest of us. At least they usually get chance to prepare, we didn't, they just arrived and expected us to jump to their demands regardless of the time of the month or what else we had to do.

JessM Thu 02-Apr-15 14:20:34

It is peak season for teaching moans as the unions (all of them) are having conferences and trying to get into the headlines.
e.g. in the last day or so we have had
teachers being harassed on line (how do they know? Are they daft enough to have open access Facebook or twitter accounts?
and teachers overwhelmed by children who don't speak english
and older teachers feeling victimised

People are leaving the profession are they? Maybe it is partly due to all this woe in the media. I can't think of any other job or profession that does this annual festival of saying how awful the job is.