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Thread: How much work stress do you tolerate?

  1. #11
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    I'm an impatient psychiatric nurse for the court ordered population. I'm the permanent charge nurse on my unit, which included some management responsibilities with a full patient load for me too. 7-8 people report directly to me every shift, and I need to coordinate care with docs, social workers, families, visitors, nurse managers, ancillary departments. It's always busy, almost always stressful, sometimes dangerous physically, sometimes 10-11 hours work with only 20 min for lunch. But I usually love it. I often wonder why. But I do.

  2. #12
    TxZen
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    Last job- holy stress nightmare. Funny thing is, I spent 10 years in the military and was never at the point of stress I was with my last job. Has a lot to do with the people you work with. I am finding changing industries completely has alleviated 85% of my stress, just from the type of work.

  3. #13
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    I often wonder about the 'can't possibly do it' thing since I work with some families who are in deep financial issues. They don't have jobs, experience homelessness, etc. I was talking to one lady who got a job, yeah! And then she was talking about how she couldn't stand it. It did sound like some bad things were going on, but not abusive things, and I wondered if she understood her situation very well.

    In any case my stress is coming from 2 places right now. One is that a lot more of our sites are becoming similar to mine and I am comparing. There is one school running after school clubs totaling 200 kids and he helps with recess duty as well. I told my assistant that and he is not even inspired with my goal of 80-100 daily, which is an increase of what we already are doing. So the comparisons can drag me down when I see the differences, but can be encouraging when I start to get curious and investigate why so that I can improve.

    The other is the damn job time creep. I ended up again with meetings on Friday during the day, and we worked on a camp until after 8:30 last night. The only reason I was okay was because the evening part was creative, we were planning the 2 days of very cool programming and I was in my element. We are doing more child-voice but also more staff voice in everything, so instead of getting a partner and planning out the curriculum for 2 days of camp we had a team of 10. I will admit there were ideas that were much better by this process, however now we need multiple meeting with as many of the 10 people again and we work at a variety of before and after school programs across the district. So there went my Friday and I really need to do more to get my son to the transitions counselor at his old high school. sigh,

    There are days i would want 9-5 with a lunch break, but then I have heard regular office jobs do not include play dough or legos.

  4. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tammy View Post
    I'm an impatient psychiatric nurse .
    That is a funny mini-typo, hope this isn't rude to notice

  5. #15
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    Not at all rude. And perhaps true!

  6. #16
    Senior Member Miss Cellane's Avatar
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    Currently, my job is pretty high stress. But that's unusual.

    We have a very busy time over the summer. They tell you this during the interview process--don't count on much time off over the summer. There are contract deadlines that have to be met, there are high penalties to pay if they aren't. We hire lots of temps, who work both a day shift and an evening shift, so we can get things done in time.

    So summer is usually busy, but only stressful for a couple of weeks when your particular project is being worked on in the final stages.

    However, this summer we had two people out on medical leave for the whole summer, and a brand-new contract that proved to have a few wrinkles no one had anticipated. So I ended up doing my usual job, plus being assigned to another project director to help out, because both the medical leave people reported to him.

    It wasn't the work so much, as working for the other project director. Who is not a nice person. And who is horrible to the temporary workers. Horrible.

    I worked split shifts much of the summer, going in at 8 am, coming home at 1, going back at 5 and leaving again at 10. And working Saturdays and a couple of Sundays.

    On the positive side, I accumulated so much comp time that I'm sitting at home this week, getting paid, and relaxing my butt off. All on comp time. My manager told me I had to take some of the time, so I picked a good leaf-peeping week and am chilling out.

    I have a good manager who does things like this.

    And the Big Boss, during one of our working Saturdays, came in to see how things were going, and heard the miserable project director yelling at me, because I was "letting" the temps take their legally mandated 15 minute break and MPD thought they should be made to work straight through, as his project was more important than the temps' well-being or, you know, the law.

    Big Boss made him apologize to me, and from what I've heard, had a stern talking-to with MPD.

    There's stress, but how the company helps you handle it is important as well.

  7. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tammy View Post
    I'm an impatient psychiatric nurse for the court ordered population.

    I read that, and Nurse Ratchet sprang to mind and laughed. Then I thought about it and wondered if your situation was similar to BAE's, with the accessibility to getting checked out, to make sure you don't become a Nurse Ratchet. (required psyc eval's to make sure you don't end up taking stress out on patients)

    For me, job stress, is simple, people stress isn't. I've had a lot of mixed comments on my job situation, since I deal with two partner, brothers and have played the role of deciding vote/go between, etc. Several have asked how I navigate the blood verses water minefield, and their families tell me I am the binding agent of the place. There have been enough other people issues that leaving has been on my mind as of late.

  8. #18
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    No required psych evals. It's survival. I make sure to take my time off, or I'd burn out quickly.

  9. #19
    Senior Member SteveinMN's Avatar
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    DW and I have discussed this many times. What we've come down to is that work is much different now than it used to be.

    - Used to be that there were a couple of times each year when projects or problems required putting the pedal to the metal and grinding out a few 60-70 hour weeks. After years of reorganizing, attrition, and layoffs, however, that's pretty much all the time now. Or at least the expectation. There's never time to do it right anymore and there's barely time to do it over. Used to be if we had to work late to fix a production problem, they'd at least bring in pizza or comp the time. Now you just get to keep your job a while longer...

    - We've taken the slack out of business. Used to be you called someone and left a message if they weren't there. Now, if they're not at their phone, the call trips to their mobile phone or is transcribed as an email that arrives with a commanding "ding" sound on their screen. Instant messaging, email, on-call schedules -- there's very little downtime anymore.

    In the case of my stress level, I just plain burned out. I still remember the moment. After years of trying in an environment that fostered thinking outside the box and the social capital needed to get things done, bureaucracy finally trumped real work. When you start thinking the comic strip Dilbert is based on your company, it's time to reconsider.
    Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome. - Booker T. Washington

  10. #20
    Senior Member jp1's Avatar
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    When I interviewed for my previous position at my current employer (my first position here) I was upfront that I was ok with occasional overtime during a few weeks of crunch season (the month of June in my industry) or if some last minute fire erupted that needed to be dealt with but that I wasn't willing to work 50-60 hours/week as a regular thing and that if that was what the job was I'd not be interested. My (then future) boss said he understood and felt the same way. Until my last year in that roll, when the department was understaffed because that boss, as well as another coworker, quit within a week of each other, the position was exactly as promised and I was happy. The department was staffed just about right that we all had to work hard but not stupid hard or long.

    I've since learned that there are other departments in the organization where I'd've likely been told "thanks for coming to the interview but this probably isn't the right position for you" because the expectation is regular 12 hour days year in and year out. And I would've said "thanks for being honest. you're right. This isn't for me." It's nice having enough of a financial cushion that I can turn down crap like that.

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