How much work stress do you tolerate?

[rodeosweetheart]

I was just over reading on the Dave Ramsey forum and someone was asking if his wife should quit her job, as she "experienced a lot of stress more than once a week/"
This made me wonder about my job and stress, and whether other people tolerate a lot of stress at work/look for other work/quit/become disabled from stress--these are all alternatives I can think of right now.

Do some people actually only get stressed once a week at work? That sounds really nice to me.

I am on vacation from my main job, still working my second job, and vacation ends in a couple of days. I know my stress levels correlate with this main job, as this is pretty clear, but I am wondering how others here deal with this problem?

My primary reason for working is access to health care, followed by money.

Yet my main job has created a stressful situation for me, most of the time--with concurrent rise in blood pressure, insomnia, depression and anxiety. I have worked hard, with some success, to work through my reactions and improve them, but I am still struggling with panic reactions, etc., to the job.

On the other hand, being broke would produce all of those, too. . .

[Gardenarian]

It depends on how you define it. It's somewhat stressful just getting up earlier than I might like and having to stay on a schedule. I'd much rather be out hiking, or reading a book, or doing yoga. I think work is just inherently stressful.

At my job I work with nice, sane people. I like the work I do and I don't feel a lot of pressure; I never come home fuming about some incident at work or anything like that. I have had jobs where the people I worked with were difficult and I dreaded going in, but I didn't stick around long.

[Lainey]

I think sometimes the stress level can creep up. You don't hear so much about bosses who are screamers, but on the other hand, there are plenty of bosses who expect salaried employees to work 50-60 hour weeks routinely.
The idea of leaving the office at 5 pm and not putting in more hours on your computer from home is becoming less and less common, so the expectation that you're basically working or on call every day is what's stressful.


I know we've talked here before about calculating your real hourly wage, and I think a lot of salaried people are actually working for a far lower hourly wage than they realize.

[jp1]

In my current role I experience very little stress. My main job focus is on doing public speaking regarding our insurance product and the general need for it. (cyber, or data security, insurance that pays out when corporations like Target or Home Depot have a data breach and have to spend money to notify people/provide credit monitoring services/respond to lawsuits). My overarching goal is to help the company sell it. Mostly I just have to be able to talk knowledgeably about it to a wide range of people, but since I AM knowledgeable I find this to be easy and enjoyable.

And the settings in which I have to do my job are occasionally quite awesome. For instance last december I had to take a trip to Seattle for a "product fair" which is a euphemism for a holiday party that we, an insurance company, throw for brokers who place their clients' insurance business with us. Before the party I met my sister for coffee that afternoon (she lives in Seattle), told her why I was in town and her comment was "so, they flew you to Seattle for the day to go to a party?" Yes, pretty much. Or there was the one hour speaking engagement that I had to go to the big island of Hawaii for...

Before this role I underwrote insurance. That was WAY more stressful. We were short staffed so it was long hours and lots and lots of details and tight deadlines. If my current role hadn't come available (or I hadn't gotten the position) I would've burnt out and would likely work for a different employer today.

My biggest stress right now is that my boss got a big promotion so I will be getting a new, as yet unnamed, boss. The most likely internal candidate is not someone I want to work for. I'll have to wait and see how that plays out.

[Tradd]

There is an *extremely* high level of stress with my job - customs broker/freight forwarder. I enjoy what I do, but it still can get *very* hairy. Customers will call up and say, "Where's my container?" They are usually chomping at the bit for their shipments.

It's very date driven. There are Customs-mandated electronic filings that must be done a minimum of 24 hours before sailing. When the containers arrive at the destination city, you have day of notification + 2 days to pick containers up before storage kicks in, which begins at $100/day. Air freight works on even tighter timelines. When anything is delayed, the customers usually start getting really anxious and ride your butt.

Duties have to be paid in a timely manner or there are massive fines levied by Customs.

One coworker, whom I loved, had to leave my company for a less stressful job at the beginning of the year. She had chronic health issues, and her doctor told her the stress was going to kill her.

There's so much going on that work days usually pass very quickly. I'm currently working 50-60 hours a week, but we've got two new people (one starts tomorrow) so things will eventually settle down. Summer/fall are usually very hectic with peak shipping season, but we've been working these long hours since sometime in April.

[Kestra]

There are definitely different kinds of stress. There's the soul-sucking, emotionally traumatizing, contemplating suicide, hating-every-minute stress, then there's the super busy, boss is dumb, processes aren't great, regular job stress.

For the first, no amount of money is enough. You have to quit. For the second, it depends on the money and other job perks for how much stress I can tolerate. I feel that I can tolerate quite a bit, but having a large cash cushion I don't really have to, so the perks and salary have to be pretty high for me to stay in a stressful job. Like someone mentioned there's also stress duration. At my current job, the moderate level stress has been going on for too many years now, without an end in sight and I've been applying for other work. I certainly don't have to quit, but I'm exploring other options.

[awakenedsoul]

I've left some ballet teaching positions because of toxic situations. At one dance studio, the owner wasn't paying my social security taxes. I noticed the amount seemed low on my SS statement, and called my accountant. He was pleased that I caught it, and sent me right down to Social Security. It was several thousand dollars. She was livid that I reported her. I was only paid once a month, and she started bouncing checks...

Another woman was just very verbally abusive. She'd come in and rant and rave at me in front of the kids. She'd also run her classes over 20 mins. into mine. The parents would show up 20 mins. late to pick up their kids, and I was exhausted after teaching five classes in a row. I just wanted to go home and eat dinner. She also would hold my check until she felt like paying me. (She also paid once a month, and I needed the paycheck for food at the time.)

My performing jobs were a lot of fun, and not really stressful. We always go paid on time, and I liked the people. I did leave MGM in Vegas because it was just too dangerous. People kept getting hurt. It just didn't feel safe.

Your situation sounds bad. I hope you can find a job that's healthier and more rewarding.

[ApatheticNoMore]

Once a week sounds quite reasonable, and quite accurate to me. Maybe once a week there's something that needs to be done ASAP, rush, rush, rush! Or some pure death march, that involves a combination of rushing, drudgery, and stress of things going wrong. Or much more rarely some urgent problem I don't know what the heck to do about (and not knowing is stressful).


Yet my main job has created a stressful situation for me, most of the time--with concurrent rise in blood pressure, insomnia, depression and anxiety. I have worked hard, with some success, to work through my reactions and improve them, but I am still struggling with panic reactions, etc., to the job.

It sounds like too much to me, to much too suffer for a job. Yea, yea jobs are jobs and one may never like them but ... Quite frankly I think one should look for another job WHENEVER they think they think that there's better out there to be had, but one may not find one of course, and quitting with nothing else lined up is another matter. There's likely a threshold that I would hit where I would quit with nothing planned, but it's higher than just that which would make me look elsewhere (perhaps quite high, but at a certain point it would be triggered).

[bae]

My current work involves lots of mental and physical stress. So much so that I am subjected to regular supervised medical stress tests, and get a 12-lead EKG done every month at least. During the work day I will sometimes get multiple basic medical exams - checking pulse, BP, O2/CO2 levels, blood sugar, ... I have lost 8 pounds during a single 8-hour shift.

When a day goes poorly, my employer provides nearly-mandatory counseling sessions to deal with the mental stress.

[jp1]

It sounds like too much to me, to much too suffer for a job. Yea, yea jobs are jobs and one may never like them but ... Quite frankly I think one should look for another job WHENEVER they think they think that there's better out there to be had, but one may not find one of course, and quitting with nothing else lined up is another matter. There's likely a threshold that I would hit where I would quit with nothing planned, but it's higher than just that which would make me look elsewhere (perhaps quite high, but at a certain point it would be triggered).

Thinking to the other thread about the family that was profiled on MSN with the $8,000 monthly nut, being supported entirely by the husband with a $125k computer job. Imagine the stress he would be in if he was not only in over his head financially as he obviously is, but also hated his job. What then? His options for dealing with his stress would be limited to 'find another job that pays just as much but that I might like better'. Thankfully I've never put myself in anything even remotely like that situation and never likely will.

[Tammy]

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.

[TxZen]

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.

[Zoe Girl]

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.

[Zoe Girl]

I'm an impatient psychiatric nurse .

That is a funny mini-typo, hope this isn't rude to notice

[Tammy]

Not at all rude. And perhaps true! :)

[Miss Cellane]

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.

[ToomuchStuff]

I'm an impatient psychiatric nurse for the court ordered population.


I read that, and Nurse Ratchet sprang to mind and laughed.:laff: 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.

[Tammy]

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

[SteveinMN]

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.

[jp1]

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.

[lhamo]

Up until last year my current job was relatively low stress -- had a few peak workload periods during the year when I would have to work 50-60 hours/week due to program events and other time-sensitive things, but would generally have downtime after to make up for it/recalibrate.

The last year has been a stress-filled nightmare. Stepped into my former boss' role while still being responsible for my previous job. Thought it would be a short-term thing but it has drug out for over a year. Throw in some complex administrative changes, an office relocation, and several new programs and you have a pretty miserable me. Thankfully it seems to be drawing to a close -- we have a candidate for the Director position, someone I like a lot and hope to work smoothly with. I will be getting a promotion and hiring someone to take on about 90% of my former job duties. In the end I guess I am glad I've had the experience, but very close to burnout at this point after several months of working 10-12/hour days.

I have also been in the curled up in a ball crying at my desk because of psychotic boss situation in a previous position and stayed in that environment longer than I should have. Still have some PTSDish stuff related to that horrible year.

[rodeosweetheart]

So many helpful responses. Steve, what you describe is exactly what has happened where I work. JP1, same thing, with layoffs and our job responsibilities doubling to pick up slack. 50-60 hour work weeks are expected, and our pay actually decreased. Llamo, same kind of thing seen with shifting job titles, layoffs, and unsuccessful hires from within where the person said, hell no, I did not sign up for this. Constant availability, lots of electronic surveillance of what you are doing, numbers, metrics, a real emphasis on adoption of silly new technology, the flavor of the month sort of approach to the problem.

Oh well, at least boss has changed, for much the better.

[Zoe Girl]

I am hearing serious rumblings in our department. So far mine is about the same but the last week the volume of different things happening at the same time has increased. After the wonderfully creative Monday night I went in super late yesterday and had my nails done. Now I am in the thick of giant lists and 4 hours of meetings today. At least my business is fine with bringing food to meetings so I can eat lunch. The best thing my grouping has done is listen to us about a meeting free day per week. Over half of us have a morning program that starts at 630 am, and then all of us have programs that go until 6 pm. We are at our own schools and meeting are central. So one meeting a day and you are working 10-12 hours and cannot get any personal life managed. I have used the meeting free day every week to do appointments, errands, actually exercise, basic things that most people get to do.

[Davidwd]

CBT can be very good for handling stress my GP said to me "there's a lot we don't know about stress, but we do know it's a killer"

[ToomuchStuff]

What is CBT?

[Gardenarian]

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

I know several people who use the EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique, or "tapping") to deal with stress and anxiety.

[rodeosweetheart]

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

I know several people who use the EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique, or "tapping") to deal with stress and anxiety.

Yeah, when I went to Dr. Mercola he did this; he was a big fan, and it was interesting, but have not done it since I had this job. You really have to trust the person doing it.

2 days back on the job after vacation and just took my BP and it is up to 155/100.

It was better on vacation, much better. . .

[SteveinMN]

2 days back on the job after vacation and just took my BP and it is up to 155/100.
Time to start looking for the exit sign... :0!

[rodeosweetheart]

Time to start looking for the exit sign... :0!
I think you are right, Steve.

[gimmethesimplelife]

Now that the weather is not quite as obnoxious, banquet season has come back to Phoenix and I signed up for a few training classes at the temp banquet service I pick up shifts for. Mostly I did this to kiss their rear end a bit but also to meet the new managers I had not had a chance to meet yet. Ouch. This place, once quite nice to work for provided you showed up on time for a shift and worked hard and did not create issues - ( in other words, what I consider the bare minimum) has become very corporate, so much so that when the new office director came to introduce himself briefly to all of us he looked at my polo and short and socks and shoes - all clean and in decent shape - and said very snarkily - "What's this, your I don't care look?" Even as much as nothing in the workplace today would really surprise me, I was more than a bit put off by this.

Also there is a new rule to the effect that after a shift one can't undo their tie until arriving at their car or their mass transit stop. I don't have a problem with this second rule but I do find it a bit ridiculous and controlling. I have signed up for a few shifts with them and I will see how things go - I have had a good rep here as a good worker so I'll see if I still cut it for them and vice-versa. At least I won't have to often deal with that snide office director.....I just wish they had auto payroll deposit so I'd not have to set foot in the office more than once or twice a year. I have a feeling here is another employer that it going to be sinking into metrics and pettiness and higher turnover than need be.....I'm just glad this place is just an income stream for me and not a F/T thing.....The vibe I picked up in the office was not at all pleasant and was a 180 from just two years ago when I first came aboard. Rob

[gimmethesimplelife]

Steve, if you notice and are wondering why I edited your post, I only meant to reply with quote in agreeance to what you had posted to Rodeosweatheart and the system would not let me do it. So that is why it says edited by gimmethesimplelife underneath your post.

So, now that I can't get in and agree with you - I'll just say here - yes, sky high blood pressure to me is a sign I need to be doing something else somewhere else and is also a reason that I am at the moment not serving in a tipped position. Rob

[profnot]

I'm self employed and love it. My BP is 116 / 74. Lower than when I worked for The Man.

BP is a good litmus test. Take high BP as a clear and loud sign to make plans.

[SteveinMN]

No problems, Rob!

My BP went down a good 20 points after I quit my HSSJ...