The Work Stress Thread!

[Michael_3165]

Tell me about your work stress! I am interested in hearing the different stresses that people have in their work places. I am sure we all believe our job is one of the most stressful but I need to hear other people's gripes about work at the moment!

 

Mine tend to focus around email after email (cc'd into 80 or 100 a day easily) about stuff that doesn't really matter or is completely unreasonable in their demands. 

 

People's jobs all conflicting with everyone needing to get a different result at the expense of the next person. 

 

People not understanding the role of those they are delegating to... 

 

Juggling a thousand different aspects of a job at one time, being scrutinised and expected to know everything about everything that happens. 

 

Yours?

[sammorgz]

I work in one of Cardiff's busiest pubs. The rugby World Cup has been horrendous. 18 hour days on weekends with 3 hours sleep in between dealing with thousands of shitty drunken customers (some are alright but on the whole they're a pain) has been stressful.

 

It wouldn't be that bad but I work there full time and have a two year old so it's pretty stressful non stop. On the plus side I've only been working there a month and a half and I'm being pushed up to team leader, so that's ace. Roll on November though!

[gbacon85]

Mine: incredibly micro managed; very KPI driven; huge commercial and revenue targets; bit of a misogynistic and homophobic atmosphere sometimes; very cliquey.

 

I generally hate people and don't mix well, so lots of things stress me at work. But then I go home and see the kids and it disappears. There are plenty of people that work in much more stressful jobs and worry about bigger things than email "banter" and people talking about shit films and fucking Netflix...YES WE GET IT YOU WATCH NARCOS!!! WELL DONE.

 

My previous job was a million times more stressful, Youth Development for at risk young people. Getting called at 3am because a young person that you have been working with has attempted suicide or been arrested makes not hitting a monthly revenue target look so insignificant.

[Tommy!]

I used to be an accountant for a property investment management company.

 

I did work which didn't fit standard service charge work and i was undervalued because not many people would/could do what I did.

 

It wasn't untill I left and they shit them selves it sunk in, so my last 6 months clawing for something was painful.

 

After I left they never told my clients, so I'm told, just pretend I was in a meeting all the time. It was also given to someone who was paid more then me and they wouldn't/couldn't do it.

 

It was the day I went spastic at home and called in sick did me.

They didn't believe me and said they would put it as holiday so I turned up. As soon as I was there they tried to send me home. Too late then, don't trust my judgment you get a day stuck with mental Tommy.

 

 

The co-op the other hand milked me for all I was worth and paid a pittance. I was turned down for jobs because I was working class, saw MS suffers written off for an interview soon as they walked through the door. The co-op nearly killed me, literally, through over work and its disregard by management.

FYI its fine to turn in reports with blood on your hands as long as the numbers are good.

[Guy Bifkin]

We have a huge proportion of women at my place, I'd guess about 8-1, but very few of them are in any way attractive. If I'm being honest, I'd probably only do about 2-3 of them. 

[Nexus]

I'm a Y7-11 teacher in a comprehensive in a small town with two grammar schools. 

 

The only thing that matters according to the government is whether or not students get either 5 A*s to C, including English and Maths, and whether or not they've made three levels of progress from Y6. 

 

Now, with two grammar schools taking off the top 30% of our cohort, each year group tends to get around 45-55% capable of making 5 A*s-C, if we're lucky. 

 

Last year, my school also set the Y11 targets to four levels of progress from Y6, assuming the student came from a Primary School in the area. This meant I had, in my bottom set, students predicted Bs and Cs when in reality they'd be lucky to get a D on a good day. If the students joined the school any time after Y7, their targets would be uh...made up. So I had kids who barely speak English with targets of a C. 

 

I also took the group on in Y11. They had been doing History GCSE since Year 9, however, as the bottom set, these were the students who had spent the last two years pissing around. So when I got them in September, they should have covered 75% of the course, leaving me with just 25% and revision to do. Fine, except they couldn't remember shit from the previous two years. 

 

I was asked to make professional predictions on the students based on what I thought they would get, in May of last year.

 

Of my group of 15, I predicted 6 of their results correctly. 3 of the students were permanently excluded before they got to the exam, two of them had barely functioning English, and one had joined the school in September, having not done any of the modules in Y9/10 of the exam we were sitting. Brilliant. Basically, of the 12 who actually sat the exam, I got 6 predictions correct, 2 out by one grade, and 4 out by two grades. However, because my predictions don't tally with their targets (so what was the point in asking me?), I am deemed to have not made enough progress with the class, and therefore will not be given a payrise. Despite the fact that my observations last year, including one from OFSTED, were 'Good' with 'Outstanding' features, I spent every Tuesday and Thursday evening doing intervention with the class, plus at least 1 day in each holiday from October Half Term, as well as my Y7-9 groups mostly hitting their targets, and doing everything else which was asked of me. There wasn't any discussion, it was just a blanket "nope, not happening." I appreciate my results were shit, but ultimately I don't sit the exam!

 

The school is also under immense scrutiny from both the DfE and OFSTED because we were in Special Measures for so long - we are now out of Special Measures, and into 'Serious Weaknesses', however the OFSTED inspector came in on the Thursday before half term, and said that the School Action Plan wasn't fit for purpose - so we'll probably be back into measures by the end of the year. This in turn means that the Senior Leadership Team are absolutely dreadful to work under. I was criticised for my marking, but only anonymously, and via a tick box, rather than any real explanation or suggestions for improvement. 

 

I also have to contend with the fact that my Y11 class this year are probably even worse than last year's - they all missed a year of History lessons, and their controlled assessments are shoddy at best - so I probably am not getting a pay rise next year either!

 

I am also looking for other jobs, which is another stressful things - teaching interviews take up an entire day, so usually I'm setting cover for all my lessons, plus creating a super whizzy fun lesson for the interview, driving for 2 hours to get to the interview, doing it, then driving home again, ready to go back to work the next day. 

 

I love working with the students. I like teaching. I can tolerate planning, and marking assessments. I just hate every other aspect of it, and I feel like a constant failure. 

[Guy Bifkin]

Well that's put my work issues into perspective...

[Nexus]

Haha, sorry. 

 

I also taught English last year, and my English results were shit. 

 

Obviously it's because I'm shit

[King Mal the Glorious]

My main issue at work currently is that I'm actually really good/efficient at my job so I keep getting given other people's shitty problems to deal with because "Mal will sort it out". I'm happy to help but I feel I'm being taken advantage of quite a bit.

 

Example: a large part of my job is scheduling in work for our engineers. Last week I booked in about 400 jobs

The lass next to me did about 25. Guess who had to pick up the slack...

 

Edit: there're many more points but I've had a few and I hate typing ony phone.

[Mr_Danger]

I've got to go in for a face to face meeting later because i've been off sick for 5 days. Wouldn't be so bad but i've been milking it for 3 of those days. It's a mouth infection from an abscess that i've been off with. So far my plan is to work out before I go in so I look flustered and clammy and to pack my mouth with cotton wool. The abscess still looks raw as fuck though so I might show him that.

[Mr.E]

I work in IT support, for the court services.

Generally its fine, but the amount of stick you get from the people calling in, when (as you can imagine) a lot of targets in terms of "time allocated to fix" and all that jazz, are all in agreement with our company and the court services via very big contracts, which in this case were set up years ago. Still you always get, "how long will this take, I'm very busy you know" despite the fact we support the entire service for the UK, so 1 individual persons issue is of a lower priority than say, an entire building going down etc.

That and the amount of very important people, how make very big decisions for this country, who cannot remember a password for more than 2 hours.........is mind boggling.

[Duke]

Nexus, where do you live?

 

I work for a local council in strategy. Been there about 6 months. It's mostly going alright. I helped this guy write our annual report (that goes out to the public) and he's now left, which means they've asked me to be the lead author for our medium term strategy, which is a et project of the chief executive and I'm just this junior analyst. It's nothing compared to many stresses, but its slightly nerve racking.

[Grecian]

Mine are all to do with internal politics. I work in University admissions, and genuinely enjoy my job, but my team tend to be the ones caught in the middle of politics.

 

As most uni's are, we're trying to increase our international student numbers as they are essentially free money. Problem is, we have an international recruitment director who is paid on commission, and demands that we take everyone, regardless of their ability to speak English or academic background. On the other hand, I have academics who want students who can speak English, and are interested in the subject and aren't just here for a Visa (we get a lot of those!).

 

Most of the time, there's civil war between the academics and international department, and my team is bang in the middle. I've had full out arguments with heads of school, been summoned to the Vice Chancellor, and had academics refusing to speak to me because of decisions I've had to make. Chuck in international agents who will flat out lie to us and the UKV&I to get their clients visas, arguments with applicants that last for days because they won't tell me how long they've been in the UK or how they got into the UK in the first place...

 

Most of the time, I really enjoy my job. But there are days when I could quite happily never see a UCAS application ever again.

[Slapnut]

The most stressful aspect of my job is that I simply don't have enough to do so I spend most of my day on here.  I'm not sure if it's a blessing or not.

[Chest Rockwell]

I've only been here a month now but fuck this place.