Have you had an intensely stressful job? There are some that would

[Mike 03]

naturally come to mind like: air traffic controller, pilot, emergency room doctor, oncologist, etc...

But after a few years of listening to ReachMD, an XM satellite channel for medical professionals, there were some other interesting ones that popped up:

A Throat specialist to opera stars and famous singers. Imagine being Madonna's Head, Nose and Throat specialist on the day of a major performance, and she doesn't feel good.

Or the Physician for the Los Angeles Lakers during the finals, and somebody like Kobe Bryant is having knee pain, and you don't know if it is trivial or a career-threatening (or potentially life-threatening) injury?

Or you are the physician for the lead actor in a major motion picture, and each day he/she is out is costing the producting $75,000 to $100,000 in production and insurance costs.

And I'm sure those examples are just the tip of the iceberg.

Have any of you had jobs or careers upon which lives, reputations or humungous amounts of money depended?

And to add to the stress, the "front office" or management really needs you to solve this problem and find no serious issue. In other words, fix it for tonight, we'll worry about it tomorrow, even though it could be a crucial decision with horrible consequences for the athelete/singer/actor.

That would be extremely intense, and it would be fascinating to hear about your experiences?

[Tangerine LaBamba]

1. Try being

a lawyer in a death penalty case..................

[nomorenomore08]

9. Kind of hard to top that one, isn't it?

nt

[lost-in-nj]

2. hi sweetiy

my kid has one

he is a Paramedic... if you don't help, he can't

sometimes he is so frustrated....
the stories.... :cry:


:hug:

how ARE YOU???

lost

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. I worked as a flight instructor.

The first rule of flight instruction is to remember that your student is always trying to kill you. Most of the time it wasn't scary, but every now and then... it was...

[MajorChode]

25. I used to feel bad for my old flight instructor

I thought for sure I was scaring the shit out of him. One day he came in after a lesson and he was white as a ghost. He said, "that guy tried to kill me." I asked him if he wanted to put off my touch-n-goes for another lesson and he said I was easy by comparison. I didn't feel so bad after that, although I still gave him a big bottle of booze after I soloed.

[triguy46]

4. So stress is defined by being a doctor to a star?

Try managing a workgroup of 43 individuals, 1/3 with professional or post grad degrees, 1/3 with bachelors level, and the other 1/3 a mixture of just HS to some college. Daily drama, back biting, name calling, cliques, lying, etc. And you're the boss who has to keep the train on the tracks. Hell I'd trade that any day to be the doctor to one patient.

[Gormy Cuss]

6. I had a job like that.

Earned every gray hair on my head at that place. Worked 60 hours most weeks, sometime 80 or more. I was well paid but finally jumped off the roller coaster and haven't looked back.

[rug]

5. Hands down.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=moderators&forum=105

[JonLP24]

7. Most stressful job I had was the Army

It's like you're always in trouble and you spend most of the time trying to avoid trouble. It was very stressful all around, I was an 88m a truck driver. We delivered supplies to various bases and that was stressful in itself but the most stressful position was a headcount at a DFAC at Arif Jan, Kuwait when my hand was broken thus unable to do truck driving missions. I was an E-3 but my job was to make sure everybody coming through the door washed their hands, had their ID card, took off their headgear, among other things. The most stressful aspect was their was military officers and the area Zone 2 of Arif Jan had alot of them. My NCOIC said ID card, no exceptions. I remember a full bird Colonel came thru the door and I told him you need to go back and get your ID card. He blew a fuse, said he left it in his computer I said it didn't matter. Anyways I let him through because I really did not want to argue with him. Anyways he was so stubborn he came back like an hour after closing and showed me his ID card. Many times I just avoided conflict with those in higher ranks, especially a two-star Marine General that always came for breakfast. He would always leave his hat on the table while you eat, the rules are no hats on the table but there was no way I was going to correct him. Even my NCOIC wouldn't correct.

There are also alot of civilian employees on base, mostly KBR. I remember one civilian that the TCN cooks pointed out to me was always taking a bottle of hot sauce. I asked my NCOIC and and he said they can't take bottles of hot sauce. Anyways after we stopped her the first time nothing happened, then the 2nd time she tried to sneak out with the bottle wrapped around inside a newspaper and I stopped her and the NCOIC of all the shifts(not the same NCOIC I referred to earlier who was just in charge of my shift) asked her not to come back to the same DFAC, there are atleast 3 in Camp Arifjan, Kuwait that I know of. Anyways one day when I was doing headcount at the cash register that same woman came in and started talking alot of trash. I'm very much a coward when it comes to confronting people so I didn't react or anything. I can give you so many stories and alot of the truck driver's in my unit as well as myself used to make fun of the 92G's that never go to Iraq and get stay in a DFAC for 6-8 hours a day but that is a very stressful job because it has rules and alot of people break them or don't follow them including high ranking officers but mostly it was the civilian employees that gave me the hardest time all the time. It probaly wasn't stressful like an ER doctor but it was the most stressful job I personally worked.

[dana_b]

12. it sounds stressful

just being in Kuwait would be stressful enough but dealing with superiors who break rules is a huge pain in the ass.

[siligut]

8. My father’s team designed the mechanism used to prevent an accidental nuclear explosion.

Something like 1 chance in 6,000,000.

[quakerboy]

10. Stars? stressful?

I suppose if that was where your heart was. If I were a medical person, serving the stars, I doubt I would be that stressed. Cush work, in terms of having a few clients to focus your energy on, and the resources to do your job well. I would do my best and go home at night. At worst, you tell them to shut their yap and then you go practice for normal people. No skin off your nose.

I would think being a ear nose throat person(or any other Dr) for an infant who cannot express them selves and who cant help themselves would be far more stressful to me personally. Then add in stressed scared parents, plus the annoying pissy parents, and then the apathetic and even abusive parents, that would be my idea of stressful.

Or being a first year public school teacher. They just came up on the end of the year, and plenty of them are not sure if they even have jobs next year. That's stress.

[dana_b]

11. a nurse

the most intense stress is when a patient codes or you're trying to help parents whose child is dying and who you've come to know well. Also having too many intensely ill patients assigned to you at the same time. It's then when your prioritizing skills have to be damn sharp.

[Truthiness Inspector]

13. Police officer

You sometimes have to make critical split-second decisions on how to preserve life (your own, the suspect's, and/or others'). Meanwhile the ignorant (meaning ignorant of police work) Peanut Gallery will without fail dissect what you did or did not do and think they woulda/coulda/shoulda done it differently from the luxurious position of not having been on the spot and having to deal in real time with the situation.

[denbot]

14. Commodity's Broker, Commission only salesman with a mortgage

Operations Specialist in the Navy.. Commercial Fisherman in rough Pacific N.W. seas..
Ummm.. large coke deal with 4 gacked-out heavily armed psycho's (one time only)..

[Dammit Ann]

15. Try being a server for one busy night.

People are hard to deal with when they are hungry and you are trying to feed them, entertain them and keep it all looking easy.
With a big smile on your face.
I'd rather deal with Madonna.

[Chan790]

21. +1

Being a barista on the opening shift of a coffeeshop off the interstate. Trumps most other jobs in the stressful job catagory. Too many customers, too few hands, everybody is at your throat...and the pay sucks.

[Dammit Ann]

37. You feel my pain.

[NewJeffCT]

28. I'd rather be serving than working as a host

I worked in a restaurant before and did all of the work up front - serving, bussing tables and hosting. Though most people hated it, I liked bussing tables the best, as everybody was happy when you bussed their tables and I never really fell behind due to a lack of effort. Hated hosting the most - when things run smoothly, nobody notices. When things go bad or fall behind, it all comes back to you.

[Dammit Ann]

36. True.

The hosts always get the brunt of the chaos, if they aren't causing it. LOL, maybe that just my restaurant!

[elleng]

16. Mother to daughters.

Don't ask.

[vadawg]

17. worst job ever was assisting forensic scientists in exhuming mass graves in Bosnia

we got rotated through but some units were tasked more than others due to experience etc, all i remember was being drunk for days at a time, totally harrowing. I have no idea how the specialists managed it as they had to stay sober in order to process the remains, I still have the willies even when digging in my garden sometimes. Oh and some late night traffic stops or the call to a child abuse or rape complaint.

[Heidi]

18. I would think that criminal defense attorney, oncologist, psychiatrist, etc.,

might be just a _bit_ more high pressure than support staff for any entertainer. :hi:

[Deep13]

19. I prosecute child molesters.

The one time I defended one was worse.

[hunter]

20. Teaching junior high school in an "underserved" urban environment...

Those kids can eat you alive.

I hated going to work knowing that I had to maintain incredibly strong personal boundaries or I would go insane. The needs of these kids were overwhelming but I could do little more than maintain discipline. It was difficult to do any teaching of the sort I'd expected -- half the kids in my classes couldn't read.

I'll never forget the day one of my more unruly classes got really quiet. At first I thought I was doing something right, but then I realized they were listening to some disturbance in the classroom next door. I stopped talking and then I heard an adult yelling, a window breaking, and all the kids running out of the classroom.

I threatened my own class with some sort of Holy Terror if they left their seats. I don't remember exactly what I said to them because I was SCARED and I could see they were all just itching to run out and see what was happening. I walked out of my classroom and peeked in next door. There was a substitute teacher alone in the classroom sobbing at his desk and a chair sticking out a broken window in the back of the classroom.

Our school didn't have phones yet (they got them a few years later, can you believe that????) so I had to send two of my own students out into the wilderness to fetch the principal. I told the few kids who were still hanging around outside to wait by my door because I didn't want them in my classroom knowing they would light off my own class with irrepressible chaos.

It was stuff like that that made situations like guns found in lockers or pagers carried by sweet little drug runners seem quite mundane.

After I left teaching I worked in a blood bank where life or death situations were common and mistakes could kill people, but honestly even the very worst days in the blood bank were almost relaxing in comparison. Better yet, I got to go home knowing I'd accomplished some good in the world. The only thing I accomplished while teaching was keeping some sort of peace in fifty minute chunks of time.

[femmocrat]

35. Compared to the other life-and-death situations posted, I was reluctant to post about teaching.

BUT... I have been there too. Fights, teachers threatened and assaulted, kids with weapons, fires in lockers and rest rooms.... I could go on and on. I taught in an inner-city high school my first 3 years of teaching. God Bless those who can stick it out. I could not.

[Sigh Sister]

22. Labor and Delivery Nurse

You have the lives of two people in your hands and things can take a turn for the worse quickly. Having to do a stat C-section when you know the baby may not live if you don't get it out quickly enough is EXTREMELY stressful. When the baby is crowning, but gets stuck. That one sucks too. Also not being able to find fetal heart tones and having to tell the parents that their baby has died is heartbreaking.

[likesmountains 52]

33. NICU nurse here...Amen sister..

[tigereye]

23. Child Protective Services was up there

Parents who really could have been good parents if not for major addictions to drugs and alcohol, parents who thought it was fine to hit their kids with whatever was at hand, 4 pm calls on Friday afternoon from parents who wanted me to come and take their kids to shelter RIGHT NOW, searching scary areas of the city for kids who simply left home at whatever time they felt like it or never came home at all, driving homeless parents with no ability to take care of themselves or kids to shelters, having to take kids from school or send little babies to the hospital, trying to explain to the judge why kids shouldn't be able to stay at home while their parents cried or had to stand for hours in the hallway of the court....




It was the longest year and a half of my life.

[SoxFan]

24. Army EOD specialist

[Cannikin]

26. I worked for a Neurosurgeon for a year as a tech. I still can't watch "House"....

Without having flashbacks... srsly

[jmowreader]

27. I worked for a guy who led by making death threats

This is no shit. The job I had before I started driving a truck? Our production manager threatened to kill at least one person every week. Most people joke around saying "oh, I'm gonna kill that guy." With this man it was no joke. He lived in a camper he had parked on the shop floor. In the camper were at least three guns, and he carried a loaded derringer everywhere he went. Everyone in the building was afraid of him, including the company president, but no one would do anything because he's got a hair-trigger temper. (I downloaded a page listing some of the warning signs of psychopathy. The page had fourteen symptoms and I could prove 11.) And when he wasn't threatening to kill someone, he was screaming his damn fool head off. He'd scream every time something didn't go exactly the way he thought it was supposed to. The problem is, the man had never worked in this field before so he didn't actually know how things were supposed to go. He was a steamfitter for thirty years. There's one right way to fit pipes. In graphics there might be forty different correct ways to do something; if he didn't like the way you chose, he'd go off on you. He used to scream bloody murder at the laminator operators because they didn't laminate like he did. Their work was perfectly fine, but it wasn't the way he would do it so it was all wrong.

We used this matte lamination stock. It's supposed to be completely shine-free. The manufacturer changed the way they made it, and it was a touch glossier than he liked. His solution? Yell at me for labeling gloss lam as flat lam.

We wrapped a box truck. We sent two guys up to measure the box truck. They wrote down the wrong height for the sides. The truck came in after the panels were printed, and they were too short. His solution? Yell at me. (And no, he didn't apologize when it turned out I wasn't the one who screwed up.)

He came in one day and demanded that I immediately print, on this one printer, some little labels because we needed to ship them right out. I did so. Well, this worthless piece of shit walked into the room, saw the labels printing, and started screaming bloody murder. Said I shouldn't have put the labels into the workflow (I was printing six big squares of camouflage) at that time, even though he said to. Said if the next piece of camouflage was a different color than the first ones he was going to write a note backwards and nail it to my forehead with a nail gun so I'd always see it when I looked in the mirror.

He threatened to fire me because I "let us run out of light magenta ink." Never mind the fact that I had it on order and there was none in the United States. It was my fault we were out of it. Naturally, for the next three months I got a daily ass chewing over that.

There were just so many things. I can't even remember them all. You know why I didn't walk out the fucking door? Because fourteen people's livelihoods and three investors' money were 100 percent dependent on my ability to withstand this man's shit.

You know what's really weird? I still carry this bastard with me everywhere I go. I lay in the cab asleep at night and hear him scream. I see the tire cover he had on his truck on someone else's car and hear him scream. I see some of the vehicles I wrapped and remember all the things he didn't like about them. I see a green truck, and hear him flip out--there's a phenomenon called "reciprocity failure" where you print something gray or brown and have it come out green, and we had it big time. I run US 30 through Ohio, see the exit for the town he's from and think "am I going to see him on the road?" (I don't think that's going to be a huge problem since I'm running in Texas now, but there's always the possibility.) I drive through Waco and think of the gallons of Dr. Pepper he swilled. He's always with me. I can't get rid of him. I wish I could. I feel like a woman whose husband beats her--all I need is a pair of cute jeans and a copy of "Stand By Your Man."

This is the place I got laid off from because of lack of work. Check this shit out: A few weeks ago I was waiting for a shipper to load me and I got a call from the president's assistant. He was all apologetic and shit..."I picked you to lay off because I was afraid for your life, but the person we kept can't do the work. If I get rid of (name of production manager), would you come back?"

A request: No one post the words "you win." I don't want to win. I want to evict him from my brain and I don't know how.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

29. Wow, that's a seriously creepy character.

I have no idea how to make him "go away" -- it sounds like he gave you a touch of PTSD, which is totally understandable considering that you had to work with a complete psycho. If somebody is so scary that the CEO is afraid to fire him, that's some crazy shit. I'd guess that over time you won't be bothered so much, but I have no advice to offer. I've worked with an assortment of weird, annoying and somewhat crazy people, including a guy that I figured was capable of going postal (he retired without ever doing so, fortunately), but nobody that scared me on a daily basis.

It's pretty bizarre that they'd offer you your old job back after having laid you off because they were afraid this guy would kill you. Even if they do fire him, I wouldn't go back if I were you -- I'd always feel like the crazy guy was lurking in a corner somewhere, like Jason or Freddy Krueger.

:scared:

[jmowreader]

32. I don't WANT to go back

I also don't think it was a "touch" of PTSD--I think it's full-blown PTSD. Toward the very end of my stay there, he went back to Ohio for a week. You know how really shell-shocked veterans will look over their shoulders by whipping their heads real quick to the left or the right? Apparently I was doing that, and the R&D guy finally pulled me over..."you know he's not here, right? What are you freaking out about?"

As of right now I don't think I can print anymore. This is weird because I used to be a really good printer, but I can't bear the thought of trying to print something.

[Skittles]

30. I deal with offshore (cheapshore) folk very night at work

be on a conference call for hours on end with people in India, Brazil, Spain etc. - it makes you want to hang yourself

[Nikia]

31. I agree that it is stressful talking to people who are difficult to understand

Our company does business internationally and it is very difficult communicating with someone on the phone who speaks very little English or with a heavy acent. I don't feel quite as bad though since I overheard the president of the company telling a customer that he couldn't understand him, even though the customer was trying to speak English, because he didn't speak (wrong Asian language). The customer was very offended and we experienced a significant decrease in sales from that company because of it.

[Skittles]

34. it's not just that they are "difficult to understand"

they very often do not know what they are doing and it enrages me when it affects my systems

[EFerrari]

38. Simultaneous interpreting in federal court was a little stressful.

Handling a comedian was a little stressful.

Having teenagers, THAT was stressful! :)