Most stressful job you had?

[Zeze]

During summer in college, I worked my ass off. Wake up at 630a, go to my parents brunch restaurant at 7am. After the lunch rush (130pm~), I'd go the town italian chain (Maraconi Grill) which EVERYONE went to until 12:30am.

Basically I did physical and mental labor for every waking moment. That isn't too bad if the shifts weren't a complete s***-show. The evenings were super intense. I distinctly remember a mental meltdown I had - something I had never experienced in my life before. I had 12 guests waiting (3 tables) and line out the door. I just kind of collapsed and had to take a breather.

Second hardest was an IT job in production support. Our critical tickets were created by patients who couldn't get meds. I hosted a call with offshore team at 630a, which meant I got up at 530a. We worked 12 hour shifts and grueling status calls with upper management. We had a consultant who broke down crying in these calls. Worked right through 4th of July.

You?

 

[Exterous]

Job? Worked for a company that was going out of business during the recession. There was no real timeline for when I would lose my job so every day could have been my last. And most days at least 1 person was let go which is fairly depressing considering I was good friends with many people there. My job duties kept changing as various areas were closed up so I had to keep scrambling to find more tasks I could do to avoid being let go. To make matters worse many customers were terrible to us. Yelling and arguing with us. Telling us they were glad we would be losing our jobs. Sure we could argue back now (whats the company going to do? Fire us?) but that is not a healthy work environment. Fortunately I found a job a few weeks before the very end. Worst couple months of work in my life

Overall stress: Last two year of college + job. I went to a very demanding school for a very demanding degree. So much so that they don't even try to accommodate people who work during school. When I asked if there was class flexibility for work I was told I had to "determine what was more important: getting a degree or getting a paycheck" Heaven forbid I want to get a paycheck to pay for a degree or anything. But I managed to shoehorn in a job so I worked 80+ hours a week September through May. I was so very happy when I graduated and cut back to 60 hours a week (Got a full time job and scaled back the job I had in college to 20 hours a week)

 

[TeeJay1952]

Short order cook in 70s. I made 6.00 while everyone else made 3.50. had to squeeze others to get the most out of them while not revealing all my tricks so that I became expendable.
Still have the Bar rush dreams 50 years later. Kitchen is going down!

 

[ultimatebob]

Honestly, it was probably when I worked at a restaurant as a busboy/dishwasher and we got a busload of tourists come in. I do not miss that job at all.

I've worked 80 hour shifts dealing with production outages in IT, but even that experience wasn't quite that bad as the "busload of tourists" nightmare scenario when working solo as a dishwasher.

 

[Fritzo]

My current one.

I love it, but every...single...day I come in and have to fix I problem nobody has ever seen before. It's along the lines of:

"Hey, this guy has a brain tumor. Get rid of it."
"But I'm not a Dr."
"Google it or something..."

Tends to cause ulcers, but I get to keep my brain sharp and learn a lot of cutting-edge stuff.

 

[Exterous]

My current one.

I love it, but every...single...day I come in and have to fix I problem nobody has ever seen before. It's along the lines of:

"Hey, this guy has a brain tumor. Get rid of it."
"But I'm not a Dr."
"Google it or something..."

Tends to cause ulcers, but I get to keep my brain sharp and learn a lot of cutting-edge stuff.

Did you try Goolging "Getting rid of ulcers?"

 

[highland145]

Did you try Goolging "Getting rid of ulcers?"

Yeah but it required quitting his job.

 

[Fritzo]

Did you try Goolging "Getting rid of ulcers?"

Yeah but it required quitting his job.

Yep, getting rid of stress and changing diet. My department is like the IT version of "House"

 

[nakedfrog]

Working on an assembly line in Michigan. One of my earlier jobs, I hated it more than I hated any job I've ever had.

 

[Muadib]

Loading trucks for UPS when I got out of high school, was mine. I quit after 2 weeks during a heat wave.

 

[clamum]

I guess my current job, because every few weeks we have Tuesday and Wednesday night on-call, and then weekend on-call slightly less often (every six weeks I believe). It just sucks because it's a big (like 40 different servers, all running different apps) production system and I'm only *really* familiar with a subset of it. I just feel like I'm kind of alone, in charge of this big thing that I only know a part of, when I'm on-call. Even though there is others I can reach out to (if they answer or are home). It's not quite rational but I haven't been able to shake it, though I do deal with it better now and I'm not so "uptight" about it for lack of a better term.

My previous job could be stressful, but that was just due to the jackass manager. I got along with him quite well but ugh, he was quite the guy. He'd call me at night (JUST ME, not the other devs) and babble about some problem (that could fucking wait until the next morning) or make me fucking go into the office and try and work on it. I remember one time he was repeatedly calling me when I was at the bar playing the weekly game of darts with my team. I kept ignoring the call until the game was over and then calling him. He wasn't too happy. Too fucking bad. I'm not gonna leave my goddamn team in the middle of games for your idiotic made-up emergency. I learned a lot at that job and I thank the owner of the company for hiring me out of college, but I do not miss working with that guy.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

I've already talked about it multiple times in other threads but... Public Accounting / Consulting (Big 4). Fuck that work culture that can only be described with words iike "divorce", "no family" and "work comes before social life, hobbies, family, and anything else"

Nail in the coffin was December of last year. I gave them a big heads-up (2 months) advance notice (like I always do) that I was taking the week before Christmas to visit family in another state. Had flights, hotel booked, etc...

Well, I wasn't getting along with the manager and partner that were on that project - mostly because the manager was a giant retard. I told them going into the project "I have experience with X system, but not with Y system that it is interfacing with". They told me that it was fine because the manager knows it well. Nope. She had no clue what she was doing, and I was spending all my time trying to study and train up on the system at night while at the same time working during the day. Of course, the manager will only give her bias point of view to the partner, so it made it an "us against you" thing. Mind you, the overall project was behind - not just us - and the manager/partner were getting pissy at me. When I ask a manager questions on how to do things, I expect them to be able to answer them or point me in a good direction of where I can find it.

Anyhow, 3 days before (the Thursday before I leave on Sunday) the partner sends me an email (with the manager) saying I can't go on vacation and have to fly to the client and work. What could I do at that point?

I just replied "okay".... Next week comes around and I give them the ol *cough* *cough* I'm sick I can't go email*cough*. Turned off my phone/computers and didn't even look at emails until all the holidays were over. Holidays end on January 2nd and I sent an email saying my last day was that Friday (Jan 6).

Go f*** yourself, have a nice day was basically what I said heh.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

I opened a 200 room hotel in Albuquerque as Chef that was a real cluster fvck. It opened 6 weeks late because the owner's son was put in charge of construction. The son contracted it out and immediately left for a 6 week vacation in Hawaii. The contractor not having anything in the contract saying they couldn't, contracted it out again. The latest contractor turned hvac over to the lowest bidder who couldn't read blueprints. They put all of the hotel's hvac that was intended to be installed on the second floor on the first, right where my walk ins were supposed to go. I opened the hotel with two refrigerated semis in the parking lot as my walk ins. They also installed the kitchen line in our rectangular kitchen across the short side instead of along the length of the kitchen thus eliminating most of the counter space. I left 6 months later and they sold the hotel a year later.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Level 3 server tech at the hospital, as a contractor. The IT manager there was an asshole and a dictator and overall a horrible person to work for. That and the fact that it's a very critical environment just made the job quite stressful. But the IT manager was the real problem. He just poisoned the work environment. Things were great for everyone when he was on vacation, which was super rare. His wife lived in Ottawa which is 8ish hours from here (I don't blame her) so he would go see her at Christmas and that's about it.

I liked the actual job, and we got to work with lot of things like SANs and VM environments that smaller clients did not have, but the politics and logistics made me dread going in.

Saw an opening for NOC and decided it was a sign, and I jumped ship. More pay, shift work (aka better hours) and way less stress. Best job related decision I ever made.

When we lost that contract we actually had a celebratory BBQ at our office.

 

[Dr. Detroit]

I spent 9.5yrs in public accounting as an auditor, 5 of those yrs were with the Big 4. 60-80hr weeks with big deadline weeks pushing triple digits & long commutes were the norm.

 

[deustroop]

A young version of me was a successful applicant for a junior management position at the local university on a far away Island that was part of the country but only according to the history books and official geography. The citizens of this wayward place have a well deserved reputation as Irish descendants, Unemployment Benefits recipients and fierce anti mainlander attitudes. According to their founding mythology, things were great until they joined Canada and precipitously declined thereafter.

I, an uber mainlander, arrived in town ignorant of the local culture.

Things did not go well. Why, locals reasonably asked, was a mainlander hired for a job easily filled by a local ? Everything I tried in coordinating, planning and executing failed in the delivery which was dependant on the Students' Union who, as students tended to do in those days, rebelled against all evil acts of the administration.During the unforgettable third week, the Union launched a one day strike and paraded down maistreet carrying a coffin entitled " Student Union", and in case anyone missed their point, proceeded to hang me in effigy.

I did survive three years on that retarded little rock but had to rely extensively on my own sense of humour and past experiences as a student myself.

 

[brainhulk]

Research Coordinator fresh out of college. That summer was the worst because I was working 2 jobs. Research Coordinator dropped into the middle of a study where I didn't wtf I was doing and learning as I go. Then afterwards I would go work at a pharmacy because I wanted to get into pharmacy school. 13h days (not including 45min commute to research) that summer was the most exhausting and stressful time I ever had. I would fall asleep after 5 seconds on my couch. Then start all over the next day.

 

[Ackmed]

Being the lead on every patrol, trying to find IED's primarily using a metal detector. Problem was, it didn't pick up the IED's because there was no metal on the main body.

 

[brianmanahan]

consulting job out of college. worked 70-80 hour weeks for 6 months, including a 30-day streak with no days off.

with overtime i would've stuck with it, but it was a salary gig.

when i started hoping that i'd get in a car accident so i didn't have to go to work, i knew it was time to look for another job.

 

[GrumpyMan]

My last job for sure. Had to move millions of pieces of mail through the USPS postal system. Talking about sucking donkey balls.

 

[Captante]

Most stressful job I've had was driving into lower Manhattan from Greenwich 5 days a week, every day the markets were open to deliver paper backup receipts of all of the clients overnight "computerized" trading transactions. (back when this was something new)

Then I would pick up their paper receipts from other brokers and haul a$$ back to the broker in CT ideally before the 9:30 am opening bell.

I almost always made it too.... 55 mph the whole way I swear!

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Current one. I dread starting each day and when the weekend comes, I know I’m only a couple of days away from going back to work. As if the pandemic and the excessive workload weren’t enough, we were acquired and the deal closed in December. Merry Christmas! I was hoping maybe I could get a package and leave, but the only package I got was a big stock grant as a retention bonus so it looks like my dream of a big severance package isn’t going to happen.

I’m really just burned out but have no clue how to handle it. I started a new business last year and spend most of my spare time working on that. At least I enjoy it and can say it’s something I am passionate about.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

911 Dispatch.

Midnights ... 2-3 AM, total silence, the whole world asleep. Phone rings, guy screaming his house is on fire and his kids are trapped. This area is all volunteer and you know no matter what you do it will be at least 15-20 minutes before anybody gets on-scene.

 

[Greenman]

 

[Stiff Clamp]

I had to work third shift stocking the store - without sleep. Just a lot of fail sleeping in daylight - I was always tired. I started having panic attacks after 4 years of that. So I quit.