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Something I've been mulling over for a while, given the wonderful world of managing a team of landscapers most certainly does not come without stress.
What careers are out there with absolutely no stress whatsoever? I can think of 2
Monk or Cricket Commentator. Both seem fairly relaxed although I have no experience of either, so I'm happy to be proved wrong.
This thought process started of as wondering what jobs exist where your performance is not directly gauged by another's satisfaction? Watching a farmer putting up a fence on a mild summer day, with his dogs scampering around the field looked appealing at the time, but not so much come winter when the sheep/cows/goats have knocked that fence down.
I'll let y'all know how the career change goes.
Caretaker. But specifically of uninhabited islands.
Dream job.
IT nerd
Not stress free if you were working at AWS yesterday. Or Lloyd's or HMRC or Ring or Snapchat or....
IT nerd, based upon the amount of people on here all day, they all do sod all work.
Weeksy's got it! I'm sure there are nerds who get stressed, but that's probably cos they are rubbish at it 🤣 No sure if I can say the area I work in, for fear of detection, but it's piss easy. The only stress is from the idiots I work with.
IT nerd, based upon the amount of people on here all day, they all do sod all work.
Unless it all goes to shit and then, magically, it's all on you even if it is not.
I used to dream of just taking a job stacking shelves at the local supermarket to get away from the stress at my last job. Luckily I got a job at another place with a team that is not dysfunctional. Oddly, I know other people in my area that have thought about quitting and starting a cat sanctuary, or being an arborist, or...
None whatsover. Stress is about the person and the situation not the job.
There will be CEO's who absolutely love their job and would do it for free given the chance.
Equally there will be people stacking shelves or mowing lawns that are on the bleeding edge of having a mental breakdown.
It's a modern conundrum
Responsibility for others brings stress.
No responsibility often mean lack of control and being at the whim of an idiot - which brings stress.
Working for yourself brings lack of financial security and responsible for running a business legally - which brings stress.
Stacking shelves in a supermarket is the automatic response of many as an end of working life final job - but I think it might be a hellish combo of corporate bollocks and tight margins and being ordered around by a 12 year old in their first 'management' job.
Too late now but at 53 I look about people I know of similar age and I reckon those who look the least stressed are those with a trade that's in demand with time served experience who work for themselves and do as much or as little as they feel motivated to with a good enough reputation and enough confidence that they can pick and choose and the work from domestic properties or small companies will keep on coming. Plumber, Electrician or in this part of the world a tree surgeon if you fancy being outdoors.
One of the biggest drivers of stress reduction is also probably a reduction in your financial aspirations. And not shafting yourself by getting divorced or an expensive C&H habit.
Stacking shelves in a supermarket is the automatic response of many as an end of working life final job - but I think it might be a hellish combo of corporate bollocks and tight margins and being ordered around by a 12 year old in their first 'management' job.
Did it for 8 months or so around the time I was doing my A-levels. The money I got from it saw me through university but it was far from stress-free. Demanding / impatient / rude customers, permanently angry middle managers, delayed deliveries and corporate bollocks.
It wasn't "difficult", no-one's life really depended on your ability to stack the fruit juice neatly but a demanding and petty middle-manager could still be pretty stressful!
I think that a delivery driver for a supermarket must be pretty low stress.
I think that a delivery driver for a supermarket must be pretty low stress.
That would surprise me. Still have other people/systems planning your route and deliveries. Dealing with uncontrolled dogs. Sharing the road all day with idiots that seem set on endangering your life to save themselves a few seconds. Entitled customers upset that they’ve had cod roe substituted for caviar. Drop offs where there’s nowhere to park anywhere near the recipient. No thanks.
I think that a delivery driver for a supermarket must be pretty low stress.
I hope you're joking - sitting in traffic all day, dealing with the public, doubtless ridiculous targets of the number of drops you're supposed to do in the time allowed. I would imagine it's far from stress free.
Traffic Management. You know the guys that put up temporary traffic lights & then sit there in a pick-up scrolling FB waiting for them to stop working. Seems pretty low risk to me, and 'Traffic Officer'.
Traffic Management. You know the guys that put up temporary traffic lights & then sit there in a pick-up scrolling FB waiting for them to stop working.
They get endless abuse from the public though. I've worked with a lot of them in my time on cycle races, how some of them put up with it I'll never know. Verbal abuse is commonplace - stuff about "how dare you shut this road, I know my rights, I pay road tax, you've got no authority, jumped up little Hitler..." and so on through to occasional physical abuse and having cars driven at you.
For quite a while I was an Accredited Marshal (British Cycling ran a scheme in conjunction with the police to train volunteer marshals how to stop traffic under the same legislation that lollipop men/women use) and I worked on a number of races - it was pretty much a given that you'd get abuse on every race. Turnover of marshals was quite high, people would do it for a year then just be so fed up of the abuse they'd pack it in.
Managing traffic for roadworks is one thing, managing it for a cycle race doubles the abuse factor.
Traffic Officer
Yeah, dealing with fatalities, ****s who think they know everything better than you, people whose journey is more important than ensuring a road is safe to be reopened, etc etc
A few people I know who wanted less stress became Postmen and they loved it. Pretty sure the number of houses in a given round can't be stress inducing as our postman is very relaxed, takes his time, pops into a neighbours house for a cup of tea (or maybe more but it is not the 1970's anymore so let's go with a cup of tea)
Friend of mine has just swapped an IT management job for being a postie. She's loving being out in the world and meeting people and dogs, but still slightly worried about whether it will pay her bills.
I forgot fireman. I got as far as getting a tour of a fire station and sit and chat with a watch on a night shift through a friend's husband. Can't remember why I didn't go for it it. Wish I had.
Whilst there is obviously a lot of stress when attending an emergency, Id describe it as good stress. Bad stress is in incessant low grade chipping away at your sole that seems too common in modern work life.
A friend of mine's son is now a navy diver. That also seems like a career with short term 'good' stress every now and then and a lot of not much stress at all.
I forgot fireman. I got as far as getting a tour of a fire station and sit and chat with a watch on a night shift through a friend's husband. Can't remember why I didn't go for it it. Wish I had.
Best mate just left the fire service after 15-20 years or so due to stress, politics, corporate bollocks and general rubbish.
None whatsover.
See?
A friend of mine's son is now a navy diver.
Years ago I worked in a pub and a regular was a helicopter pilot for oil rigs – I think he did two weeks on, two weeks off. The two weeks on apparently had quite a bit of downtime too. Wouldn't work for lots of people (ie, with families), but he loved it.
starting a cat sanctuary
Try getting a feral to the vet first thing in the morning for neutering!
Or alternatively feeding some newborns every 2h day and night, and seeing a couple of them die pitifully anyway.
Not sure it's stress free, but my lad has just sent me a video of the demolition of the office block behind their house, and I reckon pushing walls over with a fancy digger must be great for your mental health
Interesting thread. Stress is related, in my opinion, to pay, job stability and how many ****s you give. I'd imagine stacking shelves at 67 when you're doing it for beer money and being told by some lower management person what to do when you don't really care would be low stress.
For me it's other people that bring stress at work, outside of my direct team who are awesome.
Contemplated being a handyman type thing when I eventually retire, as being answerable to only myself would be appealing. Well right until I drill through a gas pipe!
Caretaking. Schools, local council buildings, libraries etc etc. Fixing things, being useful. Low pay but rewarding
I've been retired for a good few years and work thankfully is a distant memory but what about lighthouse keeper
but what about lighthouse keeper
Hasn't been a lighthouse keeper this millenium.
but what about lighthouse keeper
Hasn't been a lighthouse keeper this millenium.
Can't get more stress free than that!
I doubt it was very stress free either. Probably depended on the light house a bit to be fair but bell rock in a storm... Or even just rough winter seas when your relief haven't made it for two or three weeks.
Grim.
The most stress free task i ever had in a job was to inspect all the lightfittings in all the ncp car parks in london. Oyster card in one hand and a phone in the other all i had th do was walk through each carpark and note any issues with the lights that had all been replaced. It was an observable survey so only had to walk past.
I could do that day. Some of the carpark where quite eye opening... The bentley storeroom, bugattis etc covered in an inch of dust. Lamborghini's with all four tyres flat etc. then a fiat panda 🤣
Any career can be stress free with the right attitude. I know teachers and surgeons who are stress free. I know administrators and gardeners who are constantly stressed.
A healthy dose of not giving to much of a stuff and having good separation between work and home is what’s needed.
what about lighthouse keeper
Aren't there cases of lighthouse keepers going mad from the boredom and isolation?
I'm in it right now, but the private equity parasites who've bought the company have detected somebody enjoying their job and actually contributing in a very small way to the betterment of society, so are doing everything in their power to snuff it out ☹️
Caretaking. Schools, local council buildings, libraries etc etc. Fixing things, being useful. Low pay but rewarding
You are kidding.
I manage a small team which does this. Budgets are seriously cut so we have about half the staff we actually need. We spend the days running around like headless chickens responding to leaks, blocked toilets, puddles of vomit, failed heating systems and massively pissed off staff and customers because things don't work and all we can do is fight fires rather than preventative maintenance You get bored of scraping shit off the toilet walls when kids decide to use their own faeces to write abuse, and currently there's a phase of sticking used sanitary towels to the inside of cubicle doors.
Then you spend nights responding to alarm calls because a moth has crawled over a sensor.
I have one member of staff on holiday this week and I'm doing 12 hour days just to keep the doors open and (most) of the lights on.
All for less money than you'd get stacking shelves in Asda
I'm recruiting if you want a job?
The last year I was working, I had transferred from the vehicle logistics part of the business, to a subcontract that was AA/BSM, the driving instructor business. Our job was installing all the dual controls, and applying the vehicle livery graphics, which is what I did. Once I got over the initial steep learning curve of handling large sheets of self-adhesive vinyl, it was brilliant, very low stress, as a car couldn’t be rushed to avoid issues like bubbles or dust under the vinyl - it’s surprising just how large a bump in the surface a barely noticeable bit of grit can cause, as it ‘tents’ very noticeably!
It was a job I got very good at, my years in print and publishing meaning I had a very good eye for alignment of the panels and making sure everything lined up.
I keep meaning to look around to see if there’s anyone locally wants someone part time, like doing all the livery on police cars, that’s virtually identical, apart from the colours.
Stress is related, in my opinion, to pay, job stability and how many ****s you give.
This - I wouldn't automatically associate it with a particular job. Down to an individual and their tendency to worry about stuff just as much as a particular job being "stressful". Being mega busy doesn't automatically equal stress etc.
A healthy dose of not giving to much of a stuff and having good separation between work and home is what’s needed.
Conversely my family and home life causes me more stress than my work - there's always some shit to deal with and it's stressful because it's people you care about.
At work I've very much got a don't give a shit attitude and have no problem telling a customer that their demands can't be met.
When my Grandad left his proper job he went back to helping out on the local farms, bit of dry stone walking, ligging hedges, hanging gates etc. All supplemented with a bit of bartering, pheasants, fish, mushrooms, holly, his legendary tomatoes and various bits and and bobs I used to "help" in the school holidays. Awesome life. Ironically enough he died of a heart attack.
IT nerd, based upon the amount of people on here all day, they all do sod all work.
Weeksy's got it! I'm sure there are nerds who get stressed, but that's probably cos they are rubbish at it 🤣 No sure if I can say the area I work in, for fear of detection, but it's piss easy. The only stress is from the idiots I work with.
Thing with IT work is that there is a very steep learning curve, once you become technically proficient in a niche it becomes very repetitive and eventually quite easy. People often hit the top of the technical career path, that can be well paid. Many people are happy to stay at this level in their career.
Combine this with
A healthy dose of not giving to much of a stuff
And the ability to switch off from the corporate gobbledegook.
Then you are sat at a desk all day, performing your job to a high standard and yet using a small amount of your mental bandwidth. Hardly surprising people in this position can find a bit of time to distract themselves with a bit of waffle on a forum.
Postie might have been a stress-free job many years ago, but given my experience of Royal Mail, those days are long gone - incompetence and abuse from management, defective and unroadworthy vehicles, not knowing when your day starts or finishes because they can’t be arsed to do their job.
I have my own design & print business that I run from home, plus I work part-time in a shop selling hardware and whisky. Yes, it can get busy in summer but never to the point where it gets unmanageable. The door gets closed at 5pm and we all go home. Importantly though is financial security, not having to worry about paying the bills etc.
Living on an island there are probably more than average number of folks living here a relatively stress-free life where the most stressful thing is tourists not knowing how to drive on singletrack roads. Even the police here have it pretty good - very little crime. Talking to one of the relief officers who came over as one of the regulars was on holiday, a big difference from his normal beat in Clydebank.
Furniture-maker.
25 years of slowly going bankrupt.
Once you accept that you're never going to make any real money at it and eventually retire poor, the stress will just melt away 🙂
I've always thought Christmas Tree farming must be low stress, most of the time.
Furniture-maker.
Actually I’m now going for whoever does the coding for this forum as you can obviously just throw any counter-intuitive dogshit out for formatting , posting photos, etc and consider it job-done.
Yeah, that was close. I nearly reported you for some unspecified naughtiness.