Stress at work?

Sorry - too long post ^.

There are stresses in both sectors.

The head of the school where I am governor regularly sends me emails at 2 am - so much for waking out of the job at 4 pm! He has no other opportunity to catch up on the mountain of bureaucratic nonsense he is served up with.

Equally there are members of my family who work in the private sector and cannot make a living wage without doing overtime, meeting targets and trying to fathom a complicated bonus system.

I have worked in the public, private and charitable sectors and all have their strengths and their drawbacks so it seems to me that making comparisons between the sectors is like comparing apples and oranges.

My husband used to work in the private sector. He worked 9-5 and had at least a full hour for lunch, which was deli-style and provided by his employers. On the last Friday of the month the team decamped to various local restaurants and had a 'team meeting' with lunch (and wine) paid for by his employer. Had he stayed he would have been a partner by now and his annual salary, supplemented by a Christmas bonus, would always have been, on average, at least £10,000 pa more than he has received since moving to the public sector.

One of my brothers has also worked in the private sector for many years and hasn't had a pay rise for the last eight of those. He gets no bonuses, no perks and the job is extremely stressful.

Two examples of work in the private sector and yet completely different. I could give similar comparisons between people working in the public sector who also have completely different experiences.

My husband left for work on Monday morning and will be back on Friday evening before leaving again on Sunday night so as to be able to attend a meeting at the other end of the country on Monday morning. He gets no perks or bonuses and very limited expenses - if he forgets to pick up a receipt he doesn't get reimbursed (quite rightly - he agrees with accountability) and although he gets TOIL (there's been no overtime or performance related pay for years) it nowhere near covers the nights he spends away from home. He's a civil servant and there have been annual budget cuts for years resulting in huge losses of personnel so that many people are attempting to do the work of three people, which is unsustainable. Suicides and workplace stress have increased, resulting in ever fewer numbers left to carry the load.
BUT - he has a job and mostly he loves his work and so we have much to be thankful for.

Yet another cause of stress with teachers IS the fact that everyone goes on about their short working day and long holidays. My daughter never ceased to be either marking or doing lesson plans. The final straw was the brilliant idea of doing spot checks on classes given that some of her classes had a mental age far below their actual age and yet the spot checks seemed to expect a 'proper' lesson. I think it was a 'three and you're out' system. Maybe they did need to weed out bad teachers but, hey, they shot themselves in the foot this time. I was always having to look after the boys because her school had different holidays to her childrens [hadn't always been the case; someone decided to change the dates]. As for taking them to school with her; I'm only relieved that she left the school without being stabbed...those children would never have set foot inside the door [rant over ]. Looking at the general picture, I'm sure that one of the main reasons for stress in the workplace is bullying; something that I suffered from for years [took it as far as I could when I made an official complaint but got nowhere] and was one of the causes of my marriage break up [my ex's tormentor eventually ending up in prison accused of violence].

Nonnie I agree that all employees are having a tough time, whether they're in the public or the private sector. I don't know anyone who isn't working over their contracted hours, struggling with bills etc because of lack of pay rises (despite the stuff being said about zero inflation, it doesn't feel like that out here in the RL does it)

I don't pick up on public sector gransnetter's believing those in the private sector have it easy. I suspect the reason the public sector has a 'louder voice' is because historically, most joined their union with a view to collective bargaining. That opportunity was not open in the private sector, certainly not in any of the areas I worked in.

Jingle- agreement from me with your post about the reality of teaching.

Nellie so many of the things you say also happen in the private sector. My son didn't get a pay rise for 7 years and then this year got 1%. I seem to remember something about some of the public sector getting increments instead of rises but not sure.

At least in the public sector when you work long hours you are paid for them and get a commensurate amount of time off. I usually worked long hours in my last job and never got time off in lieu or extra pay.

I'm not saying it is harder in the private sector or easier, I am saying that lots of people have stressful jobs but the public sector has a louder 'voice' so we all get to hear about it.

It often seems on Gn as if those who come from the public sector think the rest of us have it easy.

I have just read jess's post about teachers and their lot! So many untruths! (The is respectfully meant - but needs saying)

"most teachers are out of the door by 4 pm". Make that 6 please! And even then there is marking to be done at weekends.

The government is moving the goalposts re their pensions as much as any others'.

I have never heard my DD mention a teacher bringing a sick child to work with them! The parent stays home with the child and the remaining teachers have to provide cover. (Yes! They do have to do cover!)

They do do playground duty. Hanging around in freezing weather is the norm.

I can't remember when my DD had a day off sick.

"They get to laugh more. "Oh yes, most of the kids are great. The latest classroom incident my DD had to deal with was when a couple of kids decided to fill a pencil case with gas and set fire to it! She didn't laugh at the time - she dealt with it calmly and sensibly. But we have laughed about it, and other incidents, since.

Oh, and did I mention holiday revision classes - which they are expected to do?

Get your facts right please.

Working in teaching, Social work the health service has all the difficulties of facing the public who make many demands and often getting stroppy and abusive when they cannot get what they want.

Parents verbally abusing staff when the school have tried to discipline their child.

I have been verbally abused many times on the phone. Had a police woman
drag a large teenage girl off my shoulders.
l have interviewed office callers with a collegague because you don't feel you can trust that person. You keep the desk and panic button between your self and the visitor and your back to an open door.

Many of the people you encounter in the public sector do not want to be "there"!
In school and not wanting to get down to work so they playing "wind up the teacher".

Having a social worker visiting because of concerns about the poor care their children are getting.

The health service paramedics, a/e staff, regularly deal with abusive drunks as well as seriously ill accident victims and people who die on the wards despite all the care given which can leave staff feeling they have failed however hard they tried.

NHS clinical staff do long shift work hours, some times twelve hour shifts and night shifts which mess up body clocks.

If anyone thinks the "private sector" is cushy they are very very wrong.
No pay rises for about four or five years now as far as I know.

Funding is cut to the bone. My former colleagues are despairing at how bad things have got now trying to run children's and Mental health services with inadequate services. It's stressful being asked to do a job when they have removed all your rescources.

I think there is a lot in what Jess says and the thing that struck me because I had never thought about it before is the staff room. Unless one was a smoker there was never anywhere to go and have a good moan with the colleagues so not the same opportunity for a group moan. Quite the opposite, we were always careful not to moan in case it got back to the boss. Careers have been ruined by such things.

Like Petra I was replaced by three people so know that life is not easy in the private sector.

It is a shame that some seem to think this is another private v public sector thread, that was never my intention. What a shame that (often) those in the public sector are so defensive. I just wanted to make the point that life is stressful in the private sector too.

My only experience of public sector working was when we moved and I did some temping for the Probation Service prior to getting a permanent job. I was flabbergasted to see them working set hours, having study leave, proper lunch breaks and simply chatting a lot of the time. They made so many generalisations about their 'clients' and seemed to have a very blinkered attitude to life. They made assumptions about me and when I told them we had bought a house and where, they didn't believe someone as lowly as me could live there. I was temping, so assumptions were made. Of course that is only one experience of a couple of months so I cannot generalise.

Hear, hear Iam64. x

Thanks GrannyTwice - this thread deteriorated into a public bad, private good debate instantly. I don't know any teacher ( or other public servant) who'd be paid for 2 years when off with stress. The maximum would be 6 months on full pay, 6 months on half and then it stops. Yes, it's a good package and anyone is free to leave the private sector, spend in excess of £40,000 training to be a sw or teacher before working in what is a rewarding if stressful post at the same time as being subjected to nastiness because you chose the job you did.

If you think teachers and SW have it so easy, get the qualifications and switch, then get back to us if you find it stressful etc!

Oh - social workers are immune to the goading!

I had a nervous breakdown caused through stress at work. I never dreamed it could happen to me. Me, who could juggle all the balls in the air at the same time. But you don't see it coming until the s..t hits the fan, and in my case, it sure did. Fortunately I can laugh at it now.
Funny enough, when I went back to work, my boss had found several people to do the jobs that had been dumped on me.

This really is a very unpleasant goady thread. Off for a free

Not to mention the constant moaning about them all

I saw a great deal of stress from colleagues during my social work career, and I cannot say that I felt too great a large amount of the time!

I think that the common factor in the stress that public sector workers suffer is not the job per se, but the micro-management and bureaucratic crap that dogs their every move.

I've been a science teacher and it is pretty stressful being shut in a room with thirty 15 year olds - who are required to do practical work and who just don't get the importance of health and safety. Specially if you are not good at classroom management (I wasn't) If you' re given he worst groups (i was) and if you are not given much help and support (I wasn't) it can be quite unpleasant at times. If you are feeling a bit weary or under the weather the kids don't sympathise, they sense weakness and play up more.
You do have to do marking and prep in the evening or at the weekend. However... most teachers learn to be good at classroom management once they are established in a schoo, you do get an awful lot of holidays and most teachers are out of the door by 4pm. You have relatively little childcare stress (your kids teacher is on strike - ok you just bring your kid to school with you). You also have fantastic terms and conditions including pension, sick pay etc. Far better than equivalent jobs in the private sector. And working with kids can be fun and rewarding - teachers get to laugh more than other professions. Oh and if your colleague is off you don't have to cover their work (like you do in many jobs).
They don't do dinner duty, yard duty etc and get approx 1 free period a day.
The teaching unions compete with each other to convince teachers they are terribly hard done by. When I was a teacher the staff room used to be full of moaners, and staff rooms are still full of moans. No wonder there is a problem with recruitment - the teaching profession is its own marketing nightmare.
Time off sick is much higher in the public sector than private. I don't think this is because it is more stressful in the public sector - I think it is because sickness is managed much better in the private sector, there is often more sense of being part of a team and the sick benefits are often much worse.

Nonnie I believe she was.

I have conflicting views on this. When Mum was in hospital a while ago, I asked a group of 3 nurses, who were chatting at the nurses' station, if one of them could help her to the toilet only to be told that mum wasn't one of their patients! They didn't strike me as too stressed.

Having said that, DH's colleague (and the only other person in the county doing the same work) retired about a year ago and has not been replaced. DH's contract has been slightlyvincreased and he is under a lot of pressure to see more and more patients. Try as I may to persuade him, he won't cut down his hours because there are people needing him but I think the NHS is relying on his sense of professionalism to not leave people in the lurch!

And, DD's school has had Ofsted in this week - that's stress!

nina was she paid for that 2 years?

Having worked in schools hearing of teachers with stress related illnesses is common. One reception teacher from a school I worked in was of sick for 2 yrs with stress ! I will probably be shot down for saying it but I would have far more sympathy for a senior school teacher.
I would imagine any job that was paid on commission only would be pretty stressful.

I can understand that Harrigran Deadlines (often unreasonable) are indeed very stressful.

DS works in IT and the stress he and his colleagues have to reach deadlines is quite extraordinary. He has health problems and when the pressure is on I can see the effect it has on him.

Yes me too Nonnie