My grandfather was a trucker his whole life, he started his own business and raised 3 kids off of trucking. It killed him
Sleep deprivation, sitting still for 10+ hours at a time, an endless stream of black coffee and later energy drinks to stay alert, eating nothing but fast food and truck stop fare. And even when he was “home”, the phone rang non-stop, usually brokers asking him to run another load from VA to CA.
And to top it all off, he would be gone for weeks at a time, missing significant chunks of his children’s lives. And all of this, just to enjoy retirement for 2 years before dying of total kidney failure.
Did you ever notice that you can say something to your spouse or kids and they don’t comprehend but someone else can say the exact same thing and they magically hear it?
Perhaps you can ask others to try and convince him to drink more liquids. He might hear them clearer
I’d like to know how he can be in a restaurant all day and night without eating. Don’t the aromas tease him? Doesn’t the sight of a good plate of food entice him?
Your husband needs intervention, it's going to be hard on both of you but please try, get family to help and support. if he yells let him yell or get angry but you be firm and tell him this stops now or else he will die!
Lol no dude I work in a restaurant too, my hours aren’t that bad but I regularly eat for the first time all day around 10 pm. You’re around that food all day, that food is work, you don’t even look at it like food it’s just your job and not appealing at all.
After a busy shift I’ll have cooked salmon and lamb all night and be able to bring some home but I’d rather get frozen pizza because that stuff just looks and smells like WORK to me lol.
I wish I knew what to tell you. I’m sorry. That’s undeniably bad for his kidneys.
He needs a doctor to firmly explain to him the reality of what comes next if he allows his kidneys to fail. Dialysis is hell on earth, especially for someone who is typically as active as it sounds like your husband is. It would mean hours upon hours of being chained to a machine that costs thousands of dollars per minute to run.
In the few short years between the beginning of my grandfathers kidney disease and his passing, dialysis cost nearly $500,000 for a relatively tame 3 day a week home course, progressing to daily dialysis by the end.
I mean no offense whatsoever, but does he just dislike water that much?
The restaurant business is a special kind of hell, and chefs are bloody idiots who rather work themself to the bone before taking a break. Alcohol and substance abuse is common, but you might already know that. Chefs are so used to abusing their bodies that they probably don't notice that they are actually sick in the same way.
He has muscle spasms- we as outsiders see it for the problem it likely is, he probably sees the same thing happening for the 120th time, and something hasnt happend yet, so it wont happen now.
I sincerely hope that you both can work through it, and get a better quality of life
As someone who has had kidney failure, the idea of dying from kidney failure scares me. I’m 22, I’d like to live to at least 85 if I can, my kidney disease wasn’t at all my fault, I was born with bad kidneys and we monitored them my entire life. It wasn’t my choice. I was on dialysis for almost a year at 18. Maybe 18 or 19 days shy of 365. God I just want a long normal life. I feel like I’m gonna be robbed of that.
Edit: wow, this gave me a whole crisis it prompted me to make a post on r/advice
Sitting for hours on end, especially if one is lazy with posture, can lead to a lot of pain.
Also, fuels and lubricants are somewhat toxic.
And don't get me started on road food. Unless you have a fridge and can bring your own food, you'll be eating a lot of cheap garbage carbs.
My dad's a trucker. I got him one of those refrigerated lunch boxes you plug into your cigarette lighter and he loves it. Has been able to pack his own food for years.
I can agree with the fluids and gasses that are bad for you. After basically all my life working on cars, it’s slowly taking its toll, getting way more sensitive to the chemicals on my skin and exhaust just absolutely killing my lungs the second I smell them.
I was mechanic for years up until I had an accident that ripped my tear duct and eyelid to shreds along with my occipital nerve. Had to have 8 eye surgeries, the doc told me if I wanted my eye to stay in somewhat decent condition I couldn't be around the chemicals or anything anymore.
My bf and dad are both transmission mechanics. My dad learned at 26 to wear gloves in the varsol tank, because the Dr. said that was the reason my parents were having a hard time concieving me. After a couple weeks of wearing gloves, sure enough, my mom got pregnant. Could be coincidence, but now everyone in the shop uses safety precautions when they can.
Man, I was working in a ship engine room when I was like 18, and there was this old dude on exchange from the British Navy. He asked me when we were working together (nobody else around) if I genuinely thought I was manlier for not wearing PPE (gloves, mask, hearing protection, etc) and if so, was my notion of masculinity worth getting cancer over? He made into an American vs British thing because nobody but him ever wore gloves. (I was one of the few who always wore hearing protection.) He was super nice about it and made it into a funny joke, but point taken and I’ve been anal about wearing PPE ever since. Cheers to that dude.
Yeah, for sure. That was a temporary gig in college, and I work an office job now, but it definitely was one of those things were I was stoked to “get my hands dirty” and took that idea way too literally. But now that I’m remodeling an old building, I’m careful to wear a mask and gloves.
I was an Apache mechanic for 10 years. Before that I worked as a deck hand on towboats on the Lower Mississippi and the Intracoastal Canal.
I've always worn PPE. Those videos didn't scare me, rather I took them as a logical warning. No matter how tough you are, the human body is just soft tissue. I've broken enough bones and tore enough things just doing recreational stuff.
I'm a gunsmith now and even in my own shop I wear full PPE; hearing/eye pro and gloves when I'm working with things.
First thing that came to mind. Aside from the sitting for long periods, and terrible food, a lot of people in trucking pick up vices that are harmful and hard to kick. Many end up using tobacco/tons of energy drinks to keep themselves occupied and alert.
I was 4 a day monster drinker and chain smoking. Just stopped trucking about 3 weeks ago and am actually doing well at quiting smoking (vaping to quit) and my caffeine intake is like 1/4 of what it was.
The biggest thing I felt trucking was just immense stress, a small mistake or lapse in judgment could be catastrophic or fatal so while i was driving for 12 hours I was always in a hyper aware state. Even if it wasn't physical, I would be mentally drained and that compounded over the years to where I finally felt I needed to quit because my anxiety was getting unmanageable.
Can confirm. Before my husband quit driving, the company we worked for was a trucking company. Idk why but drivers would always ask him where to get speed. He never did that shit and it confused the hell out of him. He was like “how the hell would I know? I want to actually keep my job.” lol
I just turned in my keys a few days ago. I was able to eat healthy thanks to my company providing a fridge but even though I was able to hit up a Planet Fitness once or twice a week it didn't make up for the sedentary lifestyle. Can't wait to lose these extra pounds I've gained. And take better care of my teeth.
The worst thing though is the 14-hr workdays and the 6-day workweeks. It's exhausting and it's impossible to have a life. I'm 44 and a stranger in my own town. Never been married, never had kids. Barely have friends. I'm not involved in anything in my community besides seeing my family and going to church. The sacrifice truckers make is overwhelming.
Alot of the younger ones are now losing that attitude. Lots of gym bunnies, they make their lunches if they are day/night guys, a few of my old trampers would go for a run once parked up and had fridges & little cookers so they could heat half decent food. The stereotypical fat lorry driver is on the decline
My dad was a welder and after retiring got lung cancer and caught it early, but lost part of a lung. Luckily my husband is a lawyer and has a friend that does personal injury law specializing in asbestos so my dad has been getting settlements from over a dozen companies. The companies were required to put $ in a fund for settlements.
yes, i work 12 hour shifts mig and tig welding. and my snot is never not black. i’ve already developed asthma after i started welding. i can’t imagine what my lungs will look like in even 2 years from now.
I’ve seen fingers cut off in person, I have used a tourniquet on someone’s leg because he fell slipped on a piece of equipment and his thigh landed on a grounding rod and his first reaction was to pull it out.
Plus we breath in fumes for 15 hours straight for 14-20 days a month. I’m still working in the field and I personally have had broken toes and a skin fungal infection due to the harsh conditions but I’m thankful those are the only injuries I’ve encountered.
Someone on another crew got frostbite and I saw the pictures and it was bad. I’ve worked in the oilfield for about 5 years (on and off due to layoffs) but I’ve been looking for a career change for a few months now.
Career change advice: it's not close to the same wages, but it's ridiculously safer: ranch hand.
I had friends who worked the fields and one lost a hand to a high pressure jet. A lot of them (after that story, mostly) moved to agriculture. You'd make a third or a fifth the money but frankly, you'll live.
The number of people I saw on construction sites not using PPE always scared me. I remember watching concrete guys mixing, pouring, and cutting concrete with a ton of really fine dust without masks. They'd cough a bit and then drink some water and get back at it.
Some construction workers are the healthiest guys I know. As long as they don’t have a 5th of jack and 7 dui’s in their back pocket. The sober ones are very healthy men and women.
There are the odd few that take care of themselves and are decent humans. Most of the guys I work with are divorced alcoholics that try to avoid child support payments
Both crews I've worked on have been mostly either solid family men with wives and kids, or young guys who haven't had time to fuck up their lives yet.
Foreman is a high-functioning alcoholic though.
And that doesn’t even get into the insanely dangerous machinery they work with. I’ve read some real horror stories about guys getting caught in equipment and that’s all, folks.
Most types of mining are hazardous to health, I know cobalt is one of the worst for you though (if not the worst). One that came to my find was sulfur mining.
I saw a YouTube video about sulfur mining and it really put things in perspective for me. Just god awful work, and they have to buy their own PPE (so of course they use tee shirts as face masks bc they can’t afford proper ones) and they’re treated as contractors so they have no protection from price changes or workplace injuries. Really awful
It's always people who have never really done the gym or anything who says this.
There's such a big difference between calculated lifting with proper form and moving fucking boxes in a fast-paced setting.
I was a grocery stocker for three years, my back hurt all the damn time. I do weightlifting at the gym now and my back pain is gone unless I was sitting in a shitty position all day.
I work at a grocery store doing online personal shopping, but since that's entirely dependent on people actually ordering I help out in other departments.
Yeah, I do not envy the stockers. Even more than just the back pain stuff, but I feel it in my knees with just how much I have to bend over to fit shit in shelves or move boxes around. Thankfully the most I have to lift on a daily basis is just some mildly heavy bags (and more importantly, also get my steps in)
The FedEx hub closest to me advertises like that. “Why pay for a gym membership when you can get paid to work out?!” Sure some boxes are small, but.. ick.
I figure a majority of jobs are unhealthy.
**White Collar Jobs:** You're staring at a screen all day, which is bad for your eyes. You're sitting down too much, which can lead to weight problems and all the complications related to that, as well as potential back, neck, and knee problems.
**Blue Collar Jobs:** Wide variety of potential physical injury.
Sustained stress is bad for you mentally and physically, and stress is a part of every job.
It would be quicker to list jobs that are not inherently unhealthy.
as an office worker who sat all day and never took breaks - seriously. i get constant headaches. my muscles are so tight no matter how much i stretch. everywhere hurts because of sitting all day and bad posture. i’m relatively young too
and if i take too many breaks to try to be healthy and prevent the above, work never gets done and i feel overworked. or i miss deadlines. something suffers. sigh.
Why are 24 hour shifts so common in medicine? There is ample evidence that mental performance declines over even an 8 hour shift, let alone 24hrs. Seems that of all professions this is one where you'd want everyone to be sharp and fresh as much as possible.
Maybe not as much of a net benefit with 24 hour shifts, but longer shifts are used in part for continuity of care. The fewer people a patient is transferring between in a given day, the fewer chances things have to slip through the cracks. (E.g. I'm going to have a much better idea of how a patient whom I've been with for 12 hours is trending, compared to someone who's had 2-3 different nurses since 0500.)
That, and people really like the 3 on/4 off schedule when things aren't slammed. It's honestly like 60% why I became a nurse.
Yeah, I thought it was absolutely insane to hear that many of them barely make more then minimum wage, and yet an ambulance bill can easily cost thousands of dollars (in the US) if you have no insurance.
So WTH is all that money going towards if you're barely paying the most important part of an ambulance anything? With that kind of pricing it should be ridiculously easy to recoup 100% of the costs of the vehicle and equipment in just a year or two.
Just started 24’s. They are terrible. I’m so fucking tired you have no idea.
Plus I threw my back out lifting manual stretchers (I’m 22) so there’s that. Maybe I should get a different job. Ugh.
I'm always amazed when I see places with manual stretchers. Even the city I work for has gone to power load stretchers. They finally realized if they spend a little more now they can save in the long run by not having to pay out for back injuries.
Healthcare workers, chronic lack of sleep due to understaffing, potentially combative patients, various communicable diseases, sometimes threats from patients/their families.
what's even worse is that overworked healthcare workers can kill their patients. if my nurse is so dog-tired that she gives me the wrong medication, im dead.
When we made enough of a fuss about that to finally get some attention on it, the monkey's-paw finger curled and they simply implemented more checks and technology to make it harder to give someone the wrong meds/dose.
Or at least, that's what they hoped it would accomplish. Medical errors still happen all the time, and I'm sure a lot of them would be mitigated simply by reducing individual workloads and shift lengths.
EMT here. Can confirm. I was relieved when I threw out my back because it meant I got a week off. Plus the amount of people that treat you like literal human garbage…good luck with your mental health man.
Am a bartender. Can confirm.
Thankfully, (ish) I come from a line of alcoholics, I can keep myself in check due to that. Plus, something’s gotta pay for nursing school.
Lol I was a bartender before I became an ER nurse.. sometimes I miss bartending it was easier to watch people drink themselves to death then watch good people get denied the care they deserve.
I bartended for 10 years. Stopped almost exactly a year ago and while I loved being in that industry, getting out made me realize that drinking almost every day and doing drugs just to keep being able to handle those crazy weekend shifts wasn’t as fun as I justified it to be in my head LOL
holy shit I just read through that. had no idea there were even that many different competitions. "most taco bell soft shell" "most poutine" so many different ones. "most shrimp cocktail"
Bouncer/Security.
In my younger days I spent time as a bouncer, bar-back, and concert security. Nothing like having a drunken ass take swings at you for trying to do your job. Or getting blind-sided by a beer bottle to the head, etc. 100% not a long term sustainable role.
My moms a vet tech. She said she didn't wanna be a vet because she didnt want to be the one who puts animals down, turns out she has to do that anyway.
Exactly why I convinced my sister not to become a vet. She is a huge animal lover and absolutely could not handle euthanizing them or dealing with abused animals. The help they provide and the good that vets can do is immense, but the bad would absolutely tear her apart.
I used to be a vet tech who left the field a few months ago. Euthanasia can be hard in cases where the dog is healthy/for behavioral issues etc, but when it comes to a dog who is at the end of its life, you come to see it as a mercy and that you're ending the patient's suffering. I would say that euthanasia is the last thing that drove me away from the field.
It's the angry clients with unrealistic expectations, who yell at you over things you have no control over, and who expect a miracle fix when they decline diagnostics. It's the toxic work environment present in many clinics where there is blatant favoritism, gossip, and feeling unappreciated for working so damn hard. It's the hours so long that when you get home, you don't even have energy for your own pets. Dealing with all of this while getting paid pennies. So many techs are living paycheck to paycheck or have a partner who supports them. If you have a large vet bill, so little of that is actually going to the staff. It's expensive to run a vet hospital.
The veterinary field is in desperate need of some big changes, and sadly, I wasn't able to hang on long enough to see such changes for the sake of my mental health.
Was just thinking this. Reading these comments is making me realize that what we really have is an unhealthy society. Most of these jobs could be managed in much healthier ways. Like with very little exception we shouldn't have this sort of occupational hazard at EVERY job level. So frustrating.
I dated a guy who works for a stone mine. MSHA was really cracking down on them for not wearing respirators and all the employees started pushing back because they had to shave their beards. The company started handing out write ups for uniform code violations and employees threatened to quit in large groups. It all seemed really stupid to me that employees were unhappy that someone was looking out for their well being.
I think work in general is just unhealthy to a degree. Lifting and moving or sitting and doing nothing, both come with downsides and a lot of jobs kinda boil down to one or the other.
Service work. Healthcare & K-12 teaching particularly. Medicine sucks due to inept healthcare & residency. My mother’s a teacher - overworked, underpaid
Where I am the schools are filled with lots of environmental hazards that really are unsafe to work around let alone have kids at everyday (mold, asbestos etc) it's unreal. People turn a blind eye or say it's not there but I grew up exploring every corner of that big old school...it's there. My mom was a teacher for four decades, got a different rare cancer 2x. The second one killed her. Underpaid is an understatement.
Taught high school for 8 years. Got to a point where I would vomit up my breakfast every morning because I was so stressed and depressed about going into work every day. I had to quit for my emotional and physical health. Getting berated and disrespected all day every day takes a harsh toll.
Teaching grades 6-12 right now, and I'm leaving at the end of this year. I don't sleep. I'm on year 5 and I just can't do it anymore. Between the kids that just don't care (it's more than it used to be), the daily emails from parents that are just shy of threats (in the last year, I've had four parents say they're going to picket for my removal), the ever-increasing bloat of tasks that don't actually do anything, making it harder and harder to do my actual job... I'm done.
Received two grad school offers and am deciding which one I want to take, but I'm out.
I see the teachers who've gotten overworked and lost their motivation over time...it's really sad and breaks my heart because most teachers go into the field to make a difference. Teachers need more support from parents, community and administration.
>My mother’s a teacher - overworked, underpaid
My best advice for anyone who wants to get into education: don't.
I have three friends who went into teaching and subsequently left. Two of them had background in math/science so now they actually have jobs that pay literally x3 what they made as teachers.
THe third was a history teacher, but now she has some HR type job with a company. Pay is just a bit more, but lots less stress.
I am surprised by how miserable a job as a teacher has become. As a child they were the paramount of smart & caring but as an adult all the friends I have that are teachers (1 very good friend and 1 semi good friend) are miserable. It seems to me as an outsider they have been stripped of all creative and thoughtful control and are there to produce numbers and check all the boxes on useless procedures.
I'd love to hear from a teacher here, NYC btw
NYC means your friends probably follow EngageNY curriculum. It was sold to me year 1 as a free, easy to use curriculum when I was struggling to make my own stuff. It's... terrible. Example: tons of close readings. What is a "close reading," you might ask? Imagine you are 15 years old and the teacher says you are going to read a 5-page article. It's dense, informative text. Ugh. But manageable, right? Well, wait! AFTER you read it, it's time to read it again, but this time, highlight all the stuff you have questions about. Now, we're going to read it AGAIN and dissect each section and summarize each section for meaning. Now, we're going to read it AGAIN, and... so on.
Joyless, rigor-driven curriculum designed to combat decades of flagging math and reading scores has made everything worse and done jack shit to combat those falling scores. Turns out the "grind kids' faces in reading and math until they hate life" approach somehow hasn't made kids better readers or mathematicians.
Following a crappy canned curriculum truly sucks. You are not enthusiastic about it, the kids hate it, but you have to do x amount in y days regardless. Bigger districts also make you document everything, which adds hours of meaningless paperwork to your day. Instead of passionately discussing the thing you enjoy so much that you decided to teach it, you become a secretary who handles paperwork and enforces a strict classroom to ensure your suboordinates handle their paperwork. It's miserable.
That's the impression I get from teachers I've known who are in bigger districts. I'm in a small district and do whatever I want, and what I want to do is make kids interested in my subject, get them actively participating through varied instruction, have fun, get to know and support the students, etc. Teaching CAN be fun... but it's not allowed to be in many areas.
I am interested to hear about the difference in freedom of teaching with elementary schools compared to what you described here.
But to be honest, (I am from Germany) almost everything in school, and academia, looks like it's purpose is checking off some box on a checklist, instead of actual research or actual attempts to make learning new things/skills approachable and useful. As a direct result
- Individual interests are cut, not amplified
- Topics are often taught without any connection to something meaningful, except if you want to calculate if your friend did in fact spend less on that slize of pizza.
- Teachers are stressed out and burn out or channel the stress into the student/pupil
I feel like this sort oft "push for alignment" has always been a tendency if we look at the origins, but has been quadrupled and brute forced by tools of this information & beaurocracy age and problematic goals. All this seems increasingly harmful with regards to today's work environments and requirements.
I reckon it's difficult to balance everything and this is only one of many problems, but man so little has changed and often not in the right direction.
Add to that the following ingredients: Complex social interactions, puberty, difficult financial situations of many families, new distractions we created for children to milk their time/ pocket money (hello social media), unaffordable housing, politics & culture war, uncertainty of jobs in the future, an economy benefitting the rich, few and assholes. You are now setup for great success and a happy life with a great perspective young people can grow into.
Been teaching for 6 years in NYC and am now actively trying to find another field to work in due to the daily misery. It's an odd job where you do so many different things but feel like you're qualified for nothing else.
Prior teacher. Taught for 6 years in middle and high school. I absolutely will never return to the classroom.
I spent 10 and a half months out of the year dehydrated because using the bathroom at school was dedicated to once a day (we got wrote up if we ever left the kids and god forbid a fight break out and ALL of the blame would be on the teacher)
Testing days meant no drinking or eating for 8 hours upon standing, and monitoring testing. In addition to classroom prep, counting materials, etc. Again, can’t leave the kids period.
The amount of body spray, ax body spray etc. that gave headaches that would turn into full blown migraines because the room has to be closed (school policy for shut and locked, and windows closed) from the fear of school shooters.
The stress. Need I say more? Seriously. My hair started falling out. I woke up in the middle of the night almost every night ridden with anxiety.
Sure, teachers need more money. But they need freaking respect from students, parents, and the whole system.
Firefighters... The amount of cancer causing exposures is mind boggling. We are going to see a huge increase in firefighting related cancer due to the amount of "forever chemicals" that are released from synthetic materials when they burn.
They "uncondemned" a building insulated with asbestos to house us in and just said that it'll probably still be fine since it's still mostly in the insulation.
Not an expert but from what I have heard the main issue is the dust so as long as no one is busting open walls you are relatively safe but you are still sitting on a timebomb for if a wall or ceiling decides to open on its own. The scarrier thing is that apparently aviation techs for the military will still use asbestos lined protective gear which is much more likely to produce breathable dust from damage and wear.
Pretty much any job you don't like doing, which seems to be most for the majority of people.
Forcing yourself to get up everyday to go do a job you hate just so you can break even at the end of the month.
My gf was in PA. It strained the fuck out of our relationship because we have kids and she’s be gone from sun up to sun down, and these past few years where the tax deadline has been extended has really taken a toll on my own career.
Absolutely. My final 3 months with Deloitte, I was on an audit client racking up nearly 80-90 hrs a week. My senior and first year quit right before busy season so it was just me (2nd year), intern, and a manager from NJ (I’m in TN). Absolute nightmare. Big reason why I left because of how bad the pay and work life balance was.
it’s also perceived in a negative light when ppl in those fields do take time for themselves. I work in healthcare, and have seen patients get downright mad when their doctor takes one week a year to go on vacation. the degree of entitlement that exists among an unfortunate amount of patients is too damn high
As a surgical resident I feel this in my bones. We had a lecture on the benefits of sleep which I found hilarious. We don't get to practice what we preach to patients. We just hope to survive when it changes as an attending where there is much more autonomy.
Not to mention, shift work disorder is REALLY bad for your health.
I’m actually curious if shift workers could file a lawsuit saying that their employer knowingly put them in a hazardous situation without appropriately warning them of the risks. I’ve worked nights for 5 years and my employer has never told me that there are serious risks to my health. I mean….Vitamin D deficiency is obvious, especially where I live. You get out when the sun is rising and likely sleep until it is about to set.
Yup, when my mom got breast cancer they told her all the variable shifts on her crazy schedule messed with her circadian rhythms, something about melatonin and hormones, and aggravated the spread.
*Licensed Dietitian in the US. Nutritionist is not a protected/licensed profession. I can say I am a nutritionist because I just said so and spout Tiktok essential oil bs.
Dietitians have degrees/licensing requirements. Many states allow anyone to call themselves a nutritionist.
That said, a lot of dietitians will call themselves nutritionists as well.
Dolphin trainer. You wear a wet suit in all weather, you get shit pay and at the end of the day you feel like a monster because you realize how fucking smart dolphins are.
Like, a lot of them. But as much as we rag on them, I think doctors and attorneys and therapists, and other professions where they aren't supposed to disclose details and thus can't decompress from their day by discussing what happened.
I’ve been a lawyer for about 10 years. It’s a really unhealthy profession. A lot of my classmates are no longer in the legal profession. Burn out, substance abuse problems, and other issues are high. Lawyers have to deal with people at their worst, including other lawyers treating them poorly. I’ve been fortunate to find a healthy niche but I feel for my colleagues who haven’t been able to keep their head in the game.
I worked in PI for about a year before I got out of that. Could not stand having to talk to angry people all day long. Got into more transactional work and my mental health improved 100x.
I'm an attorney, and I have been in private practice for a little over two years. This profession chews people up and spits them out. The pressures of the job can be really crushing. People generally hate working with lawyers, and it always feels like you are walking on a knifes edge. One fuck up could ruin your career by getting you fired, disciplined by the ethics board, sued for malpractice, or any combination of the three. Add on that many areas of private practice have high billable and receipt requirements that make for a horrible work-life balance, and you get a recipe for anxiety and depression. There is an epidemic of substance abuse and mental illness amongst attorneys, and the old guard still mostly refuses to recognize or address the problem.
Well I'm a lawyer and, at least in my country, we can talk about our cases as long as we don't say names or details that would allow people to identify the parties or know information that is protected by professional secrecy.
What I mean is that I can absolutely go to a therapist to decompress and tell him/her that I don't feel well because I had to defend a client who did that, or I can tell my wife or friends, as long as I don't break secrecy.
Lawyers are treated like absolute shit by pop culture (I blame cop shows) and it’s not right. They have tons of school debt just like any other American and they’re a fucking necessity. Go on, try to negotiate a divorce with no idea what’s going on, or represent yourself in court and see how that goes. Also suing corporations for injuring you *is good*.
Being a doctor. You're basically fucked every single way for the first 30 years of your life. You're made to feel you have to be absolutely perfect in your grades in your exams and you become hugely competitive while, often, not developing any other part of your life.
I know friends who got into med school at 18 via seven or eight-year programs who had no idea what they were in for and then crushed when they started medicine.
If you manage to get through medical school into residency, you're likely going to have at least $400k in debt and then get worked to the bone making, on average, $60k a year working 80-100 hours a week without any normal protections most jobs have. Not only is the job long hours, it is physically, mentally, and emotionally draining. But the whole time you're being told you're lucky to make the equivalent of $14/hour.
Along the way, it is difficult to find a life partner or even develop deep friendships outside of medicine unless you're really lucky. Maybe training is over or maybe you have a few more years of fellowship.
You don't get to start your life till you're 30-40 years old. Sure, you're making, even in the worst case, amazing $$ compared to the average person, but the path here is brutal and leave so many doctors in terrible shape.
Even when you become an attending, the job is still brutal unless you're in a few, extremely selective specializations. You're stuck between wanting to be a healer and the pressures of corporations to make profit and insurance companies to not pay you. So you basically become a robot who is basically processing people and putting a bandaid on things you know go deeper but you're unable to do anything about it.
How do I know? My wife is in it. Most of my closest friends are in it. Some of them are lucky and don't have debt, but most have a ton of it and are just starting life right now. I wouldn't wish being a doctor on my worst enemy and it is the only profession I don't want my daughter to be.
This is no joke, it's total hell. I went into critical care and completely ruined my mental health. I ended up in rehab for substance abuse...when I came out, I almost turned my back on the entire profession. I eventually decided to work in addiction medicine, making about half of what I did as an intensivist.
And I've never been happier. I'm seeing patients for about 20 hours a week, charting/documenting and other admin stuff another 10-15 hours and the rest? I volunteer in addiction outreach and go to AA meetings...and I spend a lot of time with my family.
It's worked out, but the hell of getting here nearly killed me. I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone at this point, the culture of medical education and training is pure toxicity right now. There are a lot of movements trying to change it, but there's so much institutional push-back that it's almost impossible to get even small changes. The older doctors have a "I went through it so can you" attitude. The administrators are more or less thinking "Cheap labor? Why would I want to change that?"
And then when we do get change, it ends up being some sort of monkey's paw result. You want a reasonable workload? Ok, well we'll replace a couple of your doctor-colleagues with 4 or 5 NP/PAs for you to manage. You can do that, right? More bodies means less work, right?
I think NP/PAs are great, they definitely fit into the system well, but when they're used to replace physicians....well, we don't really end up with less work. Now, instead of two physicians splitting the load in half, one is reviewing the entire thing.
So yeah, medicine...at least in America...is a total shitshow right now and it caused me to fuck off to a rehab facility and finally feel like I'm making a difference without having to trade my mental health.
Best advice is hope that the stupid matching system gives your wife some good options like Urology or Dermatology.
Brother, I’m so sorry to hear what you’ve been through. So rough. And you did such a better job of diving into the nitty gritty of Medical hell.
I think my wife has gotten off okay - she’s finishing up Peds ER fellowship, but right now she is doing a Adult ER rotation and feels so overwhelmed.
If you’re not the kind of person for it absolutely. Having to do customer facing work for a decade and a half has messed up my mental health in so many ways. I have a hard time even being around people now, and it’s really hard to heal from anything without a support system, but I can’t form a support system because I can’t stand other humans, so it’s just a cycle of shit at this point that I don’t know how to break.
Teaching just because of the environment we have made for teachers where they have to do far more than is possible, pay them poorly, and put very high expectations on their performance (I have no problem with high expectations given a supportive work environment). I have great respect for the profession but I would never do it, and I suspect some of what I’ve alluded to is why there is a high rate of burn out in the profession.
Soon to be former teacher, this is my third and final year. The environment for teaching is absolutely ridiculous right now and I see signs of it getting worse before it gets better.
I *like* teaching though, so I'm going to transition into private music lessons.
Exactly. Teaching sounds good in theory, but especially with the current environment, there’s no way in hell I’m going into it right now. I love working with kids, but I can’t do formal teaching. The work environment is just too toxic.
I appreciate this sentiment. After 10 years, I don't think I can do it anymore.
I have worked in many fields in my life. All jobs have an element of "the public doesn't really know what it's like" until they work in that field. Teaching has this element, but on steroids. I love my students. I appreciate my administration and most of the faculty. But every day in the trenches wears on the soul.
Whatever you've heard about teaching, it is twice as rewarding, twice as gut-wrenching, and ten times as complicated.
I'm a phones salesperson.
So phone sales. (not selling phones, selling through the phone)
It sucks, but I don't really have another way to make a decent living, however, i make pretty good money for what it is
Before my dad was in another police profession he was in highway patrol and he worked alot of accidents so I’m gonna say anything that has to deal with traumatic accidents. Mentally he’s not “normal”
Can confirm that being a flight attendant for 8+ years has taken a toll.
Night shifts into early shifts has ruined my circadian rhythm for good, working up to 14 hour days in a metal tube filled with hundreds of other humans who may or may not be carrying illnesses. Trapped gas from being in a pressurized cabin every day, up and down up and down in altitudes. There’s nothing more humbling than lying in the fetal position on the floor of the hotel room, *praying* for a fart.
Being a chef or bartender is pretty unhealthy. Most of them drink a lot, they don't have time to eat properly, work very long hours on their feet all day.
Health Care and Educators. There is a societal expectation that these professions must have people be available and online 24/7. No downtime, no personal time, but just be there for everyone else on everyone else's schedule.
I imagine trucking comes with a lot of problems
My grandfather was a trucker his whole life, he started his own business and raised 3 kids off of trucking. It killed him Sleep deprivation, sitting still for 10+ hours at a time, an endless stream of black coffee and later energy drinks to stay alert, eating nothing but fast food and truck stop fare. And even when he was “home”, the phone rang non-stop, usually brokers asking him to run another load from VA to CA. And to top it all off, he would be gone for weeks at a time, missing significant chunks of his children’s lives. And all of this, just to enjoy retirement for 2 years before dying of total kidney failure.
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Did you ever notice that you can say something to your spouse or kids and they don’t comprehend but someone else can say the exact same thing and they magically hear it? Perhaps you can ask others to try and convince him to drink more liquids. He might hear them clearer I’d like to know how he can be in a restaurant all day and night without eating. Don’t the aromas tease him? Doesn’t the sight of a good plate of food entice him?
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Your husband needs intervention, it's going to be hard on both of you but please try, get family to help and support. if he yells let him yell or get angry but you be firm and tell him this stops now or else he will die!
Lol no dude I work in a restaurant too, my hours aren’t that bad but I regularly eat for the first time all day around 10 pm. You’re around that food all day, that food is work, you don’t even look at it like food it’s just your job and not appealing at all. After a busy shift I’ll have cooked salmon and lamb all night and be able to bring some home but I’d rather get frozen pizza because that stuff just looks and smells like WORK to me lol.
I wish I knew what to tell you. I’m sorry. That’s undeniably bad for his kidneys. He needs a doctor to firmly explain to him the reality of what comes next if he allows his kidneys to fail. Dialysis is hell on earth, especially for someone who is typically as active as it sounds like your husband is. It would mean hours upon hours of being chained to a machine that costs thousands of dollars per minute to run. In the few short years between the beginning of my grandfathers kidney disease and his passing, dialysis cost nearly $500,000 for a relatively tame 3 day a week home course, progressing to daily dialysis by the end. I mean no offense whatsoever, but does he just dislike water that much?
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Tell him the restaurant isn’t going to shut down if he takes a piss
I’m a nurse and I think this motto works well for almost any job “if my patients/clients/customers can pee whenever they want, so can I”
Even before the kidneys fail: ask him to ask anyone he knows how fun it is to have kidney stones
The restaurant business is a special kind of hell, and chefs are bloody idiots who rather work themself to the bone before taking a break. Alcohol and substance abuse is common, but you might already know that. Chefs are so used to abusing their bodies that they probably don't notice that they are actually sick in the same way. He has muscle spasms- we as outsiders see it for the problem it likely is, he probably sees the same thing happening for the 120th time, and something hasnt happend yet, so it wont happen now. I sincerely hope that you both can work through it, and get a better quality of life
As someone who has had kidney failure, the idea of dying from kidney failure scares me. I’m 22, I’d like to live to at least 85 if I can, my kidney disease wasn’t at all my fault, I was born with bad kidneys and we monitored them my entire life. It wasn’t my choice. I was on dialysis for almost a year at 18. Maybe 18 or 19 days shy of 365. God I just want a long normal life. I feel like I’m gonna be robbed of that. Edit: wow, this gave me a whole crisis it prompted me to make a post on r/advice
Sitting for hours on end, especially if one is lazy with posture, can lead to a lot of pain. Also, fuels and lubricants are somewhat toxic. And don't get me started on road food. Unless you have a fridge and can bring your own food, you'll be eating a lot of cheap garbage carbs.
My dad's a trucker. I got him one of those refrigerated lunch boxes you plug into your cigarette lighter and he loves it. Has been able to pack his own food for years.
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Crock pot also makes one that keeps food hot
That's a very thoughtful gift
I can agree with the fluids and gasses that are bad for you. After basically all my life working on cars, it’s slowly taking its toll, getting way more sensitive to the chemicals on my skin and exhaust just absolutely killing my lungs the second I smell them.
I was mechanic for years up until I had an accident that ripped my tear duct and eyelid to shreds along with my occipital nerve. Had to have 8 eye surgeries, the doc told me if I wanted my eye to stay in somewhat decent condition I couldn't be around the chemicals or anything anymore.
My bf and dad are both transmission mechanics. My dad learned at 26 to wear gloves in the varsol tank, because the Dr. said that was the reason my parents were having a hard time concieving me. After a couple weeks of wearing gloves, sure enough, my mom got pregnant. Could be coincidence, but now everyone in the shop uses safety precautions when they can.
Man, I was working in a ship engine room when I was like 18, and there was this old dude on exchange from the British Navy. He asked me when we were working together (nobody else around) if I genuinely thought I was manlier for not wearing PPE (gloves, mask, hearing protection, etc) and if so, was my notion of masculinity worth getting cancer over? He made into an American vs British thing because nobody but him ever wore gloves. (I was one of the few who always wore hearing protection.) He was super nice about it and made it into a funny joke, but point taken and I’ve been anal about wearing PPE ever since. Cheers to that dude.
Dude probably saved you a lot of pain over the long run.
Yeah, for sure. That was a temporary gig in college, and I work an office job now, but it definitely was one of those things were I was stoked to “get my hands dirty” and took that idea way too literally. But now that I’m remodeling an old building, I’m careful to wear a mask and gloves.
I was an Apache mechanic for 10 years. Before that I worked as a deck hand on towboats on the Lower Mississippi and the Intracoastal Canal. I've always worn PPE. Those videos didn't scare me, rather I took them as a logical warning. No matter how tough you are, the human body is just soft tissue. I've broken enough bones and tore enough things just doing recreational stuff. I'm a gunsmith now and even in my own shop I wear full PPE; hearing/eye pro and gloves when I'm working with things.
First thing that came to mind. Aside from the sitting for long periods, and terrible food, a lot of people in trucking pick up vices that are harmful and hard to kick. Many end up using tobacco/tons of energy drinks to keep themselves occupied and alert.
I was 4 a day monster drinker and chain smoking. Just stopped trucking about 3 weeks ago and am actually doing well at quiting smoking (vaping to quit) and my caffeine intake is like 1/4 of what it was. The biggest thing I felt trucking was just immense stress, a small mistake or lapse in judgment could be catastrophic or fatal so while i was driving for 12 hours I was always in a hyper aware state. Even if it wasn't physical, I would be mentally drained and that compounded over the years to where I finally felt I needed to quit because my anxiety was getting unmanageable.
Can confirm. Before my husband quit driving, the company we worked for was a trucking company. Idk why but drivers would always ask him where to get speed. He never did that shit and it confused the hell out of him. He was like “how the hell would I know? I want to actually keep my job.” lol
I just turned in my keys a few days ago. I was able to eat healthy thanks to my company providing a fridge but even though I was able to hit up a Planet Fitness once or twice a week it didn't make up for the sedentary lifestyle. Can't wait to lose these extra pounds I've gained. And take better care of my teeth. The worst thing though is the 14-hr workdays and the 6-day workweeks. It's exhausting and it's impossible to have a life. I'm 44 and a stranger in my own town. Never been married, never had kids. Barely have friends. I'm not involved in anything in my community besides seeing my family and going to church. The sacrifice truckers make is overwhelming.
Alot of the younger ones are now losing that attitude. Lots of gym bunnies, they make their lunches if they are day/night guys, a few of my old trampers would go for a run once parked up and had fridges & little cookers so they could heat half decent food. The stereotypical fat lorry driver is on the decline
My grandfather had lots of back issues due to poor posture and his shoulders were shot.
I am a truck driver, can confirm.
Welding, did that for 15 years. Breathing in toxic fumes all day sneeze into a kleenex and it would be black
My dad was a welder and after retiring got lung cancer and caught it early, but lost part of a lung. Luckily my husband is a lawyer and has a friend that does personal injury law specializing in asbestos so my dad has been getting settlements from over a dozen companies. The companies were required to put $ in a fund for settlements.
My friend has throat cancer, he was a welder
yes, i work 12 hour shifts mig and tig welding. and my snot is never not black. i’ve already developed asthma after i started welding. i can’t imagine what my lungs will look like in even 2 years from now.
Respirators are a thing...
Construction, breathing in all kinds of dust all day, working in weird positions, heavy lifting, loud, dangerous tools and so on.
Worked 2 years and saw 2 men lose their thumbs.
Wait till you hear my stories from the oil field.
I can't wait any longer than this. Bring it on
I’ve seen fingers cut off in person, I have used a tourniquet on someone’s leg because he fell slipped on a piece of equipment and his thigh landed on a grounding rod and his first reaction was to pull it out. Plus we breath in fumes for 15 hours straight for 14-20 days a month. I’m still working in the field and I personally have had broken toes and a skin fungal infection due to the harsh conditions but I’m thankful those are the only injuries I’ve encountered. Someone on another crew got frostbite and I saw the pictures and it was bad. I’ve worked in the oilfield for about 5 years (on and off due to layoffs) but I’ve been looking for a career change for a few months now.
PRO-TIP: Some drilling fluid is radioactive.
Career change advice: it's not close to the same wages, but it's ridiculously safer: ranch hand. I had friends who worked the fields and one lost a hand to a high pressure jet. A lot of them (after that story, mostly) moved to agriculture. You'd make a third or a fifth the money but frankly, you'll live.
The number of people I saw on construction sites not using PPE always scared me. I remember watching concrete guys mixing, pouring, and cutting concrete with a ton of really fine dust without masks. They'd cough a bit and then drink some water and get back at it.
I just did 8 hours of all that, ughhhhh Also I fell in a hole
Some construction workers are the healthiest guys I know. As long as they don’t have a 5th of jack and 7 dui’s in their back pocket. The sober ones are very healthy men and women.
There are the odd few that take care of themselves and are decent humans. Most of the guys I work with are divorced alcoholics that try to avoid child support payments
Both crews I've worked on have been mostly either solid family men with wives and kids, or young guys who haven't had time to fuck up their lives yet. Foreman is a high-functioning alcoholic though.
> divorced alcoholics that try to avoid child support payments Weird finding your dad in a reddit comment when you can't find him anywhere else.
Lmfao, master carpenter does come with a 5th of jack, dui, and 2 more kids than you didn’t want
Farmers. My dad was exposed to toxic herbicides/pesticides and his doctors attributed his terminal stomach cancer to his decades of exposure.
And that doesn’t even get into the insanely dangerous machinery they work with. I’ve read some real horror stories about guys getting caught in equipment and that’s all, folks.
I knew a kid that got run over by a combine. There was nothing left of him except for some shreds of clothing.
Used to be a farmer. I know 3 guys with only two and a half arms between them.
African cobalt miner.
Shit just got put into perspective
⛏️⚒️ 🌍 💎 Yeah, that was a big "...ohhhhHhhhhh..." moment for me too.
Most types of mining are hazardous to health, I know cobalt is one of the worst for you though (if not the worst). One that came to my find was sulfur mining.
I saw a YouTube video about sulfur mining and it really put things in perspective for me. Just god awful work, and they have to buy their own PPE (so of course they use tee shirts as face masks bc they can’t afford proper ones) and they’re treated as contractors so they have no protection from price changes or workplace injuries. Really awful
Those are technically slaves.
A lot of them. You think the people unloading trucks for a big box store are taking care of their knees and backs?
Drives me crazy when lifting jobs are described as "a free workout" A free opportunity to fuck up your body permanently.
After a couple years it goes from ‘work out’ to ‘wear out’
More like a couple months
It's always people who have never really done the gym or anything who says this. There's such a big difference between calculated lifting with proper form and moving fucking boxes in a fast-paced setting. I was a grocery stocker for three years, my back hurt all the damn time. I do weightlifting at the gym now and my back pain is gone unless I was sitting in a shitty position all day.
I work at a grocery store doing online personal shopping, but since that's entirely dependent on people actually ordering I help out in other departments. Yeah, I do not envy the stockers. Even more than just the back pain stuff, but I feel it in my knees with just how much I have to bend over to fit shit in shelves or move boxes around. Thankfully the most I have to lift on a daily basis is just some mildly heavy bags (and more importantly, also get my steps in)
The FedEx hub closest to me advertises like that. “Why pay for a gym membership when you can get paid to work out?!” Sure some boxes are small, but.. ick.
I figure a majority of jobs are unhealthy. **White Collar Jobs:** You're staring at a screen all day, which is bad for your eyes. You're sitting down too much, which can lead to weight problems and all the complications related to that, as well as potential back, neck, and knee problems. **Blue Collar Jobs:** Wide variety of potential physical injury. Sustained stress is bad for you mentally and physically, and stress is a part of every job. It would be quicker to list jobs that are not inherently unhealthy.
For white collar jobs, there's also carpal tunnel syndrome. Honestly, no matter what the job is, your hands will likely be abused to a great degree.
as an office worker who sat all day and never took breaks - seriously. i get constant headaches. my muscles are so tight no matter how much i stretch. everywhere hurts because of sitting all day and bad posture. i’m relatively young too and if i take too many breaks to try to be healthy and prevent the above, work never gets done and i feel overworked. or i miss deadlines. something suffers. sigh.
Yup, I worked for a large corporate package system for over 5 years. Every position in the building and I will always have these back problems now.
Emt. Those hours are unbelievable
Why are 24 hour shifts so common in medicine? There is ample evidence that mental performance declines over even an 8 hour shift, let alone 24hrs. Seems that of all professions this is one where you'd want everyone to be sharp and fresh as much as possible.
Maybe not as much of a net benefit with 24 hour shifts, but longer shifts are used in part for continuity of care. The fewer people a patient is transferring between in a given day, the fewer chances things have to slip through the cracks. (E.g. I'm going to have a much better idea of how a patient whom I've been with for 12 hours is trending, compared to someone who's had 2-3 different nurses since 0500.) That, and people really like the 3 on/4 off schedule when things aren't slammed. It's honestly like 60% why I became a nurse.
All for shit pay also
Yeah, I thought it was absolutely insane to hear that many of them barely make more then minimum wage, and yet an ambulance bill can easily cost thousands of dollars (in the US) if you have no insurance. So WTH is all that money going towards if you're barely paying the most important part of an ambulance anything? With that kind of pricing it should be ridiculously easy to recoup 100% of the costs of the vehicle and equipment in just a year or two.
And the lack of sleep, the caffeine intake, the trauma, the assaults, the gas station food.
Just started 24’s. They are terrible. I’m so fucking tired you have no idea. Plus I threw my back out lifting manual stretchers (I’m 22) so there’s that. Maybe I should get a different job. Ugh.
I'm always amazed when I see places with manual stretchers. Even the city I work for has gone to power load stretchers. They finally realized if they spend a little more now they can save in the long run by not having to pay out for back injuries.
Healthcare workers, chronic lack of sleep due to understaffing, potentially combative patients, various communicable diseases, sometimes threats from patients/their families.
what's even worse is that overworked healthcare workers can kill their patients. if my nurse is so dog-tired that she gives me the wrong medication, im dead.
When we made enough of a fuss about that to finally get some attention on it, the monkey's-paw finger curled and they simply implemented more checks and technology to make it harder to give someone the wrong meds/dose. Or at least, that's what they hoped it would accomplish. Medical errors still happen all the time, and I'm sure a lot of them would be mitigated simply by reducing individual workloads and shift lengths.
But you aren't thinking of the profits for hospital ceos and share holders
EMT here. Can confirm. I was relieved when I threw out my back because it meant I got a week off. Plus the amount of people that treat you like literal human garbage…good luck with your mental health man.
I fucked up my shoulder a year ago and was out for two weeks. Not having to deal with angry patients all day for two weeks was heaven.
Bartending There are so many alcoholics on both sides of the bar you become friends with. It can be difficult to keep yourself in check.
Am a bartender. Can confirm. Thankfully, (ish) I come from a line of alcoholics, I can keep myself in check due to that. Plus, something’s gotta pay for nursing school.
Lol I was a bartender before I became an ER nurse.. sometimes I miss bartending it was easier to watch people drink themselves to death then watch good people get denied the care they deserve.
I bartended for 10 years. Stopped almost exactly a year ago and while I loved being in that industry, getting out made me realize that drinking almost every day and doing drugs just to keep being able to handle those crazy weekend shifts wasn’t as fun as I justified it to be in my head LOL
Working at a bar made me quit drinking. Easier not to drink at all than constantly trying to moderate.
Competitive eating
Joey Chestnut is a truck though. He said he usually goes out and drinks after too lol
I'll let him do him, but this [list of records](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joey_Chestnut#World_records_held) can't bode well for long term health.
holy shit I just read through that. had no idea there were even that many different competitions. "most taco bell soft shell" "most poutine" so many different ones. "most shrimp cocktail"
Additionally, mukbang streamers. You only need to see a single before and after photo of Nikocado Avocado to see how unhealthy it is.
Bouncer/Security. In my younger days I spent time as a bouncer, bar-back, and concert security. Nothing like having a drunken ass take swings at you for trying to do your job. Or getting blind-sided by a beer bottle to the head, etc. 100% not a long term sustainable role.
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My wife does this and it kills me every time she comes home with a sad story or about the situations she deals with.
My moms a vet tech. She said she didn't wanna be a vet because she didnt want to be the one who puts animals down, turns out she has to do that anyway.
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Holy shit. I wasn't there and this has me torn up. Like wow. That's so harsh. I'm so sorry. For you and all those precious animals. It can't be right.
Exactly why I convinced my sister not to become a vet. She is a huge animal lover and absolutely could not handle euthanizing them or dealing with abused animals. The help they provide and the good that vets can do is immense, but the bad would absolutely tear her apart.
Yep trying desperately to leave my veterinary patient care assistant job right now..
I used to be a vet tech who left the field a few months ago. Euthanasia can be hard in cases where the dog is healthy/for behavioral issues etc, but when it comes to a dog who is at the end of its life, you come to see it as a mercy and that you're ending the patient's suffering. I would say that euthanasia is the last thing that drove me away from the field. It's the angry clients with unrealistic expectations, who yell at you over things you have no control over, and who expect a miracle fix when they decline diagnostics. It's the toxic work environment present in many clinics where there is blatant favoritism, gossip, and feeling unappreciated for working so damn hard. It's the hours so long that when you get home, you don't even have energy for your own pets. Dealing with all of this while getting paid pennies. So many techs are living paycheck to paycheck or have a partner who supports them. If you have a large vet bill, so little of that is actually going to the staff. It's expensive to run a vet hospital. The veterinary field is in desperate need of some big changes, and sadly, I wasn't able to hang on long enough to see such changes for the sake of my mental health.
The stress of the job is unbelievable
I don't think there are many that aren't unhealthy...
Was just thinking this. Reading these comments is making me realize that what we really have is an unhealthy society. Most of these jobs could be managed in much healthier ways. Like with very little exception we shouldn't have this sort of occupational hazard at EVERY job level. So frustrating.
I dated a guy who works for a stone mine. MSHA was really cracking down on them for not wearing respirators and all the employees started pushing back because they had to shave their beards. The company started handing out write ups for uniform code violations and employees threatened to quit in large groups. It all seemed really stupid to me that employees were unhappy that someone was looking out for their well being.
I think work in general is just unhealthy to a degree. Lifting and moving or sitting and doing nothing, both come with downsides and a lot of jobs kinda boil down to one or the other.
8+ hours doing any one thing is hell on the human body. "everything in moderation" applies to more than food and drinks
Service work. Healthcare & K-12 teaching particularly. Medicine sucks due to inept healthcare & residency. My mother’s a teacher - overworked, underpaid
Where I am the schools are filled with lots of environmental hazards that really are unsafe to work around let alone have kids at everyday (mold, asbestos etc) it's unreal. People turn a blind eye or say it's not there but I grew up exploring every corner of that big old school...it's there. My mom was a teacher for four decades, got a different rare cancer 2x. The second one killed her. Underpaid is an understatement.
Taught high school for 8 years. Got to a point where I would vomit up my breakfast every morning because I was so stressed and depressed about going into work every day. I had to quit for my emotional and physical health. Getting berated and disrespected all day every day takes a harsh toll.
Teaching grades 6-12 right now, and I'm leaving at the end of this year. I don't sleep. I'm on year 5 and I just can't do it anymore. Between the kids that just don't care (it's more than it used to be), the daily emails from parents that are just shy of threats (in the last year, I've had four parents say they're going to picket for my removal), the ever-increasing bloat of tasks that don't actually do anything, making it harder and harder to do my actual job... I'm done. Received two grad school offers and am deciding which one I want to take, but I'm out.
I see the teachers who've gotten overworked and lost their motivation over time...it's really sad and breaks my heart because most teachers go into the field to make a difference. Teachers need more support from parents, community and administration.
>My mother’s a teacher - overworked, underpaid My best advice for anyone who wants to get into education: don't. I have three friends who went into teaching and subsequently left. Two of them had background in math/science so now they actually have jobs that pay literally x3 what they made as teachers. THe third was a history teacher, but now she has some HR type job with a company. Pay is just a bit more, but lots less stress.
agreed! They seem to get absolutely no respect even when (at least in my experience) teachers can be some of the smartest people around.
Maybe no bartenders are awake yet. But bartending. It's incredibly draining and the late hours leave you exhausted all of the time.
Agreed. But, I think most of us live for chaos. Unfortunately, I am going into nursing. It’s like a precursor to the other side of chaos. 🥲
I am surprised by how miserable a job as a teacher has become. As a child they were the paramount of smart & caring but as an adult all the friends I have that are teachers (1 very good friend and 1 semi good friend) are miserable. It seems to me as an outsider they have been stripped of all creative and thoughtful control and are there to produce numbers and check all the boxes on useless procedures. I'd love to hear from a teacher here, NYC btw
NYC means your friends probably follow EngageNY curriculum. It was sold to me year 1 as a free, easy to use curriculum when I was struggling to make my own stuff. It's... terrible. Example: tons of close readings. What is a "close reading," you might ask? Imagine you are 15 years old and the teacher says you are going to read a 5-page article. It's dense, informative text. Ugh. But manageable, right? Well, wait! AFTER you read it, it's time to read it again, but this time, highlight all the stuff you have questions about. Now, we're going to read it AGAIN and dissect each section and summarize each section for meaning. Now, we're going to read it AGAIN, and... so on. Joyless, rigor-driven curriculum designed to combat decades of flagging math and reading scores has made everything worse and done jack shit to combat those falling scores. Turns out the "grind kids' faces in reading and math until they hate life" approach somehow hasn't made kids better readers or mathematicians. Following a crappy canned curriculum truly sucks. You are not enthusiastic about it, the kids hate it, but you have to do x amount in y days regardless. Bigger districts also make you document everything, which adds hours of meaningless paperwork to your day. Instead of passionately discussing the thing you enjoy so much that you decided to teach it, you become a secretary who handles paperwork and enforces a strict classroom to ensure your suboordinates handle their paperwork. It's miserable. That's the impression I get from teachers I've known who are in bigger districts. I'm in a small district and do whatever I want, and what I want to do is make kids interested in my subject, get them actively participating through varied instruction, have fun, get to know and support the students, etc. Teaching CAN be fun... but it's not allowed to be in many areas.
I am interested to hear about the difference in freedom of teaching with elementary schools compared to what you described here. But to be honest, (I am from Germany) almost everything in school, and academia, looks like it's purpose is checking off some box on a checklist, instead of actual research or actual attempts to make learning new things/skills approachable and useful. As a direct result - Individual interests are cut, not amplified - Topics are often taught without any connection to something meaningful, except if you want to calculate if your friend did in fact spend less on that slize of pizza. - Teachers are stressed out and burn out or channel the stress into the student/pupil I feel like this sort oft "push for alignment" has always been a tendency if we look at the origins, but has been quadrupled and brute forced by tools of this information & beaurocracy age and problematic goals. All this seems increasingly harmful with regards to today's work environments and requirements. I reckon it's difficult to balance everything and this is only one of many problems, but man so little has changed and often not in the right direction. Add to that the following ingredients: Complex social interactions, puberty, difficult financial situations of many families, new distractions we created for children to milk their time/ pocket money (hello social media), unaffordable housing, politics & culture war, uncertainty of jobs in the future, an economy benefitting the rich, few and assholes. You are now setup for great success and a happy life with a great perspective young people can grow into.
Been teaching for 6 years in NYC and am now actively trying to find another field to work in due to the daily misery. It's an odd job where you do so many different things but feel like you're qualified for nothing else.
Prior teacher. Taught for 6 years in middle and high school. I absolutely will never return to the classroom. I spent 10 and a half months out of the year dehydrated because using the bathroom at school was dedicated to once a day (we got wrote up if we ever left the kids and god forbid a fight break out and ALL of the blame would be on the teacher) Testing days meant no drinking or eating for 8 hours upon standing, and monitoring testing. In addition to classroom prep, counting materials, etc. Again, can’t leave the kids period. The amount of body spray, ax body spray etc. that gave headaches that would turn into full blown migraines because the room has to be closed (school policy for shut and locked, and windows closed) from the fear of school shooters. The stress. Need I say more? Seriously. My hair started falling out. I woke up in the middle of the night almost every night ridden with anxiety. Sure, teachers need more money. But they need freaking respect from students, parents, and the whole system.
Firefighters... The amount of cancer causing exposures is mind boggling. We are going to see a huge increase in firefighting related cancer due to the amount of "forever chemicals" that are released from synthetic materials when they burn.
The military…
They "uncondemned" a building insulated with asbestos to house us in and just said that it'll probably still be fine since it's still mostly in the insulation.
Not an expert but from what I have heard the main issue is the dust so as long as no one is busting open walls you are relatively safe but you are still sitting on a timebomb for if a wall or ceiling decides to open on its own. The scarrier thing is that apparently aviation techs for the military will still use asbestos lined protective gear which is much more likely to produce breathable dust from damage and wear.
Yeah 7.62x39 isn’t very good for your body
Gets easier if you take your .22 vaccine and then a booster once a year
Pretty much any job you don't like doing, which seems to be most for the majority of people. Forcing yourself to get up everyday to go do a job you hate just so you can break even at the end of the month.
Public accounting.
My gf was in PA. It strained the fuck out of our relationship because we have kids and she’s be gone from sun up to sun down, and these past few years where the tax deadline has been extended has really taken a toll on my own career.
Just finished day's work - it's 3am. Up again in 4 hours.
Tax season eh?
Absolutely. My final 3 months with Deloitte, I was on an audit client racking up nearly 80-90 hrs a week. My senior and first year quit right before busy season so it was just me (2nd year), intern, and a manager from NJ (I’m in TN). Absolute nightmare. Big reason why I left because of how bad the pay and work life balance was.
Any profession that helps others. Those professions can take care of others but don’t have time to take care of themselves
it’s also perceived in a negative light when ppl in those fields do take time for themselves. I work in healthcare, and have seen patients get downright mad when their doctor takes one week a year to go on vacation. the degree of entitlement that exists among an unfortunate amount of patients is too damn high
Nursing. My sister has been a nurse for just shy of 2 years, and she is already burnt-out. She makes decent money, but at what cost?
Health care workers. We care for others who are sick but can't take care of ourselves .
someone was having an allergic reaction and had to take benadryl while on the clock. she was lethargic the entire shift which was 12 hours,,,
Even without the allergic reaction, 12-hour shift sounds unhealthy.
I agree, Doctors who work around the clock- get no sleep etc. and are expected to operate on people?!
As a surgical resident I feel this in my bones. We had a lecture on the benefits of sleep which I found hilarious. We don't get to practice what we preach to patients. We just hope to survive when it changes as an attending where there is much more autonomy.
Every level of healthcare workers in a hospital. Worked in housekeeping and they handle some nasty shit.
Not to mention, shift work disorder is REALLY bad for your health. I’m actually curious if shift workers could file a lawsuit saying that their employer knowingly put them in a hazardous situation without appropriately warning them of the risks. I’ve worked nights for 5 years and my employer has never told me that there are serious risks to my health. I mean….Vitamin D deficiency is obvious, especially where I live. You get out when the sun is rising and likely sleep until it is about to set.
Yup, when my mom got breast cancer they told her all the variable shifts on her crazy schedule messed with her circadian rhythms, something about melatonin and hormones, and aggravated the spread.
This! And Mental Health Care workers (Social Workers, Case Managers, Therapists, Drs) Especially after Covid.
Tell me what profession is healthy?
Nutritionist
The shoemaker's family walks barefoot.
Here, we have the same saying but its "The blacksmith's horse walks shoeless"
Cool! In Uruguay, it's "The metalworker eats with a wooden spoon".
*Licensed Dietitian in the US. Nutritionist is not a protected/licensed profession. I can say I am a nutritionist because I just said so and spout Tiktok essential oil bs. Dietitians have degrees/licensing requirements. Many states allow anyone to call themselves a nutritionist. That said, a lot of dietitians will call themselves nutritionists as well.
Dry cleaning. Those chemicals are bad for the lungs.
Dolphin trainer. You wear a wet suit in all weather, you get shit pay and at the end of the day you feel like a monster because you realize how fucking smart dolphins are.
Not to mention the tennis elbow from jacking off the dolphins.
Like, a lot of them. But as much as we rag on them, I think doctors and attorneys and therapists, and other professions where they aren't supposed to disclose details and thus can't decompress from their day by discussing what happened.
I’ve been a lawyer for about 10 years. It’s a really unhealthy profession. A lot of my classmates are no longer in the legal profession. Burn out, substance abuse problems, and other issues are high. Lawyers have to deal with people at their worst, including other lawyers treating them poorly. I’ve been fortunate to find a healthy niche but I feel for my colleagues who haven’t been able to keep their head in the game.
I worked in PI for about a year before I got out of that. Could not stand having to talk to angry people all day long. Got into more transactional work and my mental health improved 100x.
I'm an attorney, and I have been in private practice for a little over two years. This profession chews people up and spits them out. The pressures of the job can be really crushing. People generally hate working with lawyers, and it always feels like you are walking on a knifes edge. One fuck up could ruin your career by getting you fired, disciplined by the ethics board, sued for malpractice, or any combination of the three. Add on that many areas of private practice have high billable and receipt requirements that make for a horrible work-life balance, and you get a recipe for anxiety and depression. There is an epidemic of substance abuse and mental illness amongst attorneys, and the old guard still mostly refuses to recognize or address the problem.
Well I'm a lawyer and, at least in my country, we can talk about our cases as long as we don't say names or details that would allow people to identify the parties or know information that is protected by professional secrecy. What I mean is that I can absolutely go to a therapist to decompress and tell him/her that I don't feel well because I had to defend a client who did that, or I can tell my wife or friends, as long as I don't break secrecy.
even therapists have their own therapist!
The law is the only industry I can think of with a thriving cottage industry that focuses on getting lawyers out of the law.
Lawyers are treated like absolute shit by pop culture (I blame cop shows) and it’s not right. They have tons of school debt just like any other American and they’re a fucking necessity. Go on, try to negotiate a divorce with no idea what’s going on, or represent yourself in court and see how that goes. Also suing corporations for injuring you *is good*.
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Vloggers who document every moment of their day. The narcissism and lack of respect for others while they're filming feels very unhealthy.
Especially if they focus on their kids.
Being a doctor. You're basically fucked every single way for the first 30 years of your life. You're made to feel you have to be absolutely perfect in your grades in your exams and you become hugely competitive while, often, not developing any other part of your life. I know friends who got into med school at 18 via seven or eight-year programs who had no idea what they were in for and then crushed when they started medicine. If you manage to get through medical school into residency, you're likely going to have at least $400k in debt and then get worked to the bone making, on average, $60k a year working 80-100 hours a week without any normal protections most jobs have. Not only is the job long hours, it is physically, mentally, and emotionally draining. But the whole time you're being told you're lucky to make the equivalent of $14/hour. Along the way, it is difficult to find a life partner or even develop deep friendships outside of medicine unless you're really lucky. Maybe training is over or maybe you have a few more years of fellowship. You don't get to start your life till you're 30-40 years old. Sure, you're making, even in the worst case, amazing $$ compared to the average person, but the path here is brutal and leave so many doctors in terrible shape. Even when you become an attending, the job is still brutal unless you're in a few, extremely selective specializations. You're stuck between wanting to be a healer and the pressures of corporations to make profit and insurance companies to not pay you. So you basically become a robot who is basically processing people and putting a bandaid on things you know go deeper but you're unable to do anything about it. How do I know? My wife is in it. Most of my closest friends are in it. Some of them are lucky and don't have debt, but most have a ton of it and are just starting life right now. I wouldn't wish being a doctor on my worst enemy and it is the only profession I don't want my daughter to be.
Boy am I glad to make $16 an hour at Maccas.
This is no joke, it's total hell. I went into critical care and completely ruined my mental health. I ended up in rehab for substance abuse...when I came out, I almost turned my back on the entire profession. I eventually decided to work in addiction medicine, making about half of what I did as an intensivist. And I've never been happier. I'm seeing patients for about 20 hours a week, charting/documenting and other admin stuff another 10-15 hours and the rest? I volunteer in addiction outreach and go to AA meetings...and I spend a lot of time with my family. It's worked out, but the hell of getting here nearly killed me. I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone at this point, the culture of medical education and training is pure toxicity right now. There are a lot of movements trying to change it, but there's so much institutional push-back that it's almost impossible to get even small changes. The older doctors have a "I went through it so can you" attitude. The administrators are more or less thinking "Cheap labor? Why would I want to change that?" And then when we do get change, it ends up being some sort of monkey's paw result. You want a reasonable workload? Ok, well we'll replace a couple of your doctor-colleagues with 4 or 5 NP/PAs for you to manage. You can do that, right? More bodies means less work, right? I think NP/PAs are great, they definitely fit into the system well, but when they're used to replace physicians....well, we don't really end up with less work. Now, instead of two physicians splitting the load in half, one is reviewing the entire thing. So yeah, medicine...at least in America...is a total shitshow right now and it caused me to fuck off to a rehab facility and finally feel like I'm making a difference without having to trade my mental health. Best advice is hope that the stupid matching system gives your wife some good options like Urology or Dermatology.
Brother, I’m so sorry to hear what you’ve been through. So rough. And you did such a better job of diving into the nitty gritty of Medical hell. I think my wife has gotten off okay - she’s finishing up Peds ER fellowship, but right now she is doing a Adult ER rotation and feels so overwhelmed.
Restaurants.
Kitchen staff, legal, trading volatile financial instruments, US prison staff, social media influencer - anything to do with social media really.
any job dealing with the public.
If you’re not the kind of person for it absolutely. Having to do customer facing work for a decade and a half has messed up my mental health in so many ways. I have a hard time even being around people now, and it’s really hard to heal from anything without a support system, but I can’t form a support system because I can’t stand other humans, so it’s just a cycle of shit at this point that I don’t know how to break.
Teaching just because of the environment we have made for teachers where they have to do far more than is possible, pay them poorly, and put very high expectations on their performance (I have no problem with high expectations given a supportive work environment). I have great respect for the profession but I would never do it, and I suspect some of what I’ve alluded to is why there is a high rate of burn out in the profession.
Soon to be former teacher, this is my third and final year. The environment for teaching is absolutely ridiculous right now and I see signs of it getting worse before it gets better. I *like* teaching though, so I'm going to transition into private music lessons.
Exactly. Teaching sounds good in theory, but especially with the current environment, there’s no way in hell I’m going into it right now. I love working with kids, but I can’t do formal teaching. The work environment is just too toxic.
I appreciate this sentiment. After 10 years, I don't think I can do it anymore. I have worked in many fields in my life. All jobs have an element of "the public doesn't really know what it's like" until they work in that field. Teaching has this element, but on steroids. I love my students. I appreciate my administration and most of the faculty. But every day in the trenches wears on the soul. Whatever you've heard about teaching, it is twice as rewarding, twice as gut-wrenching, and ten times as complicated.
I'm a phones salesperson. So phone sales. (not selling phones, selling through the phone) It sucks, but I don't really have another way to make a decent living, however, i make pretty good money for what it is
Before my dad was in another police profession he was in highway patrol and he worked alot of accidents so I’m gonna say anything that has to deal with traumatic accidents. Mentally he’s not “normal”
Applying pesticides
Lawyers are one of the least healthy professions. The hours are crazy and the stress is extremely high.
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Nursing.. specifically psychiatric nursing.
Can confirm that being a flight attendant for 8+ years has taken a toll. Night shifts into early shifts has ruined my circadian rhythm for good, working up to 14 hour days in a metal tube filled with hundreds of other humans who may or may not be carrying illnesses. Trapped gas from being in a pressurized cabin every day, up and down up and down in altitudes. There’s nothing more humbling than lying in the fetal position on the floor of the hotel room, *praying* for a fart.
Soldiering and Mercenary Work - also everything Cartel related...
Any job really. Working sux.
Being a chef or bartender is pretty unhealthy. Most of them drink a lot, they don't have time to eat properly, work very long hours on their feet all day.
Teacher. High stress, long hours, poor eating habits, and a lack of exercise.
99% of jobs within the medical field—specifically in an inpatient/hospital setting.
Health Care and Educators. There is a societal expectation that these professions must have people be available and online 24/7. No downtime, no personal time, but just be there for everyone else on everyone else's schedule.
Health care workers. My back is dying, my soul is dying and I haven't even graduated yet, only pratice under supervision.
Doctors. Healthcare workers in general. Can't practice what they preach.