… is not teaching. Well, that’s my experience, but I understand everyone and every situation is unique. I have had the good fortune of always teaching in grammar schools (except when I was training). I’ve heard horror stories from colleagues about how stressful it can be working in other schools, managing poor behaviour, jumping though hoops with senior manager mandated strategies doomed to fail, all with no budget and no support. I’m aware of the privilege I’ve enjoyed, and I can only speak from my own experience.
Teaching is the least stressful job I’ve had. Admittedly, I’ve not had many jobs. As a child I did some photocopying for a solicitors’ office, did a paper round, then worked in the greengrocery section of a supermarket, then finally working on the tills and stacking shelves in the supermarket until I went to university. At university, I worked in a popular multinational fast food restaurant which I won’t name, because I could do without being sued. While studying in my first year of my first attempt at a PhD I worked as the Northwest Photonics Association liaison officer, and then my next job after my three years of doctoral research was when I became a teacher (first teaching at the university as a summer job after the teacher training, and then in a lovely leafy boys grammar school in Greater Manchester. Huh, that’s really not that many jobs, so I’ve absolutely no authority whatsoever to declare what the most stressful job in the world is.
But I’m going to anyway. In my experience, the most stressful job in the world was working as a shift manager at the popular multinational fast food restaurant famous for selling burgers and chips, whose logo and branding focuses heavily on a single letter of the alphabet found towards the middle. The bronze bridges, or something like that.
To become a shift manager there, I had to learn everything in the QRG (the quality reference guide). Everything. I had to pass an exam and attend a residential management training course in London for a week. To be fair, I still use some of the lessons learned on the various management courses I attended in my role of Head of Department in my school. I’ve been Head of Department for over ten years now.
So why was it so stressful? So many reasons. Firstly, as a full time physics student, there was a lot of university work to be done, but in order to pay my rent I had to work between 24 and 36 hours per week. It varied depending on need. Sometimes would work the Friday and Saturday night shifts, from 7pm until 7am (but usually until 8am because of colleagues turning up late). Due to labour costs, the store would run with as few staff as possible, which meant taking my one and only break in the 12-13 hour shift right near the beginning, within the first hour or two. That’s a long time to be stood over a hot grill. Forget about working time directives – we knew what we were entitled to but simply had no choice.
The worst night shifts I worked had just myself and one other colleague. I’m not convinced that is safe. Before the store started operating 24 hour opening times, I would have to work the closes on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights. I preferred working the opens on Saturdays and Sundays, but you would usually end up working later than expected. It was almost guaranteed that you would have to work later than expected because a colleague wouldn’t show up.
Whilst working, you’d be subjected to abuse from customers, some would throw things at you too. One customer once jumped on the front counter brandishing a screwdriver, which he threatened to stab me with. The reason? The milkshake machine had not been properly cleaned by the previous night’s closers, so it had conked out. People complain that the milkshakes are often unavailable, but if you’d ever had to clean one of the machines after other colleagues had lazily just ran water through them, you’d never drink milkshakes again. On another occasion, at 11:05pm (when we closed at 11pm) a customer drove around the drive through and demanded that we turn the vats back on to cook him some chicken nuggets. We initially refused, but he pulled out a handgun and pointed it at me, and we decided that, on balance, none of us were prepared to take a bullet for the company.
As a closing shift manager I would see the appalling behaviour of some of my fellow managers, who would shave time off other colleagues to reduce labour costs. As the closing manager, I’d see all the edits that had been done to the records of who clocked on and off, and when. Shift managers would shave off ten minutes here, fifteen minutes there, hoping that the colleagues wouldn’t notice, but it all added up to save the company money. Entirely illegal. Theft. What is worse, you would see a pattern – they would never shave time off their friends. I always refused to participate in this practice, and so I would frequently be criticised for the ‘high’ labour costs on my shifts. Consequently, fewer colleagues would be scheduled to work my shifts to make up the difference, and we would all suffer.
Time was such a valuable commodity, that basic hygiene would often be neglected. There were strict procedures for washing up, which involved scrubbing the equipment and utensils, rinsing them, sanitising them and leaving them to air dry. Despite these strict procedures, there wasn’t actually anywhere to leave the equipment to dry, and the person washing up was put under such pressure to go quickly that they would often simply spray off the food remnants and then put the equipment or utensils back into use.
The working environment was dangerous. The bottom platen of the grill was held at 177°C, and the top plate at 218°C. Meat was placed between these two platens to cook, and a hydraulic system would push the platens together so the meat would cook from both sides. When the top platen rose after the allotted time, it would be dripping with hot meat fat. The cook would have to put their hands into that space to remove the meat, with the hot fat dripping on their hands and arms. Then they would clean down the platens and repeat. My arms and hands are still scarred from the experience, and I haven’t worked there since 2010 (I had to go back and work there between my PhD and my PGCE). On one occasion, near the beginning of the shift, I slipped and fell. I stopped myself by putting my left hand on the grill surface (remember 177°C and covered in hot fat) and had to push against the grill surface to get back to my feet. I was holding a tray of burgers in my right hand and didn’t want to stop them. As it was near the beginning of my shift and I was the shift manager, I couldn’t leave. I tried to ring other managers for help and they did not pick up the phone. So, I taped a napkin to my burned hand and just got on with it, one handed. The next day I went to the hospital to get it properly dressed.
On one occasion in 2004, I was working a shift with just six colleagues. One taking orders on drive through, one giving them out, two working on the front counter taking orders, and me and the general manager in the kitchen. The restaurant was on the route to the football stadium in which Manchester United played. It was a match day. The shift was a blur. The general manager and I just did laps of the kitchen, doing multiple jobs simultaneously. It was seamless, but exhausting and incredibly dangerous.
On another occasion, we had a full field inspection. I worked 12 consecutive hours, and then when the inspector team left to go to our neighbouring restaurant the general manager put me in a taxi with a bag of food for the road (that was my break) and I worked another four hours there. They were also running at minimum staffing levels to save money, so needed the extra pair of hands while the inspectors were there.
The culture in the workplace was abominable. I saw bullying and prejudices of every kind. Laws broken left and right. Of course, not everyone joined in with the bullying or law breaking, but it was prevalent enough to be such a part of the culture of working there that it wasn’t questioned.
It was the most stressful job I’ve ever had. Physically demanding, whilst dealing with abuse from customers, and coping with the horrible conditions. Performance management pay rises would be issued one week before the national minimum wage would be increased each year to keep everyone on minimum wage. Everything about it was bad. In 2019 there was strike action over the pay and conditions faced by workers of this chain of restaurants. I fully supported those strikes and everyone else should too. It felt like slavery at the time.
Compared to that, teaching is a breeze. On my worst days in the classroom, when everything is going wrong, I remind myself of just how bad it was working in that restaurant and say to myself “it’s just burgers and chips.”
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