dude....for the entire year of 2004 I was working 80hr+ workweeks.

Before that 65hr weeks were the norm, for about 4 years.

Now I'm grateful I have about 45.

Being overworked is part of it...it's not the hours, it's the sheer amount of crap they want you to do...when you have to work at a breakneck speed without a single slip-up, that's incredibly stressful. Heck in my 45 hours, I have to do the work of an entire production line by myself....but that was still better than the 80 hours where I had to do the work of that production line, and my manager, and the materials dept, and to top it off tell everyone else in the dept how to do their jobs (I worked with basically the most incompetant group of people I have seen ever), to sum it up I was literally doing the work of 10......I only ate when I got home, right before going to sleep....I never had breaks at work, nothing.

Needless to say that year I was pulling 80, I was very easily angered.

This is part two....bull----. People have too much bull---- in their lives. Politics is a huge part of this, but the other side is people do/buy things they don't need to that end up becoming a burden. Trying to live beyond one's means is a quick way to get stressed out. The other is trying to please the unpleasable...if one's boss is incapable of being pleased, or is just outright stupid, then the problem of the manager is to be dealt with, and not worry so much on the unrealistic expectations. Oddly people just play into the politics game and become stressed as hell.

Then you have c---blocking at work....such as you need a certain piece of equipment to get your job done...you know they have one, and nobody isusing it....but they still won't let you use it, so you have to make do. In this case, I was lifting 150lbs by myself without a back support. I evntually just decided "it's not going to ship...you c---block me, I c---block you...reciprocity is in full effect, you threaten me, and I'll pull a trump card (it's called OSHA...learn to deal with it)"

The final part is venting stress....people in general suck at stress relief...people are too lazy to vent, and are often too closed-minded to find a alternate means to vent other than going off on people. So they just hold it in until they blow their top.


Basically I do think a majority of the stress is work-related....in general I found people at work to be very pettey, superficial, and backstabbing. This also leads to me being very weary of people there. I usually treat a person i don't know who works in the same place as me worse than I would a stranger on the street, as I have no clue what workplace cloak and dagger bull---- they are cooking up.

I for one know even at this place, my stress level is unreasonably high, but it's the lowest it's been in years....this also leads me to think that maybe we have been under so much stress for so long that maybe, we don't know how to not be under stress anymore....and that scares me.