From Wall Street to Control Tower

There are other jobs you could characterize as stressful, too, such as food safety managers who have to worry about food-borne illnesses. Probably most corporate jobs are stressful today. It seems that everyone is asked to do the work of three people and those who haven't been laid off are wondering if they're next.

Jobs involving people's health or safety can add a whole other level of stress if you let them. Most of these jobs, however, have some downtime.We're busy every single minute we're actually working.

I've been an air traffic controller at Kennedy International Airport for 20 years. Most people would call this job high-stress, but I thrive on it. You either love this type of job or you quit, or you never get into it in the first place.

It takes a certain kind of person to do this job - you can't mind shift work. The schedule changes all the time. Some people would have a hard time with that. You work a lot of holidays, so you have to have a spouse and children who understand. Air traffic controllers are responsible for thousands of lives. People expect to arrive at their destination safely and After I was hired, I was sent to Oklahoma City for what I thought was training. The first day, one of the speakers told the group that 70 percent of us wouldn't be successful in the program, and he was right. They culled a lot of the 400 or 500 trainees in the first two months.

Some jobs in the control tower are more stressful than others. We rotate responsibilities. Some of us direct planes taxiing from a terminal to a runway, or from a runway to a terminal, and others determine the routes that planes will fly.

In one hour, some of us may direct 100 planes taking off and landing. We're supposed to keep them three, four or five miles apart when they're in the air, depending on the size of the aircraft. They're not supposed to be as close as 2.9 miles, or as far apart as 6. There is no gray area; everything is black and white.

While we're working, we're "in the zone." We work for two hours and then take a break. It's mandatory. I don't care how good someone is, after directing busy traffic for awhile, you need to decompress. At the end of those two hours, you know you've done a good job if the planes assigned to you were within the limits. I like that instant feedback.

In some jobs, even some high-stress ones, people can probably go out for a few drinks at night and go to work the next morning a little fuzzy-headed. They can still perform their job, although maybe not so well. They might be able to get away with it, but we can't. I would never go to work like that.And if we showed up at work inebriated or on drugs, we would lose our jobs.

According to the US Department of Labor, "Employment of air traffic controllers is projected to grow by 13 percent from 2008 to 2018, which is about as fast as the average for all occupations. Increasing air traffic will require more controllers to handle the additional work. Job growth, however, is not expected to keep pace with the increasing number of aircraft flying due to advances in technology. Air traffic controllers earn relatively high pay and have good benefits. Median annual wages of air traffic controllers in May 2008 were $111,870. The middle 50 percent earned between $71,050 and $143,780."

As a group, I'd say controllers have a low tolerance for ineptitude. We try to work at 110 percent efficiency. Everything we do involves saving time while paying attention to detail, so if a few of us go out for a bite to eat and the service is slow, we're extremely annoyed. When I leave work, I have to turn that off. I can't expect my 7-year-old twins and my 10-year-old to be at peak performance the way I am at work.

I leave work at work when my shift is over. I don't know how; I just do it. Maybe some employees run, or work out or vegetate in front the TV to wind down.

Source: NY Times, Stephen Abraham, 3/19/10