Columnist Susan Snyder: Stress at work is all mine

Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2002 | 8:35 a.m.

I am on the fast track to becoming a work-related nut case, according to the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology.

Yeah, there's a news flash.

But miners are loonier. On a scale of 0 to 10, the institute says, miners were most likely to suffer work-related stress with a rating of 8.3. Journalists ranked No. 6 with a rating of 7.5.

I have no idea what the numbers measure, nor do I know why this study came about. It slid into my e-mail last week via a colleague. The chart ranks 19 occupations based on stress potential. (U.S. Postal workers didn't make the list.)

Only ratings of 6 or higher counted. Since we're simply going to make fun of it anyway, good or bad science doesn't matter.

Personnel managers came in dead last with a rating of 6. It didn't say, however, what the stress rating is for a personnel manager working at a mine. I'm thinking that could be a chart-buster in Nevada, seeing as how our mines are laying off people like a billon-dollar casino after a terrorist attack.

Still, working in a mine would have to be stressful, even if you weren't worried about being laid off every other day. My 12-year-old nephew and I took a silver mine tour in Park City, Utah, a few years back. You could give me big bags of money, and I'd not take an elevator into a mine shaft again.

The elevator car was composed of five compartments stacked atop each other. They'd load about 10 people into a compartment, drop it into the shaft, then load the next compartment, and drop it a little deeper into the shaft.

We were in the first group, which meant we spent something like 100 years dangling in nearly complete darkness while they loaded the elevator above us. We wore hard hats, which the kid thought was cool until we dropped into the shaft.

"We're not scared, are we, Aunt Susie?" he asked in a voice that was barely audible.

No, we weren't scared. I was a textbook case-study in panic and terror. He was 12 and would decide whether he was afraid based on my facial expression. I used so many muscles to maintain a smile for the following two hours, that even the bottoms of my feet hurt afterward.

Police officers came in second on the University of Manchester's stressful-jobs list, followed by prison officers and construction workers. (Hey, you try finding a job site in a town where every new house is pink stucco and behind a wall.)

Being a musician (No. 15) is just slightly more stressful than being a firefighter (No. 16), the ratings show. And broadcasters are more likely to freak out than either of those two occupations. Broadcasters ranked 11th, which means there is one thing scarier than an empty house or a big fire:

A TelePrompTer with big words.

Airline pilots barely edged-out journalists for the No. 5 most-stressful spot. I figure their coffee is worse (as hard as that would be to accomplish). And their gun-toting crazies are, after all, harder to spot.

We don't have to metal-detector profile people to figure out who is dangerous. We just have to remember who was fired last.

I find it amazing that churning out this drivel is considered more stressful than being a dentist, a doctor or a teacher. Readers aren't even ranked.

And judging by some of my mail, reading this is much tougher.