Restaurant kitchen manager
- Median pay: $38,483
- % who say their job is stressful: 91.9%
Restaurant managers have to be on top of their game all of the time. They have to make sure the food quality is good, that it reaches customers quickly and that the restaurant runs profitably.
They also have to deal with inspectors: Leave the salami out by the slicer for a few minutes; let a line cook push his glasses back without washing his hands afterward and points come off the score.
For hours, you're barely thinking, just rushing to get things done, says Karl Shewry, who runs the kitchen at Castaways, a steak and seafood restaurant in Fayetteville, Tenn.
"I work about 60 hours in a six-day week, almost all of it on my feet and in constant motion," he said. "Once a week, you ask yourself, why you do it."
Not for the money.
"It's low wage for the workers, as well as the managers," he said. "They pass these jobs out to anyone with half a brain and you have to have half a brain to take one."
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Methodology: Starting from a database of more than 9,000 jobs, PayScale used data from over 120,000 respondents who rated their jobs for quality of life factors. The 15 were selected based on the national median pay for workers with at least five or seven years' experience and the percent of workers surveyed who said their jobs were "fairly stressful" or "extremely stressful." Only one job per "job family" was included. PayScale conducted the survey between August 2011 and August 2013.
