If I Had Your Job...

On the bus into work the other morning, one of my weird tendencies reared it's odd little head and spent the journey niggling away at me.

For some reason, I often get overly interested in other people's jobs. I don't mean that I'm curious and desperate to know about all the ins and outs but rather I get strangely empathetic towards those that I perceive as having stressful careers. So, for example, on the bus that day, as the typically frantic mid-morning traffic piled up around us, my thoughts and prayers were with the poor beleaguered bus driver.

How will he cope with this? What if there's an accident? How will he manoeuvre the bus around those roadworks? These and many other inane questions filled my head.

So the result being that I find myself getting stressed on the behalf of the person who I think will be getting stressed at that very point. In reality this morning is surely like every other one to the driver. He could probably steam on through the rush hour in his sleep. But as every customer with a defective Oyster card boards, I find myself unable to sit back and relax.

I don't know why this happens. I wouldn't classify myself as a bleeding heart. I don't give money to charities or homeless people or watch Oxfam adverts without switching the channel but I do find myself feeling sympathy for people in situations that I would find insurmountably nerve-wracking.

I'm sure if I was around environments which contained actual, proper stress I would probably faint. Imagine shadowing a doctor or a fireman. The internal empathy would be too much. It's a nightmare of mine to be in one of those 80's 'switching bodies' comedies like Vice Versa or Like Father, Like Son. What if I suddenly woke up as the bus driver? How many people would die that day?

What does all this say about me? On the surface it might make me sound like a heartfelt, thoughtful guy but in reality all of these fears are centred around how I would react and how I would find it stressful. Not once have I ever spoken out to a stressed out barman and asked him if he's okay. I'm far too busy worrying about how I would deal with making a mojito when I've just run out of mint...