`When you tell people you are dealing with trillions of dollars every day, releasing payments to Switzerland, London, New York - people think it's a really glamorous, exciting job. From my side of the computer though, anything but this looks glamorous . . . It's tiring, stressful, depressing. I'd do anything to get out of it, but where do you start?"
Simon (25) would prefer that his real name is not used in this article. He's afraid that to do otherwise might jeopardise his stressful, tiring and depressing job. The supervisor of foreign payment transactions in the Dublin office of a European bank, he is one of a new generation of highly qualified workers on the lower rungs of a career ladder in the booming financial services sector.
He's young, ambitious and, if we are to believe all we hear about our Celtic Tiger cubs, having it all. But contrary to many a 40-something's belief, it's not all fast cars and wine bars.
Simon would sooner identify with a British report released in the past fortnight, which found nearly two-thirds of young people feel under such pressure to be a "success" that their career and qualifications take precedence over their family and friends. The survey, carried out by market researchers ORC International, also found that those who admitted feeling under pressure are twice as likely to skip meals. Fifty per cent who feel pressurised are likely to smoke excessively. Young women (51 per cent), it continues, are more likely than young men to sacrifice a healthy lifestyle on the altar of success, by failing to exercise or eat properly. Daisy Cummins (25) all too often sees meals skipped, early starts and a working environment where success can mean putting one's personal life on the backburner. She works in another young and happening world - the film industry.
Now a second assistant director, she has worked on Saving Private Ryan, Ballykissangel and has just come back from a major American movie set in Asia. "On average you'd be starting work at 5.30 a.m. - to get the light - and wrapping at about 7.30 p.m. There'd be paperwork afterwards and you'd get home at 9 p.m. You don't really have a social life. It's straight home and straight to bed, though now and again you'd have a drink with the crew. It's a six-day week, so on your one day off you're probably catching up with laundry and cleaning."
Though she loves the job and admits the travel is exciting, the insecurity of the work - the majority of assistant directors are freelance - means that when she does finish a job and finally get a decent night's sleep, she's immediately worrying about where the next pay packet is coming from. "You just have to grab work when it comes."
Though the opportunities open to young people are undoubtedly more exciting than 10 years ago, the competition for them is intense. With an increase in third-level enrolments - from 86,000 in 1993/94 to 104,000 in 1997/98 - has come the most highly educated cohort of people in their twenties this State has seen. Added to that, the nature of work is, according to the ICTU, increasingly contract, fixed-term and non-unionised. A human resources consultant with the Dublin-based Penna Consultants, Hilary Maher says the situation may be somewhat different in Ireland than Britain, with employees here in a stronger position to set their conditions.
"The problem here is more about keeping people in employment," she says. And, indeed, a recent survey of seven countries' lifestyles, carried out for Irish Distillers, showed the Irish were "the most laid back". The Irish found three to five hours a day to relax, it said. However, it also found that in Ireland young adults between the ages of 25 and 34 are the most rushed. The young person's workplace is more exciting maybe, but it's also a more precarious, tougher place to be.
Mick Molloy (28) works in that profession glamourised by the proliferation of TV dramas such as ER and Casualty - emergency medicine. Though currently working in research, up to recently he was working 80 to 90 hours a week in the emergency department at St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin.
"Working those hours involves you typically going from a 10-hour day, into a night shift and on into another 10-hour day. In some specialties you can be on-call from Friday morning until Monday night."
The immediate effect on one's health - when working long hours with little free time and few opportunities to shop, to sit and rest - comes as a result of bad habits the junior doctor inevitably gets into, he says. "I'd snack-eat and eat the wrong foods at the wrong times. You get run down and actually tend to put on weight - drinking sugary coffee to stay awake."
He says wolfing down high-fat foods means not having time to let it register with the appetite, and so there's a danger of eating too much. He also says that the lack of restorative sleep throws out the circadian rhythms, which control hormone patterns. This can lead to appetite problems, depression and even infertility. "People get very depressed. The stress can bring out conditions which might not otherwise come out. I've seen bi-polar depression and even schizophrenia."
The hours, coupled with the fact that doctors tend to be moved around from hospital to hospital, make for loneliness and difficulties sustaining relationships, he adds.
In her work too, says Daisy, it would be "very difficult to have a family". One goes from being unemployed to being away from home 14 hours a day. "There's no such thing as maternity leave or holiday pay. You could only do it if you had a very flexible partner. I know so many people whose relationships have broken up."
Simon says his girlfriend "is not very happy with [him]. I hardly see her." Though he hopes to finish by 6 p.m., Simon has been in work some nights until midnight or later, and there's no overtime pay. He calculates he did about £6,000 worth of overtime last year. Added to that, he doesn't take a lunch-break out of the office - "it wouldn't be worth the dirty looks", particularly with deadlines creeping up throughout the day.
"The Swiss payments have to be out by 10, the euros and sterling by three, and the dollars before the end of the day. You're constantly worrying and rushing. I had to go to the doctor recently because I had a viral infection. He said I was worrying myself sick. You see it in the office - people with red, stressed faces, overweight, high blood pressure." His office is full of young people, ranging in age from 22 to 38. Like Mick, in another traditional profession Ronan Munroe (27) is under some pressure. The third-year barrister's working day begins at 8.30 a.m. and finishes anywhere between 5 p.m and 10 p.m. "For the last two weeks I was `going like the donkey'. The work can get split up, which has you running from court to court, but you try and avoid that."
Ronan says he learnt quickly to break down his work into the manageable. "After the first year I made a rule that I don't bring any paperwork home. If necessary there's a section of the Law Library which stays open 24 hours, and I go there. You have to arrange time off because you could end up working six or even seven days a week. And no one would comment on that. It can become almost expected." Hilary Maher feels much of the pressure on young people is "self-imposed". Young people, she says, are probably more susceptible to the pressure to measure "success" as they feel their colleagues do. "Particularly for younger people, if they are working on a contract basis, or are freelance, there's huge pressure to perform and it's harder to stand out and stick up for yourself. They may also be just less aware that they do have a choice. It's a matter of prioritising, asking `do I really want a huge salary and no personal life?' "
As for Simon, he has been trying to move to another job. In the past month he had two interviews set up. "But I couldn't get to them. Finding someone to cover me over the two hours - well, it was impossible."