A Theory of Sandwiches & Pressure Cookers

Albert Grimm

Are you stressed yet, with spring rapidly approaching? Will you feel guilty whenever you enjoy your work during the busy season because that means you might not be busy enough? Will it torment you if you have any energy leftover by the end of May because you think you might not have worked as hard as you could have?

I used to be like that. I was never satisfied with my work unless I suffered from severe job stress. (I purposefully chose the word “suffer.”) Every busy season, I dug myself in a hole and then it took the rest of the year to crawl back out. Then it gradually began to dawn on me that I wasn’t alone and that most other greenhouse growers in my acquaintance were affected by the same severe job stress. Many of my former colleagues were either getting ill or at least very ill-tempered. Many of the best simply gave up and found themselves a job in an environment that was less hostile to their nerves.

Why are so many greenhouse growers suffering from so much stress? To answer this question, I’ve developed my sandwich theory: Greenhouse growers are continuously sandwiched between opposite interests—between the owners (or the bank) and our staff; between the demands of our customers and the limitations that nature has put on our crops; between the fact that everybody else has an opinion about how we should do our jobs and science, which says things are rarely as simplistic as they appear.

Most successful greenhouse growers in my acquaintance are Type One personalities. Most of us are nitpicking perfectionists, with a sense of bloody-minded self-discipline and a tendency for unjustified anxiety. I’d even say that a healthy measure of paranoia is something of a requirement in our business. Plants grow very happily without our help, so our job has really little to do with “growing plants.” Rather, we keep ourselves busy with preventing all the various little disasters that might afflict greenhouse production. Success doesn’t depend on doing everything right, but on preventing anything from going wrong. For a grower, the workday often feels like running a daycare center in a china store. Unless we’re worriers by nature, we might not take anticipated problems serious enough to prevent them from happening.

Then we place our predisposed personalities into the greenhouse sandwich and we turn on the pressure cooker of spring production, and before we know it, we cultivate anxiety. Inevitably, just when we think we made it through spring, something blindsides us at the last minute and blemishes our perfect crop. At that moment, we begin to doubt our own ability and we go into a tailspin of frustration and disappointment. This is happening at the same time as fatigue from a long growing season that’s taking its toll.

It’s not a healthy place. Neither does it serve any purpose to be there. It doesn’t help the grower, who might simply lose any enthusiasm for the job. It doesn’t help the business, because maintaining excessive “busy-ness” to the point of burnout kills our efficiency at work. Lastly, it doesn’t help our industry in solving the shortage of skilled growers we’re facing, because we’re burning through highly qualified people faster than we can train them.

If you’re like me, and if this resonates with you, you need to learn how to cope with this pressure. I’m taking the liberty to share some suggestions, which worked for me:

• Get a life coach. I’m serious. It took me more than 20 years of suffering before I tried. I learned that coaching works and I regret not having tried it earlier.

• Get to know the symptoms and sequence of burnout. Take them seriously. If you do experience a burnout, get help. In the past, naturopaths have provided me with valuable help and advice.

• Get a hobby. Something silly that you don’t have to take seriously. Something that allows you to become acquainted with the sweet taste of voluntary disorganization and purposeful imperfection.

• Lastly, get a grip on your ego. Learn how to take yourself less seriously. Read Eckhart Tolle, if you have to. GT

Albert Grimm is head grower for Jeffery’s Greenhouses in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada.

Editor’s note: Eckhart Tolle is a German-born Canadian resident, best known as the author of the “The Power of Now” and “A New Earth,” which were written in English. In 2011, he was listed by the Watkins Review as the most spiritually influential person in the world. In 2008, a "New York Times" writer called Tolle “the most popular spiritual author in the United States.”