Impatient Idealist

Since he was a meter reader for the local gas utility, it wasn't a stressful job from my childhood perception for a long time. He'd go in at about 5:30am and be done with his route by 11:00am at the latest. But in the last few years they made a lot of major changes (finally providing portable computers rather than punch cards, increasing route sizes massively, adding lots more paperwork, changes in management, etc.) that I could tell were getting to him. So work stress might not have been the initial cause, but relieving what had built up I think helped.