Dubious rankings: No way Columbus more stressful than New Orleans

While in New Orleans this week, I saw something on my phone that made me laugh.

I try not to look at my phone on vacation, but in the Big Easy it did keep me from making serious errors such as strolling into a dangerous neighborhood or not knowing what I wanted on my po-boy when I stepped up to the counter to order.

Anyway, at some point I noticed I’d gotten an email from WalletHub, a financial website that likes to rank cities for all sorts of things. On this day, it had ranked Columbus as the seventh most stressed city in America.

New Orleans was No. 8.

I showed this to Bess and we laughed.

At least we’d picked a vacation spot slightly more relaxing than Columbus.

We kept walking down the street, careful not to step in something.

“What criteria did they use?” Bess asked.

Good question. I consulted my phone again and learned that WalletHub had ranked 150 U.S. cities according to four kinds of stress — work-related, money-related, family-related and health-/safety-related — and how the people in those cities coped with this stress.

According to the sub-rankings, Columbus has the most work-related stress in America. That must have something to do with Fort Benning, because the city with the second-most work-related stress was Fayetteville, N.C., home of Fort Bragg and the 82^nd Airborne.

Meanwhile, New Orleans ranked No. 23 for work-related stress.

As I shared this information with Bess, we walked past three people holding cardboard signs. Apparently, it’s hard to have work-related stress when you’re not working.

The Big Easy did rank higher than Columbus for money-related stress, which made sense to us because apparently nobody there had money and everybody needed some of ours.

But overall, Columbus was still a more stressful place?

We laughed again. No way.

New Orleans has more crime, traffic and shady characters. The concierge at our hotel said she hoped it would rain so the streets wouldn’t smell so bad.

It was hotter than Columbus too, or at least more humid. Folks were using washcloths instead of handkerchiefs.

That’s not to say we didn’t have a great time.

It was off-season precisely because it’s so hot down there right now, which for us translated into a nice hotel room in the French Quarter, primo dinner reservations, plenty of room on ferries and streetcars, and short lines for everything from beignets to hurricanes.

We can handle the heat. We’re from Georgia, right?

We took the ferry out to Algiers and walked around on the point. We hopped the St. Charles streetcar to the Garden District so Bess could explain to me the difference between Doric and Ionic and Corinthian columns. The sculpture garden at the New Orleans Museum of Art was a great way to spend part of a morning, and the Morning Call Coffee Stand outside the gate was every bit as good as Café Du Monde. (We know because we tried them both.)

Some of the best things we ate: Charbroiled oysters at Drago’s, turtle soup at Commander’s Palace, the debris po-boy at Mother’s.

Oh, and the muffuletta from Central Grocery just might be the most delicious sandwich in the world.

We went two straight nights to Preservation Hall because there was a different band every time — slow jazz the first night, then Dixieland with a banjo the second.

Good times.

But when I got home to Columbus, I was glad to be there.

I sat on the back porch and listened to the crickets, and I could feel my stress level drop just a notch.

Put that in your computer, WalletHub.

This story was originally published July 22, 2016 at 4:09 PM with the headline "Dubious rankings: No way Columbus more stressful than New Orleans."