Clerical and secretarial workers completed an openended questionnaire in which they recorded stressful jobrelated incidents. This information was used to construct a behavioral stress scale and coping behaviors inventory. Another group of clerical and secretarial workers (N=282) rated these Incidents according to their perceived stressfulness and categorizéd concomitant coping behaviors. They also listed the occurrence of specific psychosomatic illnesses and filled out a widely-used measure of occupational stress. Factor analytic results suggest that clerical and secretarial workers consider instances of role conflict and interpersonal problems to be the most important job-related stressors. The'average respondent is a moderately stressed woman who employs a range of both action-oriented and cognitive-oriented behaviors, with the cognitive-oriented behaviors predominating slightly. However, as the level of perceived occupational stress increases, the use of action-oriented behaviors rises in this group.