I was one that freaked out over word problems! I just had a mental block with them. I could not understand them no matter how much even my parents tried to help me. I had no problem with regular math, multiplication/division/fractions, but give me a word problem and it made no sense to me.

Obviously, I never took upper division math because back then in high school, I was on a business track, not college track, and it wasn't required. We used old fashioned calculators, big ones, with multiple rows of buttons to do our math. Even at my first job in the accounting department of Pacific Telephone, I used a comptometer or a huge tabulating machine to balance debits and credits, etc.

And I don't think not learning or knowing algebra or geometry, etc. affected me in any way in my daily life or even in my other employments.