Berberis' World

Saturday, 4th December 2010.

It’s difficult now, having unexpectedly seen ”My Boyfriend the War Hero’, to complain with any real justification about how awful my job is at the moment. (I say unexpectedly, as I just clicked on a link and it started playing… somehow it didn’t seem fair to not watch to the end). However, in that feeling guilty about how horrible others are having it is pointless (as well as a symptom of depression, for which I was signed off by my GP last week), and that nothing about young Vicky or Craig’s lives are changed by my feeling guilty, I am going to complain anyway.

Once upon a time, the work of my department was done by three people; two in the office, the third a gopher. Rationalisation eliminated the post of gopher, and then there were two. When I started this job 3 years ago, it seemed as though I would never get to grips with the seemingly endless permutation of clinic codes and theatre lists and procedures. Eventually, though, I did, and work was good. For a while.

Since those heady days, however, the workload has increased to the point that a third member of the team is, once again, essential. Despite numerous requests, this need has not been properly fulfilled by the upper echelons of management, which leaves the two permanent staff members struggling with the workload. And it’s not as though it’s more of the same; a fairly straightforward job is becoming increasingly difficult following the introduction of an increasing number of restrictive and inflexible guidelines.

We’ve coped… until now. If one of us was due to go on holiday, the work was prioritised for the duration; what needed to be done was done, what could wait, waited. The one left holding the baby juggled two constantly ringing telephones, random googlies thrown by both staff and patients, as well as the day to day routine. 45 or 50 hour weeks weren’t unusual.

This pared-to-the-bone staffing method does not work (pardon the pun) in a crisis situation. If one person is off – both unexpectedly and long-term – the one left has no chance. Since the beginning of November, that ‘one’ has been me. I have worked both above and beyond but, with the best will in the world, you can only put an individual under so much pressure before they crack.

And, on 22 November, I cracked. After three weeks of not knowing when (or if) my colleague would return to work following an unexpected bereavement, I dragged myself to a rehearsal of Faure’s Requiem at the Indian YMCA. It finished earlier than planned (it’s a fairly short piece, so I might reasonably have expected it to do so) and I was left to pace around outside the building for 15 minutes or so until my other half arrived.

In that 15 minutes, as I tried to figure out how I was going to manage the week’s workload, my mood plummeted as I realised I couldn’t. Following numerous sleepless nights I was exhausted, both mentally and physically, and simply couldn’t put anything into perspective. Everything seemed massive and insurmountable and hopeless. I started crying – and I couldn’t stop. I was whisked to the GP the morning after to be signed off for a week with work related stress and depression.

I can’t recall a time (recently) when I’ve done so little. I managed to catch up on my OU studies, sleep a lot and generally relaxed. I felt capable of dealing with work again.

Shame, then, that this feeling has only lasted until today. It looks like I’ll be the only permanent staff in the office until January. A meeting is scheduled for Monday to determine how best to deal with the workload in the absence of my colleague. I can make a list of ‘what I do that can be done by others’ which might help to reduce the pressure, but no-one can replace someone who knows what they’re doing except someone who knows what they’re doing. And there is, currently, no-one.

I don’t know how much longer I am expected to manage. January seems a long way away, and I have other commitments. I have a life outside of work. Or I thought I did. What sympathy I had is rapidly being eroded by what appears to be an abuse of my goodwill. My husband blames my late mother’s work ethic – she would have worked until she died, had the NHS not made her retire at 65 – and says that it’s not my problem. I can’t seem to make him understand that there are problems at work which are my problems simply because nobody else is there to deal with them. I know he is worried for my health – with some justification – but I’m a grown up and I have to learn to say ‘no’ in the same disinterested tone of voice that everyone else seems to use.

Right now, I’m tired and fed up and pissed off. I vacillate between being completely apathetic and really angry. I know that a lot of people have a much worse time at work. I realise that by even having a job I am better off than many. There are people who would be happy to do my job if I was to decide I’d had enough. That’s not the point, though. I do what I do well; external factors make it difficult. The problems is the internal factors. That-which-dare-not-speak-its-name – work-related stress – threatens to derail any tidy plan management can concoct.

Public sector workers are not always looked upon with sympathy; we are seen by some as under-worked and over-paid. But public sector workers can be disciplined. They can be sacked. If you’re working like stink and end up getting signed off because you simply can’t function, you could end up being fired. Whereas, if you’re off for weeks on end, you’re more or less left alone.

Cultivating a more positive mental attitude might help. Hmm. I’m going to read that sentence again and try to work out what’s wrong with it. As long as I do that before Monday – I’ll be too busy otherwise.