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.

Yes, even though it’s still a fortnight away, my brain has already gone into ‘demob’ mode, and I am currently not giving a tinker’s cuss what happens at work. Wrong, I know, but that’s how it is when you’re anticipating your first break as just a couple in 22 years.

Don’t get me wrong; going on holiday with kids can be fun. Pontins and Centerparcs (sic) have much to offer, providing you have access to cheap plonk and a barbecue. However, as your kids get older, they want more and you (having brought them up, and being thus burned out) want less. If you can weather the years when they can’t go where they want to without your permission – which you are happy to give, even though it is tempered by the fact you have to pack for their week away in Wales – there comes the day when they are both (a) able and, (b) desperate to get away from you. The only thing you have to bear in mind is that the cat might be horribly sick during the one and only week in the last decade that both your kids are away at the same time…

There are several things I want from this holiday, and they are:

1. That I don’t catch something before I go away.

2. That I have sufficient sunscreen (in both quantity and strength).

3. That I have sufficent reading material.

4. That I don’t catch something whilst away.

5. That we have access to the WWW.

I include the last solely in case the kids need to get in touch with us in case of an emergency. I can live without Twitter and email and access to everything you could ever need to know about everything in return for 10 days and 11 nights of sun, sand and sauvignon.

It’s a school night, so this rant has to end here. I’ve had a glass or 2 of cab-sauv and am feeling (1) relaxed and, (2) that perhaps I drink too much. YMMV. Elijah has nearly downloaded, and I will be off to the Land of Nod very soon. Night all.

I started writing this at work, until I realised that if what I’d written was found, I’d probably be fired. Maybe that’s just paranoia, but I’d not believed that work could get more stressful or less satisfying… yet today it did.

I walked into the office at 8.35am, and it was already 27 deg C with no movement of air whatsoever. Also, my ‘phone was ringing. As it was an internal call – usually meaning that notes/scans are missing, or patients have turned up at the wrong time – I answered it. My line manager wanted to discuss the report I’d been working on for the previous week, and how the issues it raised could be addressed. I said I’d just arrived, had not even turned on the computer, and she said she’d call later.

At just after 9, she called again. We had a brief discussion about the report and I told her that her manager had been asking for it to be emailed to her so that she could look at it. In that it changes every half an hour or less, we’d agreed to save it on a shared drive so that it could be accessed by everyone who needed to review it.

Unfortunately, I’d not fully grasped what it might mean to give everyone access without protecting the document from cock-ups. Which meant that within 30 seconds, she’d overwritten the original report and lost a week’s work.

There is an intensity of anger which cannot be articulated. It is simply felt as a knot in your stomach. Every time you think about what has caused it, the knot tightens. Your skin flushes hot and cold, your hands tremble, and you begin to wonder if your heart is going to find its way to your throat and choke you.

It wasn’t even 9.15. I called my manager and asked her what had happened to the report – I had to be direct, lest I vent my spleen – and she said that someone was checking what had happened and was sorting it out.

I don’t remember much of what I did between then and about 11.20, when it became obvious that no-one was going to sort it out. Someone made me a cup of coffee, and I rearranged the piles of work on my desk so that it might be less intimidating. The former went cold and the latter failed.

A little later – and on the basis that there surely has to be a back-up – I emailed the IT department and asked them directly if they might be able to resurrect the spreadsheet as it existed at 9.03am, but I don’t hold out much hope, to be honest. I’ve watched too many episodes of The IT Crowd to believe that more than the smallest number of IT departments have the first fucking clue what they’re doing. We shall see.

And since when does going abroad for a year in 2 days time make you eligible for urgent medical treatment? If you’re that ill, the only place you should be going is bed. I felt a surge of absolute fury, not tempered by the fact that this wasn’t the first time it had happened.

I left work at 6.30pm. When I got home, I sang along to Stevie Wonder’s ‘I Am Singing’ (from Songs in the Key of Life, an awesome album) before hanging out some laundry and having a glass or several of wine. Of which there is some left and I am going to have some more.

I feel calmer now. With any luck, I will be able to deal with all the shit that hits tomorrow’s fan with a slightly reduced feeling of hysteria than I did today’s.

It’s amazing how the prospect of strangers turning up at your house makes you focus on the essentials. The landlord’s estate agent sent a couple round to view the house this afternoon, and within the space of 3 hours the house was tidier than it’s been for months. Not especially clean – bathroom and kitchen excepted – but just… well, just tidy.

They were here for maybe 10 minutes, and said the house was too small. If it was our house, it might be a problem. It’s not, so it’s not. We went out for lunch and did some essential (and some non-essential) shopping and came home via the route to the new house. There was a car in the drive, which we assumed was the landlord’s.

Otherwise, the move is proceeding smoothly. People have been contacted and details updated. I find it a little difficult to comprehend that this is the last weekend we will spend here. Next weekend we will be surrounded by boxes, wondering just where the hell we are going to put everything. We have replaced a loft and small cellar for 2 falling-down sheds, which will house some of it, but a certain Swedish furniture store will no doubt be the recipient of my hard-earned overtime in the shape of an ottoman or two. And then, if it all gets too much, I’ve got a choice of hiding places.

It’s music festival season – Glasto(nbury) being the main one, although there are hundreds of others all meant to cater for the bewildering variety of musical (and not so musical) tastes of those with enough disposable income to take a week off to attend – and I have to admit that I’ve not really hankered to go to one, even when I was devoid of enough responsibilty to do so. However, I sat on the edge of my daughter’s bed last night, hot and sweaty and with a head fuzzy from alcohol, and watched Muse – Devon’s finest export since a decent clotted cream tea – and envied the tens of thousands of hot, sweaty, fuzzyheaded people who were lucky enough to have tickets. They – Muse, not the crowd – were awesome.

My contribution to this summer’s musical landscape will be a raucous rendition of Land of Hope and Glory, celebrating/bemoaning* (*delete as applicable) England’s performance again Germany in the World Cup.

Amidst all the hype and hoo-ha surrounding the World Cup, it has largely gone unnoticed that the longest tennis match ever (not the only record smashed, if you’ll pardon the pun) has just finished at Wimbledon. I’ve been a tennis fan since Bjorn Borg’s first SW19 win in 1976 – although my interest waned somewhat after Andre Agassi retired – and, as one measure of how much has changed since then, I found myself this evening agreeing with John McEnroe.

Yesterday, as we watched Nicolas Mahut and John Isner walk leaden-footed and glassy eyed off Court 18, following the 2nd episode of their still unfinished 10 hour match, he remarked that, in his opinion, no footballer had the same incredible level of fitness. How right he was. These two grass-stained gladiators – neither of whom I’ve ever heard of – had been playing at 100% on the hottest day of the year so far, unable to get themselves substituted, fined (points, games, even the match, let alone money) if they wasted time writhing around on the grass “suffering” from an “injury”. True, they were both collared immediately post-match for some unnecessary chit-chat by a pasty interviewer, when they clearly wanted nothing more than an IV drip, an ice bath, followed by a Turkish massage. Well, maybe not the massage – they were in enough pain already.

Let’s face it, football is a game of 2 pretty short halves: 45 minutes of the occasional sprint, followed by a break for oranges/going to the loo/ducking hurled boots, followed (if you’re lucky or uninjured) by another 45 minutes of occasional sprinting. Maybe you get to take a free kick, maybe you even get to take a penalty. Chances are all you’ll actually do is stop the ball going out before passing it back to whichever goalie they’ve decided needs humiliating.

Just after 5pm this afternoon, I watched on the ward’s grainy portable as the umpire and players were given mementos (very British) of their 11 hour and 5 minute marathon, laughing out loud as I saw the numbers on the scoreboard. 70-68. Neither Isner nor Mahut looked in much better shape than they had last night, but it wasn’t much of a surprise that Isner won. You don’t need to be able to run very far when you’re serving well.

Nicolas Mahut will go to his next tournament £11,250 richer. That works out to just over £100 an hour. The Premier League’s Fernando Torres gets paid six times that for having 10 other people helping him get through a game less than 15% in duration.

After getting through to the 2nd round, a smiling John Isner said that more or less every part of his body hurt, and he’d lost all the skin on both his little toes. If, as seems likely, he loses his next match, he’ll net (sorry) £18,750 for his efforts. With that, he should just be able to afford 2 new knees.