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I am so pissed off with my workplace.

My seniors are all working from home for the most part.  I am considered CEV and in northern ireland, currently, the restrictions mean that CEV patients are advised not to be in the workplace. All of my (current) post involves computer stuff, that could easily be done at home. I have worked for the NHS, in that very department, for nearly sixteen years, and they are refusing to let me do any work from home.  I am being fully paid, thankfully, but i am super frustrated that im not allowed to do anything. 

I've been very tempted to get the union involved but then its like, saying it and doing it, i would be rocking the boat big style... when i could just be quiet and take my full pay to sit at home.  Pick your battles and all that?

(I sure as hell got a bigger battle coming, I have voice damage and im currently on limited duties, i suspect that wont be forever and theyll try to have me fired.)

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18 hours ago, Raining_again said:

I am so pissed off with my workplace.

My seniors are all working from home for the most part.  I am considered CEV and in northern ireland, currently, the restrictions mean that CEV patients are advised not to be in the workplace. All of my (current) post involves computer stuff, that could easily be done at home. I have worked for the NHS, in that very department, for nearly sixteen years, and they are refusing to let me do any work from home.  I am being fully paid, thankfully, but i am super frustrated that im not allowed to do anything. 

It's amazing how many companies pre-pandemic said people couldn't work from home until this time last year... even more amazing is NHS saying you cannot, they're practically making loads do it here. 

 

Selfish update: didn't get the other job, which wasn't a massive letdown, but the feedback I got was, apart from the usual "we had other strong candidates", to brush up on the values of NUH and make more examples relevant to NHS jobs, which all but one of my examples were. Think I dodged a bullet there.

Had original whispers that other PAs for our department would be moving over to the office I'm in, which turned out to be incorrect, but because a different division has taken our department back, we're being feng sui'd into a corner and bordered off from the rest, and losing our agency support. So until they hire more (which is apparently happening eventually) we'll have something like 5x5m space away from everyone else, which will mostly contain me as the other ladies from home / whatever drama may happen with schools and messes their kids around. 

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4 hours ago, EEVILMURRAY said:

It's amazing how many companies pre-pandemic said people couldn't work from home until this time last year... even more amazing is NHS saying you cannot, they're practically making loads do it here. 

 

Selfish update: didn't get the other job, which wasn't a massive letdown, but the feedback I got was, apart from the usual "we had other strong candidates", to brush up on the values of NUH and make more examples relevant to NHS jobs, which all but one of my examples were. Think I dodged a bullet there.

Had original whispers that other PAs for our department would be moving over to the office I'm in, which turned out to be incorrect, but because a different division has taken our department back, we're being feng sui'd into a corner and bordered off from the rest, and losing our agency support. So until they hire more (which is apparently happening eventually) we'll have something like 5x5m space away from everyone else, which will mostly contain me as the other ladies from home / whatever drama may happen with schools and messes their kids around. 

Seems to depend ENTIRELY on who your manager is. each dept is so different.  Our service lead and her dept are treated fairly and we as the call centre are treated like absolute shit and thats a very common practice within admin nhs.  you are introduced as your pay band before your name.  I'm a mere band 3 not deserving of the "luxury" of working from home.

It makes absolutely no financial sense to have paid me full pay for going on 6+ months now when i could have actually been doing things.  My immediate boss is now off on what seems to be relatively long term sick (its been a month now) and i guarantee the fact im not there carrying a lot of his work is a factor.

Sounds a bit like that post you applied for had someone already doing it as a temp or someone they knew that they had in mind for the position.  Have seen it soooooooooooo many times in my 16 years in the nhs honestly.  They have to go out and do all the interview process for legal fairness, yet they know exactly who they want and someone who isnt in the panel preps them for the interview.  Actually its unusual for that NOT to be the case.  More often than not you get in by agency and prove yourself worthy then you apply for a post (as i did in 2007)

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Imagine having a pandemic and they don't want to ensure everyone who can work, is working. Honestly this whole "can't work from home" bullshit drives me mad. We've all proven it for a year now.

Work has been a wild ride for me. I'm in a new title and fairly senior position and its been tough. This team are fantastic, the whole lot of them, its been fun to connect and really enjoy the work I'm doing. But (and there's always a but) I hit a really rocky patch this week with a comment from a team member and man it really hurt. The TL;DR of that comment is that it came from someone who has no filter and whilst the underlying feedback is good feedback, the way in which it was presented wasn't really warranted and ultimately I hadn't done anything to deserve it being presented in that way.

I know I'm not the best senior person around just yet (and I'm the only one with my title ever on this team so far), so I'm bound to need a little more direction and feedback...just not like that eh? 

I'm trying to keep it vague because it was sorted and I didn't need to worry so much after talking to my colleagues/managers. But fml some people need to just filter themselves. 

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As expected I had a meeting today after being un-furloughed and was immediately told I'd be taking charge of our big IT transfer this year. Nothing wrong with that in itself but still drives me nuts that I was furloughed during the initial stages of all of this so I now know nothing of what's gone on or how far we are and will spend the first few weeks playing catch up.

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4 hours ago, Happenstance said:

As expected I had a meeting today after being un-furloughed and was immediately told I'd be taking charge of our big IT transfer this year. Nothing wrong with that in itself but still drives me nuts that I was furloughed during the initial stages of all of this so I now know nothing of what's gone on or how far we are and will spend the first few weeks playing catch up.

sounds like pretty typical public service level organisation to me.  I'm sure you are more than capable though Haps. :D

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1 hour ago, Raining_again said:

sounds like pretty typical public service level organisation to me.  I'm sure you are more than capable though Haps. :D

Oh yeah I’ve no doubt I can do it. It’s just frustrating how much further along we could have been with this if I’d actually been allowed to work on it from the beginning.

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Funny how the worst weeks sometimes turn round into a positive. 

1. Manager has given the say so that I'll be passing probation, its still another 8 weeks off yet, but my objectives are going to be set-up as "Unless you do something crazy you're passing."
2. I had to sort out a fairly complicated thing involved 30+ people. I thought it wasn't particularly well done but now I'm being asked to do a presentation on it for another team as they thought it went great.
3. I'm so close to my first official project I've led (it was handed off to me half way through the project, it was fairly early stages) being released! I'm excited, but its going to be weird getting such instant feedback.

So overall what I thought was fairly rough couple of weeks has been really positive from an outsides pov. There's some other things that have come up for future me to look forward to in my career too, so that's going to be great. 

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Found out that our Head of ICT passed away this weekend. He was diagnosed with inoperable cancer late November last year and it’s been heartbreaking seeing how quickly he went downhill since then. It’s the kids first day back tomorrow as well so while I’m sure their parents will have told them by now I expect they’ll still be upset ☹️

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I've decided to ramp up my after work drinking from Friday to today. Ahead of Wednesdays new team briefing with our new lead, which would take our team down to 3 people, one had an accident over the weekend and has busted her arm, so will be off for a month at least. The second had to leave today as she's got some health issues and I don't know when she'll be back, leaving only me. 

They seem to have wangled one of the agency staff who worked here before to stay with us, but that's only temporary and things will get worse before they get better :'(

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Head of dept is pushing to get rid of me.  Implied I don't do a full days work (which is bullshit). we have 3 staff on long term sick, 2 agency people being let go at the end of the month.  My occ health interview this month which, i assume, starts proceedings to have me moved.... so they then are down to 3 members of staff out of a total of 9.  It's FUCKING INSANITY. She is doing a disservice to the department and the remaining staff who are literally falling apart at the seams.  The staff that have been here since day 1 of covid, taken shit tons of abuse from both staff and patients alike. 

If i fight this redeployment and win, sure i might get to stay, but she will have a target on my back and she'll be watching for a single mistake to have me fired.  There are so many laws in place to protect disability.  People being able to go part time or have duty changes to suit a disability etc.. but if someone wants rid of you theyll just find another way.  I'm a damn hard worker, i have skills and abilities way above my post.  All for nothing and completely thankless.

I'm worn out. 

This is a picture of the NHS and how it treats the wellbeing of its staff.

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11 hours ago, Raining_again said:

Head of dept is pushing to get rid of me.  Implied I don't do a full days work (which is bullshit). we have 3 staff on long term sick, 2 agency people being let go at the end of the month.  My occ health interview this month which, i assume, starts proceedings to have me moved.... so they then are down to 3 members of staff out of a total of 9.  It's FUCKING INSANITY. She is doing a disservice to the department and the remaining staff who are literally falling apart at the seams.  The staff that have been here since day 1 of covid, taken shit tons of abuse from both staff and patients alike. 

If i fight this redeployment and win, sure i might get to stay, but she will have a target on my back and she'll be watching for a single mistake to have me fired.  There are so many laws in place to protect disability.  People being able to go part time or have duty changes to suit a disability etc.. but if someone wants rid of you theyll just find another way.  I'm a damn hard worker, i have skills and abilities way above my post.  All for nothing and completely thankless.

I'm worn out. 

This is a picture of the NHS and how it treats the wellbeing of its staff.

Knowing how I feel as a patient, I am not surprised by any of this. I've been to two major hospitals for my care and I always say the way the "admin staff" apologies that's definitely too broad but hopefully you get what I mean, always always always let me down in comparison to how the doctors/nurses are.

It seems there's a bunch of lovely folk who want to help me and are repeatedly shot down because of shit you describe. Nearly died because of it. So fuck her, punt into a volcano. 

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7 hours ago, nightwolf said:

Knowing how I feel as a patient, I am not surprised by any of this. I've been to two major hospitals for my care and I always say the way the "admin staff" apologies that's definitely too broad but hopefully you get what I mean, always always always let me down in comparison to how the doctors/nurses are.

It seems there's a bunch of lovely folk who want to help me and are repeatedly shot down because of shit you describe. Nearly died because of it. So fuck her, punt into a volcano. 

Generally speaking the admin staff on the lower levels (we are talking non management, maybe lower management) are not bad spuds.  Obviously there are the exception to the rule in every dept.  But we are basically bound to the rules, bound to systems that DO NOT WORK.  Management won't spend money to adequately staff services, fix technical issues, sort out safety issues, or even look at waiting lists.  Any time they do anything positive (which is usually too late) they make us feel like we should be grateful for the gift they have bestowed upon us :blank:  have had several GPs and other medical staff at a loss for words at the position im in, and I don't doubt you are the same. 

Incidentally we had a suicidal patient on the phone today that no professional wanted to deal with.  We are admin staff.  We dont have the professional training nor the emotional training to deal with that.

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On 08/03/2021 at 6:53 PM, EEVILMURRAY said:

I've decided to ramp up my after work drinking from Friday to today. Ahead of Wednesdays new team briefing with our new lead, which would take our team down to 3 people, one had an accident over the weekend and has busted her arm, so will be off for a month at least. The second had to leave today as she's got some health issues and I don't know when she'll be back, leaving only me. 

They seem to have wangled one of the agency staff who worked here before to stay with us, but that's only temporary and things will get worse before they get better :'(

Meeting had, and I don't know how many times it needed to be stated that if they took X away, it would mean there would be no one to cover their work. It finally seemed to got through, but they've got the people previously doing it to carry on for a month (which if it was me, would easily refuse as they literally took the work from them) but are "putting vacancies up soon". Support for the other staff who have been overloaded, and for the staff that don't exist. I'm treading water with what I've got.

Bright light we (think we do) have someone starting Monday (not sure how temp), but they don't seem to have anyone who trains people, and the 4-5 deputy service managers they have don't do it, so apparently this has fallen down to me, because it says I am required to be "flexible" in my job description.

Ah'mazin.

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I'm sitting on the fence right now in my job.  I hae a decision to make very very soon.  Every time I think about it, it fills me with anxiety and stress.

I could potentially take someone to tribunal for the way ive been treated but she has a way of getting out of these things (i've witnessed her go through at least 3 and somehow she gets to stay in her job despite losing one of the cases).   I have to get my union involved.  I don't know if i have the energy to do all of that without making myself seriously ill. 

I could accept ill health redeployment and hope i get somewhere ok (anywhere is going to be an improvement over where I am), and be rid of her. 

 

the latter is probably going to be the easier answer for me, but it feels so wrong that she gets off with it time and time again.  Should I shoulder the weight and stress of a tribunal, with potentially not enough proof?  Should I morally just let it go for her to bully other people..?  I really don't know.  I'm a very fragile human right now I don't even know if i can handle the decision bit let alone anything else :(

 

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Argh, that sounds horrible & frustrating! I would say you've got to look after number 1 first. It's shit not being able to fight back against someone's unethical behaviour but it doesn't sound like you're the one in a position to do it. If leaving represents an opportunity for something better & lets you protect your health that's a no-brainer and it's not an immoral choice. You are not required to destroy yourself on everyone else's behalf. Better to look after yourself until you're in a position to make a positive difference with proper support, whenever & wherever that is. 

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I've accepted redeployment.  They've basically bullied me into it by overloading me with work.

theyre gonna lose a foundational member of the team that started it from the ground, and knows the system inside and out, at a high level, and with skillset well above my pay grade.  I'm a band 3 (skilled post non management 21k) that knows more than a band 7 (high management 44k) who has worked for the dept the same number of years.  I can interpret complex data, make it look meaningful, design reports, fix problems and find even the most obscure piece of data from out of my ass.  The band 7, head of service, doesnt know the password for the reporting tool.

What i know, and what they don't, gives me licence to fuck around. :laughing:

I told them i had to validate some numbers in a report today (granted they are complex and sometimes do have issues so this is more than believable) but they didnt need any work, i just sat for an hour doing a couple of emails. I've got all of the february backlog to clear through.... I dunno i could probably pull it off in a week...maybe? (which is pretty speedy even for a data analyst) now its gonna be 2.5. This is what happens when you screw someone over that gave their entire career to you and your department.

My immediate boss is fuckin MAD.  I text him and he told me to ring him straight away... Hes off on sick from stress and this was all done on purpose while he was away.  My colleagues know what i contribute and its just pissing them off too.  Its all work that will be handed over to them making them even more overwhelmed.

Never in nearly 16 years have i regretted my career choice, but im starting to now

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20 hours ago, Raining_again said:

 

What i know, and what they don't, gives me licence to fuck around. :laughing:

Never in nearly 16 years have i regretted my career choice, but im starting to now

Fuck 'em up Wendy! /Butters

I've been doing some shafting myself...

We've had a couple of agency starters this week, the other two people have been training them, I'll be mentoring new chap on Monday. One was meant to come on Thursday but got offered a perm job elsewhere. But the fisting I've tried to set in motion is that before our dept shifted over we have this one agency lass who's been helping us out for nigh on a year, so she knows her shit. When we ask why she was taken away  to previous seniors we get a shrug and vague bullshit. In most recent meeting with current seniors I ask about her again, because I think finally they've realised how assraped they've been by being given this dept in such a state. 

So I ask about her again and we finally hammer home how essential she is - she can take the place of the other person who didn't come in last week with only the slightest bit of training in something she didn't have to do before. The new seniors seemed stunned (as was we and her) that this wasn't an option before, and we it was mentioned that if we told her that she could call her agency colleague, say she wasn't happy with the switch and would like to come back, then seniors couldn't stop us - wink wink. So we did and I think it's worked out.

From what we can gather is that previous seniors pulled her away because they didn't want to get new agency staff themselves, and let us flounder needing more new staff than we have current because at that point it wasn't their problem. We've even been effectively bordered off by those blue divider things in the corner of the office.

 

Lots of roles on the NUH vacancies for PA/PPA if y'all wanna join us. Sadly with a soon to happen consultant shake up, I'm going to be losing my two faves unless I apply for a different PA role, however they're based at a different hospital which is too much hassle to get to/from to make it worth the pay bump

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On 20/03/2021 at 5:51 PM, EEVILMURRAY said:

Fuck 'em up Wendy! /Butters

I've been doing some shafting myself...

We've had a couple of agency starters this week, the other two people have been training them, I'll be mentoring new chap on Monday. One was meant to come on Thursday but got offered a perm job elsewhere. But the fisting I've tried to set in motion is that before our dept shifted over we have this one agency lass who's been helping us out for nigh on a year, so she knows her shit. When we ask why she was taken away  to previous seniors we get a shrug and vague bullshit. In most recent meeting with current seniors I ask about her again, because I think finally they've realised how assraped they've been by being given this dept in such a state. 

So I ask about her again and we finally hammer home how essential she is - she can take the place of the other person who didn't come in last week with only the slightest bit of training in something she didn't have to do before. The new seniors seemed stunned (as was we and her) that this wasn't an option before, and we it was mentioned that if we told her that she could call her agency colleague, say she wasn't happy with the switch and would like to come back, then seniors couldn't stop us - wink wink. So we did and I think it's worked out.

From what we can gather is that previous seniors pulled her away because they didn't want to get new agency staff themselves, and let us flounder needing more new staff than we have current because at that point it wasn't their problem. We've even been effectively bordered off by those blue divider things in the corner of the office.

 

Lots of roles on the NUH vacancies for PA/PPA if y'all wanna join us. Sadly with a soon to happen consultant shake up, I'm going to be losing my two faves unless I apply for a different PA role, however they're based at a different hospital which is too much hassle to get to/from to make it worth the pay bump

fuck me you actually asked a manager to do something for the good of the service and they did it?  Thats a new one!!!

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I'm in the middle of setting up a whole new system for the school to use and am still getting requests to design new assessment report templates that will only ever be used for one term only then everything is being re-done for the new system. Why can't teachers just stick with what they've used previously for one measly term???

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i f*ckin hate work

 

They loaded more work than i can physically do. i do emails for the vast majority of my day. 80% of my day if i DO NOT take a lunch break, 95% if i do).  Monthly reports usually split with everyone, but i take probably more than the rest because 1 my skills and 2 im not taking calls so they feel im doing "less work" LOL.  So these monthly reports need done every month, and a yearly one end of march. currently working on februarys, which are done early march. But i literally don't think i have the time to do all of the monthly reports before the next months are due... so im literally never going to even get caught up from the backlog let alone keep it running.

Then bosses boss (my immediate boss on sick) comes to me and is like oh we need the yearly report for x service by end of week (last week) and im just like.... RIGHT.

so I do the report. its done by first thing on thursday.... thursday before lunch she messages me very politely (i think she must be scared of me and has heard of my rep of being slightly too honest lol) asking if they can be done by thursday close so she can check on friday to send.  So im like OF COURSE.  Sat on my ass for the rest of the day doing emails and nothing else for a damn change.  Sent her the stuff at the very last minute lol

I sent the report over and she queries a number not adding up (i know why it does but its not my job/cant be arsed/its her job) so i just screenshot the raw data, total it and send it to her as a response.  I am not a data analyst.  I have been denied the opportunity multiple times.  they fuckin think im doing it and not being paid for it they can THINK AGAIN.

Think she looked at it for half an hour couldnt get her head around it and just said itll do as it is and took out the total.  this is someone thats paid prob close to 40k and is supposed to have data analysis/extraction experience.  unreal.  

 

And the funniest most hilarious thing?  We are no longer short staffed in the office (im working from home) and the rest of the team are sitting twiddling their thumbs. :blank:

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On 25/04/2021 at 8:05 PM, Raining_again said:

And the funniest most hilarious thing?  We are no longer short staffed in the office (im working from home) and the rest of the team are sitting twiddling their thumbs. :blank:

Let it crumble!

 

I'm in a quandary at the moment. I've applied for two positions, one being a PA, a rank above me, another for a PPA, which is what I am now, but just somewhere else. I had my PA interview on Friday and other one is tomorrow. A few colleagues had their PA interview today and I emailed my senior on the sly asking if there was any reason why I may need to cancel my interview tomorrow wink wink. No response. Maybe she's playing it close to the chest and not playing ball, but either I got the position and there's no point me attending anyway, or I didn't get the job of what I've been doing for the past year because of some insignificant bullshit and I then have to try and impress the exact same people who deemed me unworthy the first time.

So probably gonna cancel it tomorrow.

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11 minutes ago, EEVILMURRAY said:

Let it crumble!

 

I'm in a quandary at the moment. I've applied for two positions, one being a PA, a rank above me, another for a PPA, which is what I am now, but just somewhere else. I had my PA interview on Friday and other one is tomorrow. A few colleagues had their PA interview today and I emailed my senior on the sly asking if there was any reason why I may need to cancel my interview tomorrow wink wink. No response. Maybe she's playing it close to the chest and not playing ball, but either I got the position and there's no point me attending anyway, or I didn't get the job of what I've been doing for the past year because of some insignificant bullshit and I then have to try and impress the exact same people who deemed me unworthy the first time.

So probably gonna cancel it tomorrow.

i know if you're still nhs shes not legally allowed to tell you before the paperwork has been reviewed by a panel, that could be why.  They're super strict about that nowadays.

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10 minutes ago, Raining_again said:

i know if you're still nhs shes not legally allowed to tell you before the paperwork has been reviewed by a panel, that could be why.  They're super strict about that nowadays.

That's what the wink wink was all about! O_O

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Up on the saga. Didn't get one of the PA roles I've basically been doing. They rang up whilst I was en route to pick up new bike and one of the reasons they gave, as well as wanting a face to face to explain more, was that I didn't explain enough about the treatment pathway "which is an important part of the role", I can't remember my exact answer, so fuck me I guess for not training myself on something which isn't my job yet. I hung up on them shortly after that. I've been a miserable fuck all week.

I did give my colleagues the heads up about this question as it did catch me off guard, those two got one of the roles, so fuck me again well-intentioned idiot.

They haven't invited me to this meeting yet as one of the seniors has been on leave this week, but I'm going to get a list of the stuff I do and make it quite clear what it is my job it is to do. Because it being exactly the same except for taking some minutes at meetings and "having final overview" of some spreadsheets is not worth the base £2k difference in wages. 

 

So hopped on the job-grabbing bandwagon, saw a couple of legal secretary vacancies which I applied for one, one through an agency which when they did the usual call back was a bit arsey, one going far to say they may go through my CV with me, which was a surprise. Another was a very long shot from a vacancy in Sept 2020 for one which is right near me, was invited for an interview which was essentially a job history grilling by one of the solicitors and the partner of the firm, who was doing a very, very bad job of trying to hide his yawning, along with things like "I'm sure there is advancement available in the NHS surely?" if you're not feeling it dude, say it. I've already written that off as a fail so not holding out hope there.

 

I do however have a challenge set by Games Workshop for a game dev role there, so that's my weekend covered as I complete this mission in time...

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