Preparedness for when

fuddle

Hope so greenbee but at the minute I have carers refusing to go to houses because they don't like the customer or it's too stressful an environment for them given the customer's need. They hold all the cards because of the contracts. They literally can pick or choose where or when they will work. Until that is changed or tightened up - policy wise we can say what we like but contractually carers aren't obliged to pick anything up. The smart phones will make my life easier in terms of organisation and I am very excited about their arrival but we need an overhaul of attitude and a change in the zero hours malarky before we can really make proper use of them, I feel anyway.

I rely on carers reading their own personal emails and being contactable on their own mobile phones at the moment. That part I have never agreed with.

moneyistooshorttomention

greenbee wrote: »

Also remember that the younger generation simply accept that they have no privacy. They don't necessarily see that as a problem - they are used to it, and so their frame of reference is different. For example, I have different phones for work and personal communication. Many of my colleagues saw use of the work phone as a 'perk'. Then our work phones got smarter, were used for more than just calls, and started to have more controls. Some of my older colleagues then decided to have separate phones - for privacy (mine was just so I could switch my work phone off...). Younger colleagues really don't care.

It does look rather like that is how many younger people think.

I also find my mind boggles at the fact that it would appear some people no longer differentiate heavily between "worktime" and their "own time". Maybe its because I count as "old-er" myself that I feel very puzzled at the thought that employers would even think of using any of my spare time for work purposes unless I had agreed to do so voluntarily and was getting paid time-and-a-half or double time for doing so. But it was some years back now where one of the reasons I had to stop doing overtime was because my employer had decided to cut the extra for doing so above our normal hourly rate = cue for me deciding "Blow their overtime..I'm not doing it for that rate of pay".

When I left work for the day then it basically went right out of my mind until I had to turn up again the next workday.

I was quite firm that "evenings and weekends are OUR time" and I admit my mind boggles at seeing how lightly Leisure Time Hours are treated these days.

I suspect many younger people no longer automatically regard evenings/weekends as "theirs" any more and that's very sad:(

Fuddle - That's news to me that carers are expected to use their own private emails and mobile phones for work purposes!! Surely that must be putting a lot of people off even asking for carer jobs (as they know they would turn round and ask for work to provide them with these means of contact OR they would be uncontactable, as they wouldn't be prepared to use their own personal communication channels). I would have thought people who respect themselves enough to demand that work pay all work expenses would be more likely to be the type who would give appropriate respect to clients needs too??

fuddle

Your thoughts don't exactly equate to the reality of trying to get a job in 2015 moneyistooshorttomention. As in previous posts the sector is littered with zero hours contracts and therefore problematic.

People who "respect themselves enough to demand that work pay all their costs" are most probably pleased to have job and know if they rock the boat they will be tetering on the edge of job or no job. I would ask you to refrain from casting aspersions on their commitment to working very hard for customers just because they accept less than favourable communication means. There are some damned good carers out there who have their own mobile phone in their pocket. How silly a comment when you strip it back.


It is wrong, I agree but it has no reflection on their commitmnt from delivering high quality, person centred care. Deary me.

The real issue here is zero hours contracts. The real issue is changing times because of changing union powers and influence. Maybe 'back in your time' you didn't even get a break in your working day. Thanks to the unions for that little gem, the gem that gets swept under the carpet in the romanticism of the 'old days were better.'

jk0

I think the real reason for this is in the first sentence of the article, isn't it?:

An experienced doctor, who has questioned the official explanation for the death of weapons expert David Kelly

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/30/whistleblower-doctor-sacked-text-mod-tribunal-stephen-frost-david-kelly

[Deleted User]

In the real world, whatever age or generation you come from it is expected that you do the job you are employed and paid to do to the best of your ability and however long it takes. Both my daughters are professionals and in teaching and medicine you do the job and don't watch the hours. You have a job to do and you work until it's done and you cannot consider that there is 'their time when I work' or 'my time when I don't work. You DO the job you are employed to do or children are not educated properly or someone suffers and possibly dies. I'd like to see either one of them saying OK my time and walking away from their responsibilities. No they don't have zero hours contracts but there never seem to be enough hours in any given week for the enormity of the task that is their chosen career.

[Deleted User]

For anyone still looking for one, Home Bargains have some 14cm frying pans in.

Price £1-99.

Slightly bigger than the Aldi one egg pans, but just the right size for the Village Bakery, large white rolls sold by Aldi.

Probably need to use 2 eggs at a time, unless you are using duck/goose eggs.

GreyQueen

I hear what you say, Lyn, but there are careers, vocations and there are jobs.

Back when I packed meat on a factory production line from 2.30pm until 10 pm (the old 2-10 shift had had 30 mins docked, so they could get out of paying shift allowance - this was the 1980s) we would sometimes be asked on our 2nd short break (mid evening) if anyone wanted to stay on for some overtime.

If 8-10 lines were running on the main shift, 1-2 would run on OT to get an order out. The techs would set the line up ahead of time and we who were staying late would just shift onto the new line(s) as soon as the bell went. Within 1-2 mins, the new lines would be running full speed.

And we were asked very politely and humbly if we would like to stay on, and there was no sanction if you were knackered and had to go home. I can't imagine what would have happened if it had been put to us We've miscalculated today's production run and need another line to run for 30-45 mins to get this order out tonight. You twelve are staying and, btw, for no extra pay.

Actually, I can imagine what would have been the response of a bunch of working class women who'd been on their feet for 8 hours after doing a morning- early afternoon stint as housewives - and it's nothing you could put on a family website.

The trouble with the ethos of always rising to impossible demands is that it leads to those demands becoming ever more impossible. And then to sickness, burnout, and highly-skilled and devoted people abandoning careers.

The US/UK work ethic is obscene. In sensible European countries, if the work cannot be done in the hours allocated, it's obvious to management that the job requires more workers.

If you try to do the work of 1.5 or 2 other people, you crash and burn. We only get issued with one body and can't afford to abuse it.

If it's bad enough to be a slave and have a slave-driver, how much worse to be one's very own overseer and whip-cracker?

COOLTRIKERCHICK

Bedsit_Bob wrote: »

For anyone still looking for one, Home Bargains have some 14cm frying pans in.

Price £1-99.

Slightly bigger than the Aldi one egg pans, but just the right size for the Village Bakery, large white rolls sold by Aldi.

Probably need to use 2 eggs at a time, unless you are using duck/goose eggs.

OR a at least 6 quail eggs lol

greenbee

At one point it was thought that technological developments would result in us all working fewer hours and having more leisure time. But instead of everyone working a shorter week, we have fewer jobs that seem to involve working every increasing hours.

I have colleagues who find that they have spent 6 out of 8 weekends travelling. Our work is fairly flexible, but realistically if I'm away from home for a week, I don't take days off to make up for the nights away. You can take time in lieu of weekend work, but sometimes it feels almost impossible to fit it in.

Obviously we're not in a job that has the same safety concerns with working hours as some industrial/manufacturing/medical jobs, but we do see people suffering health problems due to stupid international travel schedules (there's a high rate of heart attacks as well as divorce amongst my colleagues), and more than once I've turned up an airport having no clue a. where I am and b. where I have come from (makes picking up luggage somewhat confusing) until I look at my boarding pass or the calendar on my phone.

I work for a US company. My colleagues are located across the globe. Often we have no clue what timezone the person we are dealing with is in - because even if we know which country they live in, we don't always know what country they are currently in. So sometimes you have to tell people it's evening/weekend/middle of the night. And sometimes you have to work evening/weekend/middle of the night because meetings involve people across multiple timezones.

I'm lucky that I enjoy my job. I'm certainly glad that I don't have to put up with one that would make me feel I didn't want to put in the extra hours or even turn up each day.

As for doctors - I'd quite like their hours to be limited (although not keen on them going off shift mid-surgery!). Having seen friends as junior doctors at the end of a 72 hour shift, I'd have to have been very unwell indeed not to leg it when I saw the zombified doctor coming towards me!

GreyQueen

One of my relations has been married to a truck-driver for nearly 25 years. And in all that time, they haven't been able to answer their home phone.

Because they have to call-screen to hide from his employer who is always crazing to have extra driving done. Even though by driving Sat-Tuesdays he will have mostly gone past his allowed hours for the rest of the week. Oh, and the tachographs are fiddled, btw. He drew the line on over-driving after he fell asleep at the wheel of his artic and drove over a roundabout and didn't notice until he got to his destination and found shrubs hanging off the trailer - spotted the carved-up roundabout on the return journey and worked out what he'd done.

I used to be a short haul multidrop delivery driver and many's a time have I seen artics weaving on the main roads, unable to hold lane discipline even in perfect weather; dollars to donuts the poor s0d at the wheel is dozing. Still see it now, when riding the intercity coaches.

SuperGran was a career nurse, and I know several others who've told me similar war stories; doctors habitually stoned on stolen prescription opiates, including one found dead at work. All very hush-hush, of course, but some of them are using amphetimines to manage the workload. And coke, and crack.

We are apparently the 6th largest economy in the world and have one of the lowest doctor-patient ratios in the west. We rank 24th out of the 27 Euro nations in terms of docs per 1,000 head of population.

The more you do, the more you get to do.