To take a job with the DWP even though I will lose friends

Congratulations.

Absolutely take the job. 50% wage incredibly, standard hours, stability and pension.

Your friend won't pay your bills, feed and house you or provide a pension.

You can make new friends with colleagues who have had shitty friends ditch them too.

People who make statements like your friend's are really lacking in decency & intelligence and often the first to make questionable choices themselves. Fuck them, that's not real friendship.

It's interesting the assumptions that have been made about what the job actually is @Jasmin1971

Maybe she will be ensuring that your granny gets her state pension and cold weather payments?

What is your main responsibility in your life?

Taking care of your family.

Take the job and if anyone is nasty about it then it's their loss not yours.

I once took a freelance job with a blood sport magazine. The editor even asked me what my feelings were about hunting. I said 'I can be bought'. I needed the job.

Take the job.

Once you're in the Civil Service, you may be able to transfer into a different department if you find your work with the DWP troubling. Easier once you've got established there.

Friends might not agree with the choice, but you'd be silly to turn down the opportunity.

Either:
Don't tell them; or
Tell them not to be so bloody silly.
You literally can't afford to turn down a better-paying job. As for the moral police, who would be making sure people got benefits and pensions if the DWP no longer existed?
I've plenty of beef with government policy. Civil servants, not so much.

My friend started off at DWP and has had a great career in the civil service

*jay55

Take the job.
Your friends are not putting food on your table.*

I love this. You're absolutely right.

The DWP is hardly a tobacco or arms company! They're trying to implement poorly thought through policy in a bureaucratically difficult way. The people there aren't bad people doing bad things. You should take the job and better your situation and hopefully have better people trying to do better things at the DWP.

Take the job. You need to put yourself first.

Also remember that the DWP will soon be under the leadership of a Labour government and could be a completely different/less hostile environment then...

The DWP isn't going to get any better if good people are told they will automatically be arseholes if they go to work there. It is possible to be a DWP employee who treats people with kindness and fairness, but if we pretend that's not true you'll end up with an organisation entirely staffed by the sort of people who impose sanctions for a laugh.

Of course take the job, but whether you do or not, ditch the 'friend' anyway

If this is real,

take.the.job.

Or repent in financial hardship at your leisure

I get their point in the way dwp treat people is disgraceful. And there are some awful staff. But as long as you go in with the value of treating everyone kindly and as fairly as you can, using discretion where you can, then go for it

Definitely take the job. Your friends are being stupid

OP won’t be setting the policies of DWP. Direct your anger at politicians

Take the job.
Your friends are not putting food on your table.

I did a summer job with the employment service a million years ago now, there were many dickhead jobsworths but a lot of lovely people too.

It's very easy to get on your moral high horse when you're independently wealthy.

Take the job. Ditch the friends. No one in their right mind would make a friend, knowing how much better off you will be, make that kind of choice. Especially not if they value the friendship.

Ultimately, this job is going to give you more money, more flexibility and time to spend with your family, better progression opportunities, better pension and I am going to guess better holiday entitlement.

It'd be foolish to turn it down because someone who doesn't have your best interests at heart gave you a ridiculous ultimatum.

Your friends sound pathetic. Go for the bloody job! It's a no brainer. Anyone who thinks the DWP is 'immoral' is a bit thick and not worth being friends with anyway.

This sounds like people I know who live in cities with all resources nearby, good public transport, cycle paths etc and tell me nobody needs to drive. Completely different when you live somewhere with very limited public transport, 6 miles to the nearest supermarket, 12 miles to nearest cinema.

(And then I have local people thinking I'm mad for walking from one end of our small town to the other but that's another story...).

Take the job and don't worry about it. They aren't the ones responsible for feeding your family.

I would accept the new job without a second thought!

If your friend no longer talks to you because of something so petty, they weren't a friend worth having to begin with. It's not like you're making a move into the slave trade or something..!

Easy for your 'friends' to talk, judgemental arseholes. Unless they have a better idea, take the job and tell them to fuck off.

There are parts of my job that wouldn't win me any popularity contest let's just say but I think I can make a difference by being compassionate, kind and fair. I am sure you will be able to do the same.

Your friends are idiots. Take the job.