I first thought about this quite a long time ago. I don’t know how many of you are old enough to remember the series “London’s burning” but essentially there was a fair bit of down time of the firefighters in the canteen or bedding down in bunks. Then life changed and it was decided that the “tax payers”needed more value for money and all that stopped and firefighters were expected to spend the time not spent on jobs, either sorting out equipment, doing paperwork (probably pointless!), doing talks etc etc. I remember being quite outraged at the time thinking to my self that these people risk their lives for us, the public, on a daily basis and I couldn’t care less if they sleep or watch tv or whatever for the majority of a shift because they were doing something I would never be brave enough to do myself.
Since then it has become more and more common in public sector jobs that supposed tax payer value for money is priority number 1. I have a friend who is a social worker in child protection. She has described to me how years ago there was time and space to discuss tricky cases with colleagues and her manager and reach a fair decision, whilst always putting the child first obviously. But now it’s all targets and getting each case closed ASAP and inevitably rash decisions are made. Not always with the best outcome.
AIBU to think that jobs that involve real lives, public safety etc cannot be treated the same as a profit driven business? I am genuinely interested if the general “tax payer” places more value on saving money over a job well done. Because I work in a similar field, don’t want to be outing, but we are always quoted “the tax payer expects” when they want to enforce something they know will not be well received!