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

[Sunsnet]

I currently work a minimum wage job in retail. It's long hours, exhausting and for really shitty money. Sometimes I earn less than minimum wage as I'm salaried and not entitled to overtime.

I've just been offered a job with the DWP. I'll earn 50% more, have a WAY better pension plus more benefits. I'll even be able to work fewer hours so I can spend more time with my family and STILL be better off than now. BUT, I have friends who think the DWP is immoral and by working for them I will be implicit in that immorality.

I agree that the way the DWP works at the moment is immoral, but surely we need good people to work there to ensure that people who need the help and are entitled to it actually get it. Or am I just clutching at straws to justify my position?

I have one friend in particular who says they will never speak to me again if I take the job. This friend is independently wealthy and never needs to work again, I am not. I do not own property, have a family to support, I'm a single parent and I have no qualifications so have no hope of a better job.

Would I really be that awful a person to sell out and take this job?

Take the job and ignore these people. They are not your friends and don't have your best interests at heart.

The DWP is not an immoral organisation it pays my State Pension for one thing and that of many others. Your friends might disagree with Individual decisions but it doesn't make the whole thing corrupt. There has to be some way of calculating and paying benefits and pensions.

@Sunsnet

Go for it better family home life balance perks and financially considerably better off too,
taking up this Gov Job is revealing the snobbery of your friends group, when it's easy to sit in judgement when they are so much financially better off than you are currently are,

If you lose these kinds of friends so what it's there lose 🤷 in reality,

at least losing these kinds of snobbery friends ,
will make way for better quality kinds of friends to enter your life too..

I worked for the DWP for 25 years. I left 18m ago to work in a school. My god I'd go back in a fucking heartbeat and that's saying something! Ignore and go for it;

Same for the dept I work for. Civil servants don’t create policy, well some might help but the Government makes the laws, civil servants assist in the admin of them. I don’t have any friends that would have a problem with me working for DWP, not sure why anyone would, they are just doing a job at the end of the day same as anyone. The civil service is a good career, good pension and good progression so put your family first OP.

Do this

i made a decision when i chose to leave my abusive husband years ago, and everyone suddenly had an opinion (I'm from a background where divorce is very rare and discouraged). i decided that, unless you pay my bills, you don't get a say in life.

As a disabled person I absolutely despise the DWP and think they have blood on their hands from disabled people who died having had all their support removed when they were declared fit for work.

If you were my friend I would fully support you in taking a job that could improve your circumstances. I do want to warn you that, depending on the actual job, you could end up in a position where you have to do, or at least keep quiet about, things that are completely immoral. I hope not, but I'm afraid it is a possibility. On the other hand, you could climb to the top and completely revolutionize the whole organisation! Good luck to you whatever you decide.

It's all very well for people who have money to tell you what you should and shouldn't do to earn money. I'd use it as an incentive to get rid of some dead weight and find new friends

How did you even hold it together when your rich friend said that???

You're working for a government department, not selling crack to school children. Your friend needs to get over themselves or bugger off.

So easy for your friend to have such crystal clear morals when they're independently wealthy and don't need to work. Champagne socialist.

I ve had awful experiences applying for PIP but I’d go and work for them under your circumstances , you should have just said you were joining the civil service and left it there

Yes just say you're joining the civil service and when your friends ask, raise your eyebrows, shrug and say, "Sorry I'm not allowed to talk about it." They'll assume it's MI5!

I suspect there are a variety of roles with the DWP. It's not all about sanctioning benefits claimants.

I assume you exclude traffic wardens from your friends circle too.

And people who work for tobacco companies.

And energy companies

And car manufacturers.

And fast fashion companies.

I don't know what a lot of my friends do work-wise. Certainly not day to day, even if I know they're a trained accountant for example.

Take the job.
DWP are effecting rules of the Government. Suggest to your "friends" that if they don't like DWP, they vote in a government that will change the remit of DWP.

@Jasmin1971 what are you talking about, you are aware that the DWP is a massive organisation covering loads of different areas including pensions? You have no idea what job the OP has been offered. What a silly comment. I agree on choosing your employment carefully and not going against your ethics but the idea that anyone who works in DWP is monstrous is ludicrous. If you work in the Home Office in counterterrorism are you a monster just because others in the organisation are involved in deporting refugees? If no one with a strong sense of morality worked in government vulnerable people would be much worse off.

Take the job, real friends won't judge you and you can be a nice person at the DWP. Actually there are lots of nice people there, I've had to phone them more than once about things for DH who is disabled and they are always helpful and friendly.

I had a similar thing in the 70s when unemployment was sky high and I got a job as a civilian with the police. I did what was best for my family and although I got a bit of stick for a while people soon got over it.

YANBU
I don't see why you would lose friends

Ok this I wouldn't be able to do. If you are desperate then you do what you have to do but unless extremely desperate I wouldn't be able to work for someone promoting something I despised.

My son is an ecologist and the company he works for were surveying for a very controversial development. He was so against this project but a 10,000 pay increase swayed him ! It’s not happening now ,but he really needed the extra money ! Just do what is best for you .

Take the job xx

Might not be so wonderful. No one on here already working for DWP? Daughter did for a while, hated it.
Just a point, why do so many working in civil servant roles, also top up salary with UC?

Is DWP the department of work a pensions? I don't see anything inmoral to work there.
Take the job.

We'll be getting a new government soon so things might change. Take the job.

People receive top up benefits because of low pay.

The people working for DWP do not set government policy.

JFC it's a government department, not the KKK. Your friends should grow up and gain some perspective. Take the job.