Has almost everyone at your work become borderline intolerably mad and difficult recently

[CurdinHenry]

Is society crumbling?

Or just mine?

Paperwork to get funding for care packages has quadrupled. Not even an hours support can be given without going to a funding panel with a team of senior managers and the director, can be waiting 2-3 weeks to get a slot on that panel, just for them to try and delay further. Families at breaking point caring for disabled family members are being left in crisis because of the delays. There has been one serious incident of self-harm that led to hospitalisation and life changing injury because the funding panel disagreed with the social worker and everyone else that they needed 1:1 support (person who has LD and lacks capacity so not someone we can say is accountable for their own actions). New director is clueless and has given unlawful advice. Reduction in direct payment rates for PAs when people already struggle to recruit one. Huge feelings of stress from management, awful atmosphere, you just know they are being put under a lot of pressure.
Performance management tools, they want a log of absolutely every task we do. Paperwork and processes regularly changing so it's hard to keep up with what we should be doing.
We've had them since November, the sad thing is they probably are saving money due to the delays and may look good on paper if they use stats, but it is at a cost to the wellbeing of the most vulnerable people in society and probably to the NHS. I can imagine some long term cost implications too as we're not preventing and delaying needs.

Everyone is stressed, angry and over-worked, nothing works anymore, public services are a joke.

I'm self employed, so no "colleagues" as such but it's getting more and more difficulty to deal with some clients as they want everything done immediately, despite them taking eons to do what they have to do, they expect me to drop everything to get them out of the hole they've dug, no one has any patience anymore, people seem incapable of doing the simplest of tasks without being constantly reminded and even then they foul it up.

Sadly I have to deal with HMRC, Companies House and a couple of other public sector bodies regularly as part of my job and it's never been harder. Even just getting someone to answer the phone, then either the line is so bad you can't hold a conversation, or they're distracted working from home by door bell ringing, dog barking, child crying, etc. Even if you can have a decent conversation, they usually havn't a clue how to do what I ask, or promise something that simply never happens, and I have to do the whole thing again.

It's a 50:50 chance whether various software/apps works or not - things like trying to prove identity for government bodies is a sodding nightmare as the systems usually don't accept the data entered, saying "something is wrong", but I've checked, double checked, triple checked and the data IS right. But computer says no!

So much wasted time and stress. Not only that, but clients won't pay for the time. They expect everything dirt cheap or free and place no value at all on my time/experience/knowledge.

I've been an accountant for 43 years, and I'm sick of it. It's all never been this bad. I'm retiring next year and can't wait. I may even give it all up early if the opportunity arises. I always planned to continue working part time into retirement for another few years, but sod that.

Yes
Constantly bickering and moaning about each other, all feeling they are the only one pulling their weight. Complaining about ‘toxic’ team behaviour and failing to acknowledge that they are an equal part of the problem. Lots of banding around the word ‘narcissist’ when referring to other with no insight into their own behaviour. Complete change resistance and paralysis.
Happy to pick up a pay packet at the end of the month but not so willing to actually come to work or even just get on with the job. Meanwhile one or two of us keeping our heads down and picking up the pieces, doing the job of three people while covering long term sick leave, having to deal with the constant personality clashes. HR less than useless at helping us (the rest of us) deal with it all.
They really don’t know how lucky they are to have a stable income, working hours that they pretty much choose themselves, a generous annual leave package and never being required to work overtime. So many people would give their right arm to have their jobs.
I feel better for having that rant!

Yes
I'm a SAHP 😂

I'm looking at going back into the workplace after a very long time out of it for family

What's going on? Is this typical? Is it different? What kind of places are all these scary stories from?

Does it link up to the personality changes people seem to have had recently? That feeling that everyone slowly going mad.... sorry for all the questions

Oh my God this must be hellish.

Ditto!

Sorry that was meant to be in reply to an earlier post. Starting HRT massively helped reduce the annoyingness of colleagues..

We’ve had an absolute recruitment freeze for over a year. Not surprisingly this is starting to REALLY hurt in terms of spreading a bedspread full of increasing numbers of holes over an expanding bed of needs.

I have to say my experience of HMRC, passport office etc this particular year has been spectacularly good, at least once you can speak to them.

My old office was full of loons. Then the pandemic happened and it all took a turn for the worse.

I really resent this culturally accepted belief that women who experience difficult situations are just menopausal. That time of the month eh love eh eh eh eh.

Ok. Dislike it all you want, it was true for me and for many other people. Hormones do influence mood - for men as well as women.

And I wasn’t experiencing a difficult situation actually - just finding everybody that I normally love/like/get on fine with was suddenly unbearable. I decided to explore HRT before exploring divorce and cutting off all my relatives and friends, glad I did.

Nope not really, one person's really struggling with the stress. The workloads mental but its the public sector.

Yes but very often bad situations are objectively bad. For example I think you're objectively sexist.

Colleagues are fine, but I regularly work with the public and would certainly say common sense is down and entitlement up. But I can't tell if I'm just getting cantankerous in my middle age and so have less tolerance for incompetence and rudeness. Perhaps a bit of both.

Yes but it could just be me. I’m post menopausal and can’t be doing with idiots and bullshit.

This 100%. Morale is low and there's some really unhelpful stuff that goes on my workplace, but people don't know how good they've actually got it!

There's a very weird vibe about the place at the moment. I haven't really spoken to any colleagues this week (if WFH) the chats a oddly silent, and I'm beginning to wonder if I've done something to upset everyone.

Literally no-one at my work, no.

But everyone is upset at the moment, yes? I'm not even at work and I would say that.

I am sure your situation is valid and objectively bad, but I think @NameChangeScot was just been self-deprecating so a bit unfair to call her sexist when she was actually blaming her own sex for it!

Have you tagged the correct poster?

People don't communicate like they used to, that's for sure.

And it seems like it's the older generations that have dropped the ball in particular

Millennials, gen y are more polite and engaged than anyone else!

Our execs keep making statements about ai doing 30:70 of our jobs and can’t understand why we can’t keep up with the workload on a 30 % reduction of staff because we have ai… free copilot that not one of them has used but someone has told them it can do our jobs. It’s kind of funny to observe but I can see others going slowly mad.

Not in my colleagues but definitely in the parents we deal with. Kids, actually, I see as becoming nicer and more tolerant (for example, I work a deprived secondary school in Salford, lots of poverty. We recently had a child join our school age 11, who wasn’t toilet trained. No SEND although absolutely undiagnosed with something, but had been ‘home schooled’ until parents struggled and placed him in mainstream education. This child soiled himself in a lesson, didn’t tell anyone about it until another pupil came and told me that they thought the pupil had had an accident and needed some help. Following this, the ‘most popular’ boy in year 11 (typically quite poorly behaved in lesson) walked him to the bathroom, reassured him that it wasn’t a big deal, and told him that if he was worried he could come and chat to him.

Parents are becoming increasingly difficult to deal with. I had a parent take her year 11
daughter to a cheerleading competition in the US in March/April. Then come home and demand I offer one on one maths intervention to catch her up. When I declined and directed her to one of the two sessions we already deliver, she refused them saying her daughter had anxiety in after school clubs. When I didn’t offer anything additional she complained to the governors that I was ‘targeting her daughter’ Another member of staff threw a pen to a child who didn’t have one (not a smart thing to do granted) but the parent rang the police to press charges for assault, wanted the staff member fired .