Those of us who were ‘cannon fodder’- how do you feel?

[Onandoff]

I went to a gathering the other day with people who were privileged enough to still be working from home in highly paid city jobs. Their experiences were a stark contrast with mine. It was interesting to hear how protected they’d been, many still getting shopping delivered and only just resuming socialising. They hadn’t been on public transport at all. There was a general air of resentment at being asked to go back to offices and commute. They’d all saved money and were very worried about covid exposure despite being vaccinated. Apparently many workers have completely refused to return.

DH and I were the only key workers there and it brought home how exposed we’d been. Literally all of our family and colleagues caught it and some died or were left disabled. My mum died. In the hospital where I work 80% caught it in the first wave alone.

It’s been interesting to see through this that the jobs essential to society are (generally, appreciate some exceptions like medics) the worst paid. If we’d refused to go in or been redeployed we’d have been sacked. While the privileged middle class are still being pandered to despite vaccination.

I feel that those who went out to work should be financially compensated for the risk we took. At the very least we should be given tax breaks and not be expected to cough up for furlough costs.

My poor DD was on her own, coping with bereavement and isolation, homeschooling on bloody ‘teams’ for months doing GCSEs while me and DH travelled in every day working our arses off. And we’ve been having to listen to people living lockdown and all the ‘family time’. Yeah I’m angry

I’m not sure where you’re directing your anger though? Are you angry at the virus? Or that you’re a medic?

How people have faired has been largely situational. Many extremely highly paid professions have been at the front of public interactions too such as consultants, doctors etc. It’s not really a rich/poor divide more just a workplace/ office divide surely

@AbstractEim

I worked at home while homeschooling kids, I had to close my business as it was impossible, I didn’t qualify for furlough or any help whatsoever from the government. My dh had to continue to work throughout, he also runs his own business, no furlough, no help except a loan that took 5m to show up and we used to pay overdue tax as no one was paying invoices. So we’re more in debt now than ever, living on savings since January 2020.

I was jealous of key workers as their children were still in school while my 8 year old developed depression, anxiety and intrusive thoughts homeschooling during lockdown. Key workers still got to go to work and get paid, as limited company owners we worked for no money to keep our buildings from going under. Key workers got free services such as fee mobile phone tariffs, we got to face the prospect of bankruptcy and losing our house and livelihood. Many small business owners have lost everything.

No one had it easy.

No one had it easy.

My friends with limited companies realised that the tax benefits of this set up were less so within this awful pandemic. They reinvented parts of their business model to survive within the restrictions.

I feel most sorry for those low earner, non savings workers who pay income tax, who lost jobs. However, equally there is an element that everyone makes/ made their own choices as to their role. Despite this, not one of us would have predicted facing a pandemic.

I know of parents who were hospital key workers in the first lockdown who really struggled to drop their child into school childcare (as it was then) to then walk into the situation they did then at work (new pandemic, no/ poor PPE). I saw the pain and despair in their eyes. The children placed with adults on a rota (to aim to protect staff from constantly being exposed over their colleagues) and without their friends. It’s been hard for key worker children also- some really worried about the risk their parents faced and barely saw their parents with the increased pressures/ shift changes. No child has had it easy.

Key worker perks cited only applied to a small group of key workers. As too the (patronising) clapping.

It’s been hard for everyone, in different ways.

My cousins partner has just returned to the office and put a picture on fb of him returning. Then about 20 comments saying, oh you must be so stressed going back in or how daunting, those sort of comments. Wtf plenty of folk have been working right through in supermarkets, warehouses, hospitals and so on. My cousins partner has been on holiday abroad, socialising and going about day to day as normal apart from returning to the office.

I was able to work from home.

It was fucking horrific. Because of confidentiality I can't even explain half of what we were doing, but we were speaking daily to people suffering in the worst ways, lots of my clients died, I was in contact with someone who was eventually murdered, I was speaking to women trapped with abusive partners, to old people who were quietly starving, to terminally ill people feeling abandoned, speaking to people with PTSD from historic child abuse, and so much more.

No many how many people we tried to support, there were not enough of us to speak to them all or enough hours in the day. I started work early and finished late because you can't cut off a call to someone in crisis or someone just so desperate to talk because yours is the first voice they've heard in days or weeks.

I might not have been commuting but I was working long hours. I might have been at home, but listening to someone tell you about their abusive childhood while you can see your own child playing in the next room is hard. There was no commute to try and switch between work and home. No colleague who gets it to share five minutes with. Not even a break between clients to shift your focus. And it was heartbreaking.

And there were also so many calls where I was just abused, for not being good enough, for not doing more, for making the phone call, for not making the phone call earlier, for just existing, for promoting a 'scamdemic', for helping scroungers rather than people in real need, for calling after someone else had called and so wasting time and resources, for not being a mind reader and having to ask what support someone would like, for not visiting in person, for visiting when I should be staying away.

There wasn't a day I didn't cry. A colleague died by suicide. I was the first person at work to find that out. Zoom calls haven't quite made up for seeing colleagues so we can support each other in person, even if just for a few minutes.

There are still people I think about now, that I spoke to once a year and half ago, for half an hour, and I'm wondering how they are, if they are okay, if they are alive. Or that my heart breaks for because I know they will be worse now than then, or because I know they have died.

We're in a weird half and half situation now. Officially I'm still 'working from home' but all that means is that I'm not going into the office but I am visiting clients at their homes. Things are not any better. I'm seeing less people because it's in person rather than over the phone but the problems they have are worse. I'm buying food out of my own money for people who have nothing, who had barely anything before all this but who have less now. I'm trying to convince one person that they are cared about and that they would be missed if they died.

DH lost his job during all this, and then his new job waited until a week before he was due to start to tell him they were not yet going back into the premises and so didn't need him after all. He's been lucky, he's found another job and if we have another lockdown he will be going in every day - no working from home for him.

A close relative died and we couldn't attend the funeral. A family friend died and we couldn't attend the funeral. I wasn't allowed to visit my family and be with them as we grieved. One of my parents had COVID and then complications from COVID, and I couldn't visit them in hospital or drive my other parent to see them. Much the same as everyone else I know.

I do not blame anyone other than the government for all of this. I don't begrudge anyone else who had an easier time working from home, or those who were furloughed, and I'm grateful to those who still went out to work every day.

The government wasted so much money, messed up PPE, made u-turns and bad decisions, gave contracts to people not fit to have them, and there are millions unaccounted for.

Some people may be complaining about going back to the office. I have no idea how badly affected their mental health may be or if they have anxieties about going back. On their surface their complaints might seem superficial but who knows?

But even if they are just upset because they've got to start commuting again and that means getting dressed and having a wash - I don't care.

It's not them I blame for this, it is the government who have mishandled things and had their friends, family, and cronies profit from it. Blaming other people who might have experienced a less difficult lockdown than me or being blamed by someone who experienced a harder one than I did will get us nowhere. It's pointless. I don't want to be in a competition to find out where I rank in who had it better and who had it worse. We were lucky in many ways, yet in others it's been horrific.

Blame the people who are really responsible for the mess.

It’s been hard for everyone, in different ways.

Being killed by it is pretty hard though. Can't argue with that.

@Knittingupastorm

Please sack them, I’ll happily take their overpaid jobs and they can train to do mine.

This is going to sound flippant but it isn’t, it’s genuine - why don’t you do that? DH told me yesterday that there was a record number of vacancies being advertised online on one of the job sites, so it’s at least worth a look.

@Knittingupastorm Could you ask him which site it was? Dh has been trying to get a new job after redundancy (Covid) and so many people going after one role we're worried he'll ever get something

@BridgetJonesPanties

ODFOD

If you are jealous, go and find yourself one of these cushty jobs. Don't blame other people for your lifestyle choices.

You make a lot of assumptions too

Lots of low paid workers, such as charity workers, also worked from home throughout, certainly not just the 'middle class'

And those who work in offices are not all 'middle class' either

I know plenty of people who caught covid who weren't key workers, including two people who have worked entirely from home throughout and have no relatives in this country. They are one of those couples you sneeringly refer to as still getting their shopping delivered - that's still a risk too, didn't you know?

I lost my aunt to Covid, she was shielding and her family were also WFH and trying to keep away from her but she still got it. Its not just key workers who get it. So I find your reference to key workers being 'cannon fodder' very offensive. We have all suffered in different ways.

If we all leave and get a ‘cushty’ job, there’s no one left to look after you and your relatives, teach your children, deliver food and collect rubbish.

Of course people WFH caught Covid (and I’m sorry for your loss) but the risk was much, much, much higher for those who worked away from home. We also had the worry of bringing Covid back to our families. The mental strain of being safe at home or working out of the home was also very different - I know as I experienced both. Everyone might have suffered but the suffering wasn’t equal and we WERE seen as cannon fodder for the ‘greater good’.

@MiddleParking
Your colleagues (assuming DfE) should have written better guidance in the first place. They should have thought about the rubbish they were releasing (usually at 10pm on a Sunday evening) and how to implement it in actual schools, not fantasy ones or the tiny private ones they must have gone to.
Your colleagues should have at least answered the questions teachers asked every time more guidance was released. Instead the DfE ignored most questions and updated guidelines without telling anyone. It was laughable it got so bad.

I went back into an office, part way through lock down 1 but because I was on maternity leave, my line manager and another colleague are still WFH, they even have the audacity to say they're working from home to keep me safe as there are less people in the office 🙄 its become expected now, and the 'its not safe' argument is completely moot, as its about as safe now as its going to be.

I think the vaccine rollout did keyworkers dirty, big time! Every keyworkers should have been vaccinated first, I don't think it should have been in order of age - they were the ones at the most risk of exposure so should have been protected first.

I think keyworkers (particularly front line NHS and social care) also should have been given decent payrises, 100% if they've got millions to give to their mates, then there is money for payrises, or at the very least a decent bonus.

Lots of people weren't given a choice though in all fairness, they were just told to go home and figure it out, a friend of mine had to strap her toddler into his buggy in front of the TV as she is a single parent who was WFH full time and her bosses were really inflexible and he wasn't allowed to go to nursery as she wasn't a key worker, some furloughed people who lost 20% of their income last their homes as they were only just breaking even as it was - whilst you definitely got the shit end of the stick, other people suffered too

SnoopyLights has it bang on. I think it is pretty unpleasant for some people to be attacking others over something none of us had any control over.

I think a lot of people on here would do well to look into what the civil service is and how it runs. You are very confused at levels of autonomy. The DFE is run by the minister and the minister only. Who is not a civil servant. He instructs. They do. That’s that. They don’t make the policy.

Like your headteacher instructs, you do. You don’t make the school rules

[quote Hercisback]@MiddleParking
Your colleagues (assuming DfE) should have written better guidance in the first place. They should have thought about the rubbish they were releasing (usually at 10pm on a Sunday evening) and how to implement it in actual schools, not fantasy ones or the tiny private ones they must have gone to.
Your colleagues should have at least answered the questions teachers asked every time more guidance was released. Instead the DfE ignored most questions and updated guidelines without telling anyone. It was laughable it got so bad.[/quote]
I don’t work for DfE, FYI - I wouldn’t out myself to that extent. But your problem is with ministers, who are elected and are wholly accountable for policies and sign them all off personally and make the decisions. That’s how it works. I don’t know how much clearer it can be. What you’re saying is like me going mental at the school janitor for my kid’s school report.

There's no way Gav wrote that policy. Come on now.

Yes I can totally understand why you feel that way, I think you're very right.
I live in an area with very high middle class population and the takeaway coffee business has boomed with everyone wfh and just wandering around on lunchbreak. No where near the risk that lower paid key workers have had. There's also a stark contrast in the ethnicity of key workers vs those wfh.
Everyone who has had to work throughout not from home should be financially compensated or receive food vouchers etc

Sick to the back teeth reading yet another post about "poor me". So you had to go out to work while others didn't. That's life. I am sorry for your loss but you're not alone in that, sadly. Suck it up. Life is slowly returning to normal. Everyone who pays taxes will be contributing to the cost of this pandemic, whether they went into work or wfh. It is what it is. No point whinging about it.

[quote Hercisback]@MiddleParking
Your colleagues (assuming DfE) should have written better guidance in the first place. They should have thought about the rubbish they were releasing (usually at 10pm on a Sunday evening) and how to implement it in actual schools, not fantasy ones or the tiny private ones they must have gone to.
Your colleagues should have at least answered the questions teachers asked every time more guidance was released. Instead the DfE ignored most questions and updated guidelines without telling anyone. It was laughable it got so bad.[/quote]
I don’t work for the DfE either, but I’ve worked alongside civil servants from several departments in my former job.

You are absolutely kidding yourself if you think the average civil servant has any choice at all about what guidelines the government implements, when those are released, how the government chooses to answer questions from teachers, etc etc. They don’t even get much say over their own working conditions. They have to do as they are told. It’s not a bunch of Sir Humphreys swanning about running the place.

@BustopherPonsonbyJones

Plenty of other people to do the job who might not moan as much

As with any job, if you don't like it, leave or STFU

Don't blame other people for your career choices

The civil service is purposefully non political so that the minions do the work as directed by up high. If people think the average civil servant has the power and sway to decide policy (they can inform policy or put forward ideas of course in some roles) then that's very wrong.

Hercisback

And lets not mention the rubbish that was put forward for two years worth of exams.

Although the exam boards should shoulder some of the blame.

Yet both have passed the problems and blame on to schools and teachers

You don't sound sorry at all mojoj. Not one bit.

With that title I was expecting a thread about having served in Afghanistan...

There was thousands of pages of guidance. Someone somewhere must have thought "this is a bit shit" surely?

I get that ultimately the minister is in control. Civil servants on the whole haven't been treated brilliantly. But the DfE have been an absolute joke.

I'm a nursery nurse, 80% of our staff were furloughed last March including me, because we had so few children to care for to begin with. I certainly appreciated being able to stay at home and keep my children at home. OH carried on working throughout.

I can appreciate the other side of things though, when I went back to work with no safety measures in place it was frightening. I realised just how exposed we were- and how people really didn't care. We had to look after children so that parents could go to work, if we caught covid as a result it didn't matter really. Easily replaced! I think lots of people thought we had safety measures in place like every other workplace, but that's impossible- all we could do was wear masks when answering the door to parents, and wash our hands.

I find this very interesting. Im on the other side to you OP - wfh from March 2020, still not back in, I've used public transport only a couple of times since despite living in London. I don't know anyone who has been seriously ill or died:

Is it helpful to pit it as us vs them? My job can be done remotely so didn't it make sense for people in the same boat to stay home and reduce transmission?

How else could key workers have been treated given the nature of their jobs?

@Hercisback

There's no way Gav wrote that policy. Come on now.

I don’t know what you want me to to tell you. If it was in his policy area, it’s his policy. I’m not suggesting he sat and typed it out personally, you’re an adult. I promise you he made and is accountable for the decisions on what was in it.