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.

We are back at this idea that everyone who went out to work was off slaying dragons* everyday, and those who were at home were all sitting in the sun and having the life of Riley. Ask for gratitude in your own right, not along having a dig at everyone else.

• Figure of speech.

And all the snideness about people working "cosily from home" - it's not the same as having to go out and risk your life/health but many people working from home were not wealthy or in good situations and many of them really, really struggled.

YABU in expecting to get financial compensation.
YANBU in being annoyed at the attitudes of those who have had a safe and easy time of Covid and don't appreciate that.

As usual no one has benefitted from this except government pals and big bosses but yet we’re all arguing between ourselves. OP if you hate it that much please do retrain, we’ve got lots of vacancies in my city firm and we’ve permanently switched to 2 or 3 days in the office, I also got a much bigger bonus this year because of how much extra work I did so I’ve certainly been sufficiently compensated

www.railway-technology.com/news/covid-19-tfl-reduces-rail-services-and-closes-40-stations/

I don’t want those key workers looking for new jobs.

I want to be able to use educators, medics, have my shopping delivered and rubbish collected when I need it.

Many HGV drivers have left. The consequences aren’t great.

I’m not saying WFH or furlough was a doddle for all, it wasn’t for me.
However I don’t think we should feed divide/conquer or race to the bottom.

As per others, same storm different boats.

See I think it’s wrong to think of being made to stay at home ‘a privilege’.

^^ The op's view is very simplistic and subjective.

It really annoys me when people lump everyone on furlough or wfh into the same privileged category. I have friends who have developed mental health issues and/or struggled financially despite being in the 'enviable' position of wfh or being furloughed.

@MedSchoolRat

All your family & friends are in "cannon fodder" occupations? Including your mother who died in hospital, is that why they "all" had covid? I'm not following.

2 DC were in keyworker occupations. One of them knows some other young people who had covid -- all recovered fine. All DC had their education and training severely disrupted. Like lots of other public health people I worked for months (full time) without a contract and no or token salary. But from home so we are not "cannon fodder." I had emails off of the public health people sent at 1am routinely. I'm not sure anyone can afford the compensation OP wants. My children will be paying for the covid response most their lives.

If you resent people you talked to in person then maybe take your resentment back to them.

Hmm quite a few on this thread it seems. And plenty of other threads filled with middle class moaners. Not as rare as you suggest.

Yes all my co-workers friends and family either caught it directly from their ‘cannon fodder’ occupations or travelling to said work, or caught it from their household doing said work. Why is that so hard to believe?

Don’t be too casual about believing young people aren’t at risk. My closest colleague who died was a well 40 year old. I have other colleagues in their 40s and 50s who are now on home oxygen and steroids months on. A couple in their 30s died on ecmo. We still can’t properly quantify peoples risks while unvaccinated.

i felt disgusted by the immediate evacuation of nhs managers to their homes

and imagine some with a heart felt guilty by their attitudes,
i am glad i went out to work and did not have to sit on my bed working from home

I agree with you OP. I worked throughout the pandemic as a key worker. I am not in the NHS though. I did get Covid, but was not hospitalised with it.

There are lots of people who have worked at home the whole time and still are, have saved loads of money, and had it really cushy whilst others were literally, as you say, cannon fodder.

If there is another lockdown like lockdown 1, I will quit. I am not prepared to do that again.

I'm one who has WFH all the way through, home schooled etc. Not much fun. Appreciate in many ways though I had it "easy".

I do roll my eyes at colleagues who don't want to come back to the office (we are due back only pt from September).

However the government has spent the last 18 months pushing a campaign of fear so it's not surprising that so many are still nervous, particularly if they were able to shut themselves away. Everyone evaluates risk differently.

I'm sure the government is delighted with the in-fighting, making everyone forget about their incompetencies.

@Spinner12345

As usual no one has benefitted from this except government pals and big bosses but yet we’re all arguing between ourselves. OP if you hate it that much please do retrain, we’ve got lots of vacancies in my city firm and we’ve permanently switched to 2 or 3 days in the office, I also got a much bigger bonus this year because of how much extra work I did so I’ve certainly been sufficiently compensated

Yes I’ve been accepted to Cambridge to do a masters so I’ll be off. Shame for the patients though.

OP I agree, everyone was facing very different situations over the last 18 months, none of them easy but some easier than others.

From the other perspective, I was shielding and working from home. In total, I worked an extra 40 hours a month in my role in the public sector ensuring people like you on the front line got the materials they needed. So yes, I was protected but also unable to go outside at all,at severe risk of disease and many,many of us worked a lot of extra hours/shifts etc to help. Working from home wasnt all happy-happy either although obviously not nearly as risky. Unnecessary travel and office work from us would not have helped you though.

Where would this financial compensation come from? Who would pay for it?

In my opinion, the pandemic massively exposed the holes we already had in health and social care, the damage caused by years of successive governments not properly funding our services. That is the bit we can and should address ASAP.

I'm sorry you're having such a tough time with it all.

I broadly agree OP. FWIW I (mc and could've sat on ass) spent the pandemic running prescriptions and food to people who were shielding, with a dozen other people who were also MC and could've stayed at home. Which complicates it a bit for me. But yes, broadly, I agree - all the lovely WFH, baking rah rah was facilitated by those earning the least and in some cases with the least job security / opportunity to refuse.

an awful lot of people died, whether you call it scaremongering or not
and wfh was the only option

At the very least we should be given tax breaks and not be expected to cough up for furlough costs.

That’s not how society works (nor should it be). Furlough allowed a “full” lockdown while reducing the number of people made unemployed. Assuming you supported the lockdown then furlough was the best solution. If we hadn’t had furlough and more people had ended up unemployed, would you also object to paying towards an increased benefits bill.

How do I feel ?
Angry, exhausted, burned out. Not the same person I was.
Very short of patience with folk affronted at the thought of going back into the office.

Why shouldn’t you work from home if you can though? What’s the problem? It brings much better work/life balance.

You sound extremely angry & hurt but playing the blame game won’t help. This has been an extreme pandemic which nobody foresaw.

We both worked, I worked from home with a 2&4 year old, it was hell. My husband went out to work in a factory with hundreds of offers, he liked the normality of it. There are no winners in this game in my opinion, should be get financial compensation too?

People are trying to minimise you but actually I think you have every right to be very angry. Being in a caring profession shouldn’t be something to be used against you, I would fully support a claim for compensation, covid infection could have been largely avoided if your employer had given you adequate PPE. Staff weren’t safeguarded, they even asked retired staff who were at increased risk to come back and help out (and a number died) ! The fact that there weren’t enough staff, or PPE or facilities is directly down to negligence from your employer. I think directing your anger towards other workers is misplaced but the anger itself is perfectly justified.

Shame for the patients though.

I think they'll be fine without you if your attitude is anything like on this thread. If you can't see that the experiences of a few of your middle class friends isn't representative of everyone across the country and their experience then maybe open your mind a little. Yes be angry that there was not sufficient PPE, that the government made bad decisions that cost a lot of lives; but why be annoyed at other people who were doing what they were told to do, many of whom struggled. We lost a neighbour to suicide who was struggling with the isolation of working from home (in a min wage admin job), cut off from their support network and without any social interaction- were they fortunate to be forced to stay home to work even though it affected them very negatively?

@Howshouldibehave I never liked how teachers were treated by the media - in real life I only heard positive things. I’m an nhs manager so, due to not being a nurse or dr I’m very much hated by media and fb. I was part of the emergency planning team and can honestly say the managers were phenomenal in a crisis. I’ve never been more proud and we have a superb relationship with the dr and nurses - we’re one team and need each other. Fb however tells me I’m lazy and just take a big salary for nothing. (Although mn tells me my salary is pennies because it’s not 6 figures.)

Everyone has had their challenges and working from home isn’t that great.

I was talking about this with my NHS manager last week - she says it is causing a lot of issues:

• people coming back from furlough or WFH bouncing around and saying how refreshed they feel to a team who have been doing face to face work on reduced numbers the whole time and now feel burnt out

• trying to get people back to the office and them saying they feel scared is not going down well with those who have been going in the whole time

• well-meaning but bloody irritating 'well-being' projects designed by those who WFH. Stop sending me emails about Zoom yoga sessions FFS! My computer keeps flashing up messages about 'have you gone for a refreshing walk' - No, because I am too busy working you arse.

• a lot of worries about being redeployed again/being burnt out from those who have been in the whole time. Staff are cutting down their hours, moving to different jobs, going on bank - the NHS is facing a workforce nightmare.

As one of those privileged workers still safely tucked away at home getting things delivered, I completely agree with you. This pandemic has absolutely illustrated the critical nature of many jobs and the under-compensation in many of them.

In the United States, we are actually struggling to fill many of those jobs now. The only way people are going to keep working them is if they are better compensated. One concrete example is our local trash service. There is such a worker shortage that services have been reduced temporarily. It’s being addressed with sign-on bonuses and increased wages. We have had schools that can’t open because there are not enough bus drivers. There also aren’t enough child care workers for parents to be able to work. We picked up some food from a local restaurant this week and there was a blank job application in the bag. The only way this gets fixed is better wages and better working conditions.

We were a cross between guinea pigs and canaries.

We were out, about and dealing with shifting advice, trains, no trains (it took two and a half hours to get to work by bus), shops open, not open, all the electronic signs telling us to stay home, thanking us or telling us the latest advice - it was a weird glimpse into a dystopian other world.

We've been paid, infected, assaulted, injured in the line of duty (still off sick), and told we're lucky because others died.

In many ways it was a privilege to be out and seeing something other than my own four walls, but the toll it's taken on my mental and physical health will drag me down for years.

Also, saying furlough wasn't paid and so hospitality etc stayed open throughout (not going to entertain the opinion that people should be forced onto benefits which means they'll lose their homes or go without pay as an alternative), do you think your job would have been easier with much higher levels of covid about? Curious about that one.

Firstly I want to thank you (and all carers in our society), for what you did & the risks you took.

I don’t think it’s helpful to group into NHS workers vs privileged middle classes who got to WFH. Because there’s a huge disparity of experience within these groups. I assume some NHS are in administrative roles, for example? And some middle class WFH privileged will have experienced, for example, an elderly parent dying alone without being able to care for them and have been traumatised by that.

More critically, I think that we exist in an increasingly unequal society and in times of crisis, sadly, that plays out and is exposed and we feel it more keenly.

The impacts of this inequity have a profound impact on our ability to empathise and trust each other. I think that’s playing out very clearly on this thread.

More here: equalitytrust.org.uk/trust-participation-attitudes-and-happiness

A PP said that the focus of our anger should be the virus. I would take it a step further.

It’s on the system is if privilege in our society that disadvantage the many and support the few.

Amazon posted in insane increase in profit during the pandemic and PAYS NO FUCKING TAX in this country. There’s the money for key worker pay rides right there.

This is what we should be angry about. Not each other.