Guilt Free Railing 17

[WouldBeGood]

Happy New Thread, Railers!

I suppose the need to show a card is to track uptake of the scheme, rather than just to make kids show a Scot-gov branded card...

Here is a freedom we don't want you to have. How-many bus journeys taken by young people are ever non essential?

Fortunately it's been so poorly publicised that hardly anyone will see the non essential bus travel gubbins.

Frivolous bus travel - how very 2022 in Scotland!

🤣 yo frivolous bus travel and questioning forbidden!

Scotland 2022!

Rookieteen is excited as he can get the first bus and then change at a later stop rather than waiting for the specific service that gets him there. That could perhaps be deemed as non-essential bus use.

It is such a shame because it's a genuinely great benefit for our young people (and will save us a decent amount in bus fares) but the bungled messaging and waggy fingers sucks all the joy out of it.

@ResilienceWanker

I can't see it appealing to the DC now. I think you may be overestimating the number of things left to them to do for legal entertainment!

LOL at the Sturge needing to let off steam here! ("railing at people who just don't understand and appreciate I'm doing what's best for them... They're ganging up on me and saying nasty things behind my back")

😂 What a great AIBU thread that would make.

I'd love her to do a AMA. Is there a popcorn emoji? But no, I don't think she handles challenging questions well at all, so I can't see it.

They need the cards for the travelling to be logged with the bus company accurately as they'll charge back to scotgov?

Though maybe the bus companies could just use the scotgov method of statistical reporting and use whatever figures benefit them most?

I've never hung out on the bus, I may however have gone round the underground a couple of times more than necessary or gone the 'wrong' way round to kill time.

The youth of today will be no different. Annie McLeod - children are the same all through time!

I occasionally used the bus to skip school but mostly used the lifts in the nearby high flats for that.

I'm railing today about work. People are off sick all over the place, or caring for kids who are isolating and off school. Buses are running a saturday service so it's not easy for many to get on-site (mainly wfh but do need a site presence of a handful of folk every day on a rota basis) and yet there is no let up in expectations, target etc.

GPs have stopped routine appointments, cancer screenings are disrupted, buses and trains aren't running properly. I don't think I have a bullsit job, exactly, but in the grand scheme of things what we do is far less important than any of this yet we're expected to carry on as normal. Deadlines to meet, targets to achieve. I've been back three days and am on my knees. Why can't we accept that some things will slide right now?

I took 10 days holiday in 2020. Carried forward 10 and lost 16 days, despite working 10-15 hours unpaid overtime every week. Last year I managed to take most of my allocation, minus another 10 days carry forward and only 2 days lost but I got so much criticism for it, for taking time off at such a critical time and letting others down. Presenteeism has gone mad here with everyone competing so how how little AL they are using. On the other hand, I have a relative working for the NHS in a covid ward. She has taken her full AL entitlement throughout because annual leave is important.

Sectors offering a much more important public service are taking decisions based on the current realities so why aren't the powers that be in my workplace paying heed to this?

That's grim cold - covid has been endless punishment of the rule following people who always try and do the right thing.

It's a stealth piecemeal lockdown - hard to navigate in some ways as it's less clear what is running and for how long.

I feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall. I was in a meeting yesterday where it was explicitly said, "we can never cut any type of service due to lack of staff - this looks unprofessional. The only way we can reduce our offering is if we can evidence that the service is not worth running and that needs to be on a permanent basis, not temporary".

FFS. There is nothing wrong with saying that services ABC can be offered with a full quota of staff and access to on-site equipment. A reduction in staff or an inability to access equipment may mean that only service A can be offered at this time but we hope to get B and C back on offer soon. There is nothing unprofessional about this and every other sector is managing it.

@ColdNovemberRain That sounds horrific. Is there a high staff turnover? Which might send senior management a message.

Amazing cold, do they want people to start fabricating evidence for permanent cuts? I try and detach and think about dinner when dealing with that level of nonsense.

Cold what sort of work / industry are you in?

Years ago it was pointed out to me you get paid to take your holidays so take them. Your company has calculated your salary on that basis and if they cannot afford for you to take the time off they should pay you for them.

@Lockdownbear Which is the only reason we're being forced encouraged to take all our annual leave in the NHS. They know they can't afford to pay people for holidays not taken, and can't afford to let us carry it over either as they'd need bank/agency staff to backfill. Don't let them kid you @ColdNovemberRain, it's nothing to do with our wellbeing.

We're quite a niche area (I know, everyone on MN claims that ) I think staff turnover would be higher if there were obvious places for people to go but being stressed yet still paying the mortgage will always win over the alternative. I did have one staff member leave just before christmas, with no job to go to but she had just had enough. She made very clear in her exit interview that the workload was too high, especially since the pandemic began and I duly passed this to senior management and HR who then duly dismissed it, giving me the requisite pat on the back for managing a team during very trying times. But the times don't need to be this trying. That's the point I'm trying to make. I'm sure any given stakeholder, knowing that they are currently unable to make a GP appointment, have had a dinner reservation cancelled as the restaurant is short staffed due to illness and isolation, can't get a train, is concerned about the risk of booking a holiday abroad, has had their kids off school or nursery or has their kids amalgamated with another three classes because there are not enough teachers to go round atm... If we get back to them to say we cannot take on this piece of work at this time, they are likely to just mentally file this under "another casualty of covid" rather than decide that we've suddenly become unprofessional in our approach. Yes, there are a few arseholes out there but the majority of people are just exhausted humans trying to get on with life.

And don't get me started on the "essential journey" nonsense. Luckily I don;t have any young folk at home who are affected by this but this message is sending us back to March 2020. Also as LRT are running a reduced service, I now have to get two buses from home to work rather than the one which took me door to door but only runs Mon-Fri. So more hopping on and off buses, buses more crowded due to infrequency, more exposure, more risk and we're supposed to consider and justify whether the journey is "essential" or not. It just puts the blame back on people for daring to go about their lives.

Anyway. I had a cancelled meeting 10-11am so rather than getting on with work which would have been the sensible option, I've been messing around on MN. I'll regret that later but I've already worked a considerable amount in the evenings over the last two nights so thought I'd take some time back. Got to get back to it now though :-(

That's rubbish @ColdNovemberRain as you say lots of services are restricted because of self-isolation, covid etc. Better to be honest about what you can offer I think.

We have the Saturday service for buses too (Lothian?), which is entirely down to covid staff shortages, some of which will be perfectly healthy people having to isolate at home.

We were told school services would run as normal but poor DC waited best part of half an hour for a bus to school yesterday and normally 3-4 buses would go along that very busy route at that time of day. It was freezing yesterday morning too.

I'm sure the 'essential' journey thing is a realisation that giving kids a permanent free ticket the buses could very quickly become somewhere to hang out.

It sounds good in theory giving kids free tickets until you really think it through. Increasing the reduced fare to 18 or even 21 makes more sense.

I was in a meeting yesterday where it was explicitly said, "we can never cut any type of service due to lack of staff - this looks unprofessional.

Oh, sympathy. We did a ‘prioritisation exercise’ last January (I think? back when all the schools and nurseries were closed anyway), to try to cut down workload to match staff resource. Several weeks of faffing and then they concluded “everything is a priority so we won’t be dropping anything, as you were.”

I'm right there with you on mental workloads!
We have been told to "do the best we can" except all work is critical and drop dead date cannot be moved......... so the do the best we can is work our arses off racking up flex time we cannot take......
We are also back to individual risk assessments and sign off to go into the office so it takes a week to get approval!

Will be interested to see if part of the review in a few weeks the legal requirement to wfh is removed. Some of my colleagues are up in arms about the possibility of having to go back personally I want some balance (and for my energy consumption to go down!!!)

That's a good point about energy consumption. With prices set to rise by 50% I think more of us should be asking for a wfh allowance from our employers. The £6 a week tax relief from HMRC is woeful.

Railing about Uni being switched to all online again this semester. Just utterly deflated with it.

Also need a name change as mine is very last year.

Trying to do dry January. I may fail this weekend

We were initially told we'd get a WFH allowance of a couple of quid a day but then that was quickly removed and we were advised to do the HMRC thing. Our work stance is that we are all saving on travelling costs so that's that. I live very near work so I'm spending more on heating and energy than I would on travel. That said, DS hasn't been in uni either so the heating and energy will be there for that anyway.

That's ridiculous Unis still being online.
Are they publishing how many students are dropping out etc compared to previous years?

I know that this will totally be off most people's radars, and the numbers are probably very low, but some students are in very vulnerable positions. Who need that face to face and time to build a new peer support network.
Just cruel.

Agree lockdown. DS2 in Aberdeen has been getting a lot of stuff face to face last term (3rd year) and he's managed to reconnect with some of his first year friends. DS1 (4th year) lived at home and whilst he's also extremely shy and socially awkward, he has no friends from Uni, he's barely been in at all so very little opportunity to make any. He's had 3 x 1 hour sessions since early March 2020, was supposed to be 4 but the last one was cancelled whilst he was on the train. I suspect he'll have very little face to face this term either and then he'll be in his final year of an integrated masters without having any Uni friends. I'm really disappointed for him and all the other folk who aren't really having any kind of Uni experience aside from the academics.