‘D Day’ : Leap Into The Unknown! (Community Care!? Actually) by Alfred N. Muggins (current affairs observer, and undercover reporter!)

15/6/24

    ‘No work today!’ Alfred felt guilty. It was the ‘Ides of June’, so to speak. (He was certainly not going to the forum today!) It was Saturday, but he somehow felt guilty. But why should he? He had worked every Saturday, and Sunday for many months, in his Community Care job, and even years (apart from the occasional holiday)! So it felt really strange to be on what seemed to be an alternate shift pattern – one weekend on and one weekend ‘off’! Having said that, so far his new employer’s work patterns were extremely ‘up in the air’ and strange so far. Instead of being given some of the normal jobs of his previous employment – now transferred, like himself, to the new company, which had won the tender for much of his area – the manager had wanted him to bend his body clock even further to start at 7 am, or even earlier and do all of them in one run’ which he knew would have been too much at once, and would not allow him to take his wife’s nephew to school for 8.20 am (on school days).

    So his refusal to do that seemed to cost him that kind of continuity with his ‘old’ clients from his previous company of the last 20 years. Instead he had been allocated just 3 morning jobs on the first new day of the new employment 3^rd of June (which he naturally labelled D Day, as it was also a leap into the unknown, and a bit frightening! (It wasn’t actually D Day, but it was three days before the anniversary) The media was of course full of D Day themes at that time, in the run up to that most momentous and crucial date for Western Civilisation – the 6^th of June – commemorating 1944, when civilization was very much in the balance, and had to be fought for with the blood of so many largely young citizens. It was eighty years since, to the day, and the much fewer number of veterans still alive made it an important marker, which the media had been obviously instructed to report and commemorate fully.

    But I digress!

    Alfred’s current work ‘D Day’, inflicted not by freedom hating Nazis, but by a mysterious and distant Social Services, who had demanded a periodical shake up of the Community Care system in his town, following very mysterious formulas, which it was most difficult for an ordinary mere worker, such as himself to appreciate or understand! Hundreds (? How many? – He didn’t know!) of clients were thrust into the position of losing their regular carers in the shake up, and hundreds (how many?) of carers either scrambled into sheltered housing jobs or suffered the turmoil of being sent to new or unfamiliar jobs and having a hard time for at least the next few weeks, while things settled down again or the new clients became familiar and more regular. Would he ever have regular clients again? He did appear to have lost his old clients of the last few hard worked months, and recent years.

    Strangely, after giving him 3 unusual calls on ‘D Day’ Monday itself, no more work appeared on his new computerized app sheet for a few days! Not until he plucked up the courage to ring up and ask where all his work had gone a few days later on the Friday was he given some more work. He had thought the new manager might have been annoyed with him for not agreeing to work to the new company’s expectations on day one, but would have thought they would have needed all the help they could to keep up services to clients. He had been working in this Community Care setting for more than 20 years, but suddenly in a continuing employment situation into a new company, it seemed he was being deprived of regular work because they wanted him to change his work practices and not even ask him what he thought! They promptly then fitted up the first weekend of the new employment with plenty of work. But he had had to prompt them!

    He hadn’t minded having a few days of rest, to be fair, despite the rising uncertainty of wondering whether he still had a job at all. There were so many little chores and things which needed doing at home, that he hadn’t minded some kind of break after 6 months and more of quite heavy workloads and no respite, in fact only one holiday day taken since Christmas, and seven working days a week, even if some of them were not completely full days. It had been particularly busy over the last weekend of his old company.

    He later learned, or picked up the sense that quite a few jobs had not been fulfilled in the first week, but that was no surprise if the new company/agency had not even given work to the staff who were supposed to be transferred to them. He suspected that it was another example of modern management incompetence, a last minute (despite at least 6 months of warning with an extra extension of two months before it happened) and unprepared handover. Quite a few clients had some complaints – but there was bound to be some turmoil as Social Services dictated their tender bid changes. (Magic wands do not actually work in modern times! (Unfortunately!))