The light at the end of the tunnel….

…. is some ***** with a torch come to laugh at us.

Duke’s CV got sent to a company who were after someone “just like him” and who were offering a starting salary of £18k plus car.  They took on one of the other lads he worked with a few months ago and he recomended Duke (as Duke taught him most of what he knew)  Trouble is we live too far away.  But, naturally, they will keep his details at the top of the pile for our area and as soon as a post is available he’s right at the top of the shortlist.

and then there’s the Red Cross work.  Duke’s been pointing out that the working time directive is being violated by the fact taht staff are working  14 hour shifts overnight for 2 or 3 consecutive nights meaning that not only are they working more than the allowed 12 hours in a single shift but they aren’t getting the required minimum of 11 hours off in between.  He’s been ignored but sadly they have now remembered that he has a day job and they need to talk to him about it (which of course serves him right for not keeping his head down and blending in with the scenery…..) and we are expecting them to throw the working time directive back in his face by pointing out that working 2 jobs both of 36+ hours a week takes him over the allowed weekly hours (which is 60, unless you are superhuman and qualify as a doctor at which point you are capable of working 60 hours a day…..)

I’m vaguely hoping they will just offer him reduced hours or something but I can’t see it.  They have got what they wanted from him (all the information they needed to set up the service in the first place on the offer of a management role once it got going….. need I say the management role went to someone already at Branch whose contract was coming to an end?) so tehy can just throw him away like everyone else does now can’t they.

a minor train rant and anything else I feel like bickering about

We’re off on a train journey tomorrow and I am looking forward to it, BUT, I hvae to change several times and no-where, no-how can I find platform information.  Which means I’m going to need to find a board or a real live person who knows these things and negotiate a station I’ve never been to before in 7 minutes to be sure I get on my train onwards.  I know, I know 7 minutes is probably going to be oodles of time but I have lasting memories of there being 14 platforms at Manchester Pic and needing to be on the furthest one out to catch my train home and regularly watching it dissapearing out of the station just as I was legging it over the bridge.  Which is fine when it’s just half an hour to wait for the next one but not so fine when you have a further two connections to catch and a lift waiting for you at the far end of the country.  So I have to be a big brave girl and grab the first person I see in  a railway uniform and hope it’s not the trainee really don’t I!  But really, how hard would it be on these journey planners to list the platform?  From memory, unless there is a problem each line has it’s “own” platform so as long as it came with a proviso that it could possibley be running from elsewhere but try here first it would just be so much easier!  It’s not as if I know which line these stations are on!  I know all the stations I used to use, which lines, where you could hop off one line and get a train on a different one to get places not on the line in my old town but Clapham Junction?  Watford Junction?  All I know about them is that EVERYTHING goes through there!!!!  Ho hum.  There was me thinking that going by train would be oh so much easier than by car (well, okay, so it still is easier but not as easy as I’d hoped)

And whilst I’m feeling grumpy…. Duke’s new rota.  Three consecutive nights every 3rd week.  Fine, for everyone for whom this is their only job, not fine for those for whom there is a day job to get up for really.  And I know they can’t work things just to suit Duke but FFS!!!  And we think they are breaking employment law as the shifts are 14 hours but no one is listening.  Of course, he could just chuck that job in and settle for one lousy low wage and get undisturbed sleep every night but he’s put his heart and soul into getting this set up for the Red Cross, been offered all sorts of posts at some point in the future and seen the co-ordinator’s role go to some woman who already works part time at Branch and is therefore part of the in crowd of middle aged bored housewives who take all the glory for what the volenteers work for.

hmph.