Do you like or want to - work?

Do you have actual evidence, or is this just more paranoid anti-vax rhetoric?

I completely agree with you.

I am 54 and despise working. I have never pushed myself to have a career, rather than a job, its just too overwhelming. I hate being called out for doing things wrong, and looking stupid. I have always just wanted to keep my head down and not be noticed, difficult when you are not the boss. Last few years have been hell, I am just burnt out.

Good news is I have 46 working days left in this job! We are downsizing and relocating to Lincolnshire. The house needs lots of work, so I am taking 5-6 months to do the work off while my wife gets a new job. Then I can go and get a min wage job with no stress, no mortgage or debt. Sadly the jobs I would love to do are generally done by volunteers like museum guides. Love books but Libraries and would love to be an assistant. More than likely end up with a driving job or in a supermarket.

Rob

I am sorry but I have to disagree. Coming from a scientific background PEOPLE DIED (sorry for shouting). We were dealing with an unknown disease at the time with no cure and spreading like wildfire. A lot of people were and still are at severe risk if they catch covid. I believe that vaccinations should be mandatory but it is a balancing act. Now everyone thinks it's back to normal but I will tell you now it aint over for a lot of people and never will be.

Having been involved in the front line for the early part of the pandemic and it was scary as feck. Everybody had to make sacrifices for the greater good.

This is a bit of a touchy subject for me so I will politely just agree to disagree is it is quite triggering.

Just imagine if Labour had been in office during Covid? We would have had armed police and military deployed on our streets to enforce Covid Rules, patrolling supermarkets looking for any violations (without any exemptions being permitted) as in opposition, Labour kept banging on about the Tories Covid restrictions not being severe and strictly enforced enough, which in Labour-controlled council areas, they went really OTT in enforcing Covid rules - as regards vaccine mandates, Labour would have went much further in enforcing same, including empowering police and milltary to do forced vaccinations, as we saw with disabled children in Alberta Canada and the Indian Army and police in Rural India - in Ireland the police prevented people from being present at their grandparents passing, funerals and burials, except via zoom and prevented old people from going to Mass in Rural Ireland, arresting people under the amended Irish mental treatment act and using the same act to force vaccinations, even in the case of people being on remand and in Irish jails - Irish parents who objected to their children being vaccinated in Irish schools and who homeschooled them instead had the Gardai (Irish police) taking those children into Irish state care (TUSLA) where they ended up being forcibly vaccinated - many of these children and adults ended up getting serious side effects from the vaccines and normal healthy (traumatised) children and adults ended up getting heart attacks, strokes, myocarditis, cancers, blood clotting and as revealed by Irish funeral directors before cremation (preferable to burial) “sudden” deaths became “normalised” as in “sudden death syndrome” meaning that half of all young Irish children and babies, not previously thought to be at risk before Covid were lost following the implementation of Covid mandates in Ireland 

And in our post-Covid world, as we advance towards the CCP style “social credit system” especially after Digital ID’s are made mandatory, I suspect that disabled people and people with autism will be far more likely to be unfairly penalises, including by the benefits system for expressing any views (at all) on any issue, political or otherwise, anywhere online, regardless of any other issue, as by then the right to online privacy, freedom of speech and freedom of expression will be totally “done away with” and the discrimination and prejudice against disabled people will massively increase, especially if aged over 40, despite the policies put in place to protect the rights of disabled people that “the powers that should not be” will not even bother to continue to implement let alone enforce, aside from themselves alone only paying lip-service to and attempting to pursue our rights in these cases will be totally shut down via the courts 

Can't help but agree with this. I feel in the case of autism, people just expect you to suck it up and get over it. This is a reason as to why people with autism or other underlying disabilities don't disclose or talk about it. You have too many people telling you to "get out of your comfort zone" or you are expected to put your needs aside and change to please others. In the case of work, the employer will simply fire you because you are a liability that is too costly.

The UC system is designed in a way where the work coaches often see you as a number on their long list of caseloads - they don't bother identifying your needs and helping you find suitable work (unless you are lucky to get a nice work coach which is rare). The point is, work coaches have to meet targets so will shove you into any old job - mainly retail, customer service, warehousing, care or fast food - most of which are zero hour jobs with inconsistency in shifts, low wages and next to nothing in progressional opportunities or benefits.

I was on UC once back in 2020 and had the rare occurrence of having a work coach who supported me (that I am occasionally in touch with as I am trying to branch out of office work tbh) - however not a lot of people get this opportunity. There are instances where the UC system ends up driving people crazy and they end up committing suicide.

I feel that the jobs market in general has taken a nosedive, especially as the only decent jobs available require you to have connections that would refer you.

Hi, sadly I don't (as I work in a different department - children/families)

I can agree here. Same goes for the care industry; in my role as an admin assistant (as per mentioned) I witnessed so much dodgy practice I don't know where to start.

Managers would pocket money from their own staff by overcharging for employee expenses such as DBS/trainings and use the cash to go on holidays every month (mostly taking 2 to 3 weeks off all whilst paying the majority of staff minimum wage), inexperienced staff were sent to homes, documents were forged for inspections, the list goes on. I unfortunately had stress issues and depression partially caused by this job and had to be signed off for 2 to 3 weeks before - managers always called you out of hours (as without myself and my colleagues in the admin team, nothing could be done and management had no idea what was happening in their own company as they were hardly there!). My colleagues and I had triple the workload each and management hardly assisted us when deadlines came up, just yelled at us for not doing enough.

I experienced having a panic attack when the former operations manager called me more than 10 times out of hours and when I explained to them I didn't want out of hours contact (as it infringed on my personal time), they said every company operates this way which was BS (as in my current job with the council work and life balance is highlighted as important and when on leave, I can enjoy time off knowing nobody contacts me out of hours). Also, I was the only senior admin present until leaving that job last year and had to do the work of 3 people whilst training my colleague's replacement who was not only getting £2+ more than myself and my senior colleagues, they also had no admin experience and was unable to communicate properly in English (in this case the replacement was a permanent staff with a visa sponsorship and all staff in this group got pushed into every role although most of them didn't have the qualifications or experience in care). When explaining about the amount of pressure I had to deal with, the operations manager gaslit me and implied I couldn't handle pressure and needed me to delegate duties to the new admin. When I did delegate, all duties got pushed onto me because the manager's excuse was that the new admin didn't know what to do (although they hired that person to begin with).

One of my former colleagues who resigned 6 months before myself is neurodivergent and they too had similar experiences to myself which caused them to resign. That and they were unfortunately had an experience where they were spoken to inappropriately and groomed by the general manager. I won't go much into this but it was kept hidden and the general manager told the deputy to cut off contact with my colleague (who informed them about the situation).

I would never subject myself to working in the care industry again, although I never worked in the homes behind the scenes is no better and I also can't stand working in a place where managers are OK with faking DBS certs and sending inexperienced staff to work with vulnerable people, knowing any incident can take place. I think in my previous job what didn't help was the clear lack of training for staff (as iirc there were a couple of days of inductions and 2 weeks of online training). Also, I got this admin assistant role through the Kick-start Scheme back in 2021 and the whole thing was handled poorly as majority of Kick-start candidates at my former workplace had no work for 6 months. I pushed and pushed for them to get work but management just refused to give them anything and would blame me for keeping them on although they hired them. They essentially rotated between groups for cheap labour and it sickened me. I even had to report them to ACAs due to a year's worth of pension contributions missing (which I thankfully got back).

In the case of my former managers, they were the types to come across friendly and supportive and would always gaslight or undermine you in any way possible. God forbid if you asked for a pay increase (which I tried to do) or even accommodations. If they had to pay out of pocket for anything, they wouldn't do it 99% of the time unless it was for themselves. 

Frankly, since my later in life diagnosis, as an “unofficial” way to get a post-diagnostic assessment to both identify my level of autism and to identify any appropriate support needs, I would be open to the idea of working for an autism charity or other autism related company - doing so would also ease the pressures of others who refuse to understand autism, including at official level and I would be in a better position to handle the obvious prejudice and discriminatory attitudes that are out there, given the kind of experience that I would gain from such a position - perhaps this is something that NAS and other autism charities and bodies could be carefully considering as part of its campaign work? 

For me I hate working for other people, but my nature also gets the better of me, I always want to help people or make them smile, as a result ive tried a plethora of jobs, most of which were by the time i turned 20, im now 26...

Ive been trying to understand ways to work for myself as I cant stand having to wake up at 5am just to be at an office for a 7am start, leads to massive burnout, especially as I work in public services, I have tried a lot of things and luckily have found a side gig of a community manager that is compensated and I work my own hours as a second job, however I really wanted to back in the day become a streamer and entertain people and have "friends", this went well for a bit then fell flat because I forgot how to have fun.

Personally wish I could take a step away from full time jobs and work my own career, however my family hate that notion and will turn their nose up at the thought of me not being in a full time job.

I am the same.  I do return to some interests. some atrophy if not persisted in, like language studies.

The Legacy of Blair's Regime!

It’s the same with supermarket management positions, they get a sick thrill out of abusing their power against workers and many “policies and procedures” and “ways of working” enable and encourage such behaviour, giving them a shield to hide behind, backed by the trade unions who have “partnership agreements” with many supermarket companies - if workers try to sue using their own solicitors via a private prosecution they can be then counter-sued for libel, defamation and slander by the supermarkets in bullying cases for example and this can even include police involvement as well as local councils and even bodies like the DWP - even the courts and the legal system is weighted in favour of supermarkets and trade unions against workers right from the start, making it virtually impossible to get justice or legal redress, all,of which makes for a totally corrupt system

When I had to go to the job centre every couple of weeks before I got back on incapacity benefits, my "worker" told me that her husband was having the same problems and that they treat their staff just as badly or even worse than they do the general public.

No, but I don’t have a choice. The thought of ever having to go on universal credit absolutely petrifies me with the way they treat you. So I just carry on struggling with being self employed instead, and not earning very much money at all. 

Hi Desmond, I know what you mean. I did the Accounting Technician level 3 qualification whilst working full time - I was around 40 at the time so had more energy than I do now, but it was still very intense and pretty exhausting.

Now I'm retired I just want something to focus on and help keep my mind active. The open learn courses have no essays or reports to write and no deadlines, so it's a relaxing way to learn, at your own pace.

However, if learning is not for you, you should definitely not feel you should be studying. We are all different and all have different abilities, needs and ways of coping. I hope you have your life structured to suit you now. Feeling content, no matter what we do or don't do, is the aim.

I have too many qualifications. And, now, I don't feel mentally capable of further study. Thirteen years ago, I began an Accounting Technician course; then suffered burnout, the following January. I quit the course, and my life went back into tailspin.

I can't cope with such intensity.

I have too many qualifications. And, now, I don't feel mentally capable of further study. Thirteen years ago, I began an Accounting Technician course; then suffered burnout, the following January. I quit the course, and my life went back into tailspin.

I can't cope with such intensity.