Published on 12, July, 2020
Continuing with my problems at work.
And the incidents that annoy me.
I work as a support worker with people having both physical & mental disabilities who exhibit challenging behaviour.
Last week I got a severe reprimand from a senior support worker for using my smartphone at work. I was checking the weather forecast on the BBC site. A couple of hours later the same support worker was spending hours on her smartphone playing solitaire, while her colleague was on social websites. I hate hypocrisy.
I still haven't been sacked. But I am facing a formal disciplinary hearing in two weeks time, where one option is dismissal.
New charges against me include, that at one meeting I was moving about on a rotating chair playing with it. I was actually stimming while under stress and trying to relax.
Sorry to hear it's not getting any better for you, Robert.
In my last care job, there was a 'three strikes and you're out' approach to smart phone use. Anyone caught using a phone had to prove that it was work-related, or declare that it was work-related before using it. Social media was monitored to see who might be using it. People got sacked for continually using their phones.
In my current job, I'm the odd-one-out in that I'm the only one who doesn't use my phone at work - unless I'm ringing a colleague for help, or am trying to find something to help me in an activity (a map to get to a place, a diagram of how to make an Origami model, a piece of music, etc.) The other staff have their phones in hand (or immediately to hand) all day. One of them spends hours on social media. Another one spends hours on dating sites. In doing this, they're effectively stealing time from their clients, with whom they're meant to be interacting. I hate it. Your one-off use of it sounds genuine enough. The hypocrisy of your co-workers is reprehensible. Sounds almost to me like they're deliberately targeting you. I have the same at work. I complained to management about the smart phone issue. Next thing I noticed was that people seemed to be using them even more around me! And the managers are the worst culprits.
Are you allowed to take someone with you to the disciplinary? It's shocking that you're being 'disciplined' over things like this.
Bullying at work can take many forms, and can be quite subtle. Just ignoring you, for instance. We have people like that where I work.