Office Duty

I guess some regular readers might be pondering why this blog seems to have dried up of late? Have management caught up with him? Has there been a dreaded SFO? Has the computer comprehensively crashed? Well, I've been pondering the question too. As has been discussed before, I might have just run out of things to say and a natural end been arrived at. I certainly feel as if I'm repeating myself on occasion. But on the other hand new stuff comes along fairly regularly and someone has to comment on it....However, I think the truth is I've become depressed about the way the job is going and anyone with experience of depression will know that it tends to incapacitate to varying degrees.

So, why have I become depressed? An accumulation probably, but neatly illustrated by this. Several weeks ago I found myself having reason to visit a Probation Office in a far-flung town. In such circumstances I always find it fascinating to read the various notices put up for the benefit of clients in the waiting room. In amongst all the usual helpful ones about services available in the locality there were rather stern ones about behaviour, reporting procedures and the bus fare reimbursement policy, but the one about Office Duty particularly caught my eye.

Now, ever since I first set foot into a Probation Office many years ago, there has always been a Duty Officer available to see any client that turned up at the door unexpected and when their Officer was not available. It was a responsibility that all Officers were expected to undertake regularly on a rota basis. Personally, I always enjoyed the opportunity of meeting clients belonging to colleagues and the buzz from being put on the spot by the inevitable crises that clients always seem to have in their lives. It was just part of the job and part of the service which we offered. So imagine my surprise to be reading that such a facility was only available for one hour daily at this particular office.

I know each office has a slightly different approach to Office Duty nowadays, but I found myself pondering on the notion that our often chaotic clients had to be sufficiently well organised to be able to plan crises around this one hour of availability of a Duty Officer. If anything was likely to further aggravate and inflame clients negative views of the Service, it was surely this? I know it would seriously piss me off.

I recall from personal experience how extremely annoyed I became when my local GP's surgery unilaterally ended the time-honoured practice of an 'open' surgery from 8 till 9am six days a week. Under the new system it's now impossible to get an appointment on the day and more time off work has to be arranged in order to attend a fixed appointment at a future date. It has never been adequately explained to me how this is an improved service for patients. For years I had been willing to queue from 8am in order to be seen before setting off to work and there was never any issue of patients missing appointments, as now of course.

So, just grumpiness or depression? The borderline must be narrow and the latter seems to creep up insidiously. Happily for me, it eventually seems to pass.