For the past couple of months I've been teamed up with a regular crewmate, working a regular rota. This is a good thing as it provides stability, enables you to get, for want of a better word, a “bond” with your crewmate (rather than working with a different person every shift) and a chance to plan around your off-days some time in advance.
While I have been away from work, my crewmate has been “third manning” with someone who has just come off long term illness; third manning is where someone who might not be 100% fit joins a regular crew so as to ease themselves back into work – it's a good idea and works well. So my crewmate and various reliefs have been working with this return-to-work person.
Last night I got a phone call from one of my managers.
(Can you guess it didn't go well?)
Apparently I am being moved from my regular crewmate to someone else – while my crewmate is being teamed up with the fella returning to work. This means that my place on the rota will change – throwing all my plans for the next few months into disarray, meaning I get to work all of next week where I should have had a week off, and making us get used to working with new partners.
The other problem with this is that the return-to-work fella has thrown his back out quite seriously, so my old crewmate will be working with a different person every shift, until the fella with the injured back is better.
My manager was phoning me because he'd forgotten to tell me any of this in advance…
Consequently my life is up in the air at the moment while we sort out what is going on, just as I was planning on going on two London Blogmeets in the near future.
I think I'll go and have a chat with him tomorrow, and make a few suggestions – I don't think he'll listen as to change things back would be a headache for him, but I may as well give it a shot.
I finished my ECG course today, and I found it a good course, most of which was a revision for me, but it did teach me a few new tricks.
Back to the road tomorrow – Happy, happy, joy, joy!
I can totally empathise. We have similar issues where I work (NZ). It sucks, but this is so typical of ambulance service providers. They seem to forget (
don't care) about the impact of their decisions on staff. It's as if joining ambulance necessarily involves commitment above and beyond the call – dedication to your job 100% of the time. I sometimes wonder when they will insist on tattoo's…but anyway I digress.Does your union not have minimum notice requirements for changes of shift pattern negotiated into your employment agreement? If they don't – they should. It is one of the only ways we have managed to give people at least a little bit of planning ability in their external lives. That, and moving most people to a four on four off pattern (watch system) and permanent station rosters with far less people on relief.Not sure I would like a single permanent partner. I think you could become too comfortable with each others little habits/complacent. Variety is (within reason) the spice of life!
It's tough to have to “give up” a partner or work with people you're not comfortable with. I didn't always work with my buddy Joe when I was on call, but we got along very well, I knew I could trust him, and he trusted me. Now he's on a year long leave of absence, and I'll be missing him while he's gone, and hoping to heck he actually does come back. At any rate, I hope you get thing worked out. There are some people on my crew I don't know very well, and, I'm very sorry to say, I don't trust.