It's not the job, it's the people...

I’ve had a part-time cleaning job for two years and can still remember the sense of disbelief that it was in the bag. I thought it would be more difficult. Two and a half years later I have to stop myself snarling “I resign!” down the line to my boss. It isn’t her fault. The problem is the series of lazy idiots that I have been obliged to work with. Or rather, whose work I have had to do. We are told that any job like mine is being chased because the credit crunch has meant that we are all looking for extra income. That should mean that the people doing them are worried about keeping them and work twice as hard. Don‘t you believe it.

My colleague was employed by the company I work for to clean an office in the building where I deal with the communal areas. As soon as she arrived she informed me that she had booked a holiday and would therefore be unavailable for over a week. Fair enough, the holiday was booked before the job turned up. Following this holiday, her absences (often unannounced) became frequent and a nuisance. She finally told me what the problem was and it did seem that a close family member was in a very fragile physical condition. What I couldn’t understand was why she couldn’t explain the problem to our boss who is very understanding and quite capable of seeing things from her perspective. It was as if she was setting herself up to be fired.

When she did let us know that she wouldn’t be there it was at really short notice. I kept getting phone calls five minutes before leaving for work telling me that I would have to provide cover. This was a complete pain because, at the time, I was sharing my job with a person who was also in the habit of taking days off without notice. Apart from that she was absolutely unwilling to work on the premises the other person was responsible for as it meant that the people who worked there could tell if she was cutting corners. So I always had to do it.

This meant that my other colleague was earning twice the pay for providing cover when somehow she managed to finish both her work and mine within the same amount of time it would normally have taken her just to do her own work. In fact she got quicker and quicker at it. Cleaning work like this is usually unsupervised, you have to rely on the honesty of the cleaner and the astuteness of the people using the facilities being cleaned. In the past things had to get really bad before a complaint was made. The rising cost of cleaning and maintenance means that people now expect to get what they pay for. These days if the toilets haven’t been cleaned they say so. And frankly, why shouldn’t they?

The skiver was finally sent on her way after Christmas and I was under the impression that the drama queen who occasionally turned up to clean the office would soon be sent the same way. I was a little surprised to find that, following the termination of her office cleaning contract, she was now to be cleaning the communal areas with me. Especially since the words “I don’t think much of her - I’m going to fire her” had crossed my employer’s lips. A year after the day she first began turning up when she felt like it she is still phoning the office at the last possible moment to say that she won’t be in. At the last minute I am expected to keep things going.

She is the third person to have shared the job with me who has behaved in this way. They have in common the fact that they have been dependent on state benefits for years, in fact the latest one was receiving benefit but neglected to tell our company that or the benefits agency that she had a part-time job. She was good enough to explain to me that I might be getting a visit from the said agency as she had been able to read my name on the paperwork that was on the desk of the person investigating her. It seems that my boss had been asked to provide details of someone who could identify my colleague.

Two of the people I have worked with have raised their children on benefit and have only taken jobs because they were forced to. The third came to the UK as a child refugee in need of medical attention and was brought up by a family member who was already living here. She might as well have been brought up in care as she still speaks broken English in spite of living here for more than a decade and while working with me was only interested in finding out what benefits she could claim now that she was over 18. She was under pressure from a family she barely remembered to get them entry to the UK and a place to live. They seemed to be under the impression that, in a country as wealthy as ours, all it takes is a phone call.

I am left wondering if we have denied a considerable proportion of our population the capacity to think for themselves by making sure they didn’t starve. There was a time when people were embarrassed to claim benefit, it was for emergencies only and not a long term situation. I realise that we are now in a situation where many people have absolutely no choice but to claim but my exposure to three people with a strong sense of entitlement to tax payers’ money makes me think that we have screwed up quite badly somewhere. I think it is absolutely right to make sure that children are fed, clothed and educated but I can’t help feeling that there should be more awareness of where the money comes from on the part of those receiving it. I wonder how many in receipt of benefit understand the mechanism that acquires and provides that money. I don’t expect them to grovel in gratitude for it. What I want is that we end up with fewer people who are good at making excuses and milking the system. I would rather that they used that ability to support themselves.

Once people with that attitude are in the workforce they seem to transfer that sense of entitlement to whatever it is they are doing. They’ve been so well looked after that they seem surprised that they are expected to turn up and actually work. And frankly, why should they?