Wish me luck
It will have nothing to do whether he or she has a British attitude to work. It will depend on their personality I.e. How ruthless they are in pursuit of their own ambitions.
Having worked in the same position for 10 years (Area Youth Worker). Work got very personal for me over the last 2 years, I worked for local government and the austerity cuts resulted in a new manager arriving from elsewhere in the service. After calmly expressing my disagreement with a decision made, said manager turned out to be a first class and proceeded to make my working life an utter misery. He used all the tools and opportunities, available to him, to make me pay. His manager colluded the whole way and I fought as best I could. My whole life began to revolve around not getting 'in trouble' with manager, stress, obsessing and worrying about work. Some counseling helped and I survived. My wife had been pregnant throughout the majority of the shitstorm and my 2nd child (a daughter) arrived March 2014 (incidentally this was not even acknowledged by my manager). I felt numb, like I had missed the whole thing.I am certain the behaviour was rooted in fear, feeling threatened and in self preservation but there was very little I could do to prevent it. I will never really know why. Nor do I care to know why now.Early last year further cuts were announced and the opportunity to consider voluntary redundancy arose. I took it. October 2014 the pressure cooker was released and I was out. A chance to reappraise what is important in life. A chance to try something else. The post grad certificate in education, I did after my degree and never used, came into play for some supply teaching. Some contacts built during my time as a youth worker came good and I was interviewed for a specialist teaching position at a local secondary school (it's 20 seconds walk from home!) Friday just gone. YYFY I got the job. I will be working with people who I know are lovely, I will have the shortest commute to work I have ever had and I will be on holiday when my children are on holiday. I will have more time to spend at home with my family, (cough... more time for climbing and surfing!). Not sure if there is a moral to the story but I know that when things get so personal that everything outside of work is affected it's not a place to remain.
Going down in the dephts of this appeal that I'm writing, I realized more and more, that when things get personal in the way that I explained, it's because I'm really scared. I'm scared by the idea of undergoing and injustice because the other part was successful in misleading the judge (like they're trying to do in this case). I'm not scared by losing to someone who's better than me, or has better rights. Dura lex sed lex. As usual, fear generates aggression.
