Thomas Madar – Involvement Volunteer
Experiences of Life and Employment Part 4
My final assignment was worked out offices of this well-known supermarket chain located at an enormous depot occupying the south end of Hatfield. It covered the last six months of 2007, from high summer to the dead of winter. Work varied from updating legacy software to cope with the supermarket’s expansion to the decommissioning of outdated information systems.
My performance was good. Time and task management lessons learned from a previous assignment continued to be put into practice and I became well noted for my thoroughness of my work. However, this was an emotionally rough assignment for reasons which originated well outside the world of work.
Because of my past, I was very sensitive to being left out of conversations, or being ignored in small social groupings. On a Saturday outing to Matlock Bath which was organised by my local Christian Friendship Fellowship group, I experienced a prolonged period of being ignored by the other members of a small group of which I was a member. This upset me greatly. I suffered sustained feelings of social worthlessness and mood swings which lasted until well after the beginning of the following working week, and which impacted on my relationship with others in the working team.
My mood swings triggered off an attack of insomnia which lasted for several weeks. For days at a time, I woke in the small hours of the morning and was unable to return to sleep, with the result that I was fatigued for all of the following day. I suffered periods of drowsiness which were noticeable to my assignment manager. Whenever this happened, I was asked to leave my desk and take a walk around the offices in the hope that exercise and fresh air would keep me awake.
Eventually, my emotions settled down, and I began to sleep well again. But some damage must have been done because unlike with Barclays Bank, my six month contract was not extended. I was also reported to occupational health in the hope that something could be done to relieve any future outbreaks of this nature.
The End
Following the end of my Tesco assignment, I found myself on the Bench. The Bench was a reserve list of employees who were looking for assignments, but were currently unemployed. Recent rules stated that if an employee was on the Bench for more than two months, then a notice of redundancy would follow. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any subsequent assignments commensurate with my skill set, or which did not require a substantial amount of verbal interaction with Xansa clients. This eventually led to me being made redundant in the autumn of 2008.
Thomas is continuing to volunteer for us and in between searching for jobs is a valued member of our Involvement Team helping us to improve our feedback website functionality. http://feedback.nottinghamshirehealthcare.nhs.uk/