What is it they often say? “Be careful what you wish for, as it will
come around and bite your arse!” Well
they do where I come from. I can
remember driving in to Liverpool on that first morning, the first morning that I
had four houses to manage. I wanted
more, but I was terrified. I wasn’t
playing a game; I knew that I was actually dealing with individual lives and
just how important that was. I wasn’t
out to prove that every social worker in the United Kingdom was a waste of space;
they were doing a pretty good job of that themselves. I felt that with the approach I had learned
at Natural Breaks and my ability for coming up with weird and wonderful
solutions, I could actually do some good for these people we supported.
I think it would be fair to say that I felt
lost, there was just too much to do, but I knew this was the environment where
I functioned best. If I had to sit
around with absolutely nothing to do I could be dangerous, ever wonder why they
called me the Newry Bomber on the Desert and Mountain Rescue teams? I checked in with Jimmy and Andrew, like
touching base, looking for a bit of reassurance and then with the standard deep
breath taken and expelled walked my way over to my new house. I suppose I only considered myself having two
main houses as the other two, both requiring six hours per week, were more of
an irritant that an involvement, like spinning plates on poles. One of the fellows at the new house, John,
had a Motability car. Many disabled
people in the United Kingdom are given a financial benefit by the government for
help in getting around. Some people use
this to buy into a scheme where they are given a brand new, taxed and insured
motorcar every three years. All they
have to do is put fuel in it.
I was surprised to see that the car was
missing, but not as surprised as the staff were to see me. John’s car was missing but John was sitting
at the kitchen table eating his breakfast.
John’s car should never be used unless he was in the car; after all, it
was his car. I asked where the other
member of staff was and was told that he was doing his normal morning run,
which was picking his girlfriend up, from her home, in John’s car, and dropping
her off at her place of work. He would
be back soon. I think in the armed
forces, the moment you are promoted in to a position where you can take
disciplinary action against another person you promise yourself that you never
will. Here I was finding myself feeling that
a paperwork disciplinary exercise would not be enough, behind the bike sheds
with baseballs bats kept springing to mind as an alternative.
The missing member of staff came back in, his
name was Kev. I took the car keys off
him and went out to give the vehicle a quick check. It was a nice little standard run about, brand
spanking new, although I cannot remember what flavour it was. I do remember switching it on and noticing that
there were only about fifty miles on the odometer and the petrol tank was
empty. I knew that the other member of
staff would not admit to having snitched on Kev so came back into find him, in
my face, saying that he had a personal emergency that he had to deal with. Normally he wouldn’t have used John’s car but
he had no alternative, it wouldn’t happen again. By the way, could I give him twenty pounds
as, here he hands me a receipt for twenty pounds, he has just put twenty pounds
worth of petrol in the car. I promise
you I was screaming at myself inside my head not to rip his face off.
I retreated to the office, which was a
converted front bedroom, and told them to bring all the paperwork in the house
to me. I am now of course in geek heaven, working my way through all the
accounts and diaries. I wasn’t
impressed. I trusted my original staff
with Jimmy and Andrew implicitly, even though Tony would always be whispering
in my ear, “Do you want some knock off gear?”
Tony lived in the Bootle area of Liverpool which kept up the age old
tradition of looting from the docks. I
knew that if I wanted to buy guns, or drugs, or knock off booze, or even half a
dozen flat screen televisions Tony was my man.
He didn’t steal the items he was just one of thousands of middle men in
Bootle. But I also knew that I could
trust Tony with the accounts in the house, a strange dichotomy, but I really do
believe that when you are fed a diet of how corrupt our politicians and supposed
leaders are every day of our lives and they see that they take no responsibility
for their actions many people think along the lines of what is good for the goose…….
Well, I certainly thought along those lines,
not exactly, I thought what is good enough for a sneaky little shit who steals
from disabled people is to be fired, publicly humiliated and never ever allowed
again to work in this environment. I
began to build a case against Kev but I was worried in case he wasn’t the only
one involved in corruption in the new staff team. Where I had seen corruption in Natural Breaks
and obviously wanted to stop it, I was now in a position to do so but wasn’t
really sure where to start. I knew that
the whole affair would have to be presented to Richard, so understood that
everything would have to be provable and in black and white. It was only because I managed both houses that
I discovered another con that Kev was involved in and I have to say that it was
so cheeky I was impressed.
I mentioned some time before that Gordon came
from his house every Friday evening and sat with Jimmy in his house watching
films. It was always Kev who dropped Gordon
off and who returned to pick him up and escort him back to his own house. I had been there once or twice and could see
that Kev was always in a real hurry to get back to his house. Now that I managed both houses I could see
that there were always two people on duty every Friday night, specifically for
this visit. However Kev was supposed to stay with Gordon. We, in Jimmy and Andrew’s house thought he was
running back to Gordon’s house, the staff member in Gordon’s house thought he
was with Gordon in Jimmy’s house. He was
in fact working for another company and took a fellow out every Friday night to
a local pub for beer and darts. So while
the rest of us were busy dealing with Gordon, Kev was in a pub somewhere being
paid an hourly rate by two companies to drink free beer.
Now apart from being so cheeky you have to
admit that it is quite a con. It was the only provable fact that I could record
against him. Richard as an accountant agreed
with me that the receipts for fuel and beer were quite obviously not genuine
but we couldn’t prove that he had fiddled money from the company. Richard didn’t impress me. I didn’t expect Richard to hold Kev across
his desk while I battered seven bells out of him with a pair of brass knuckle
dusters, I’m sure Tony could have found me a set. But an indication of indigence that the
people he was responsible for supporting to live in the community were being
ripped off didn’t come, absolutely nothing.
Richard went through the disciplinary process and fired Kev. He refused to inform the other company that were
being ripped off on a Friday night what Kev was up to, which I couldn’t understand.
In fact he didn’t speak to me about the incident
until I was summoned to his office a week or two later. I hoped he would turn in to a human being and
say something along the lines of, 'I know where Kev lives lets go and get him,' but no, this was born again Richard. I
was now under investigation as he had received two written complaints about me
and my treatment of the people I supported to live in the community. Despite the fact that we could open the house
diaries and match the hand writing in the letters to various entries in the diaries
and with the fact that they belonged to the old team leader and Kev, both of
whom had just been fired, Richard insisted that he would have to follow the
investigation through.
I couldn’t believe it; I had never met a boss
like it before in my life. Richard was a
proper civilian manager, he knew nothing about leadership. I often remembered Jan in Natural Breaks putting
the violent fellow in the front seat of her car to take him to a family
barbeque at her house while Andrew would ask me who Richard was and what was he
like. The problems I faced in my present
position were difficult enough without receiving what I considered to be the
proper support and encouragement. But as
I was aiming for the top, I knew that once there, there would be no support, so
I may as well get used to it now. They say
that it is lonely at the top, but no one ever mentions how fecking lonely it is
as you begin to make your way up the slippery pole.
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