Frontline service workers - are they all that ?

HondaSami wrote: »

It's laughable that the goverment actually thought people would be falling over themselves applying for these positions, it's even more laughable that lots of posters on here would not apply either even though they like to berate the PS they would not work for the money offered.

Substitute the word Goverment for 'private sector employer' .

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

i am self employed trying to keep a business going in an economic depression

this is the real frontline

God would you ever get over yourself.

What is it some self-employed people and their overinflated sense of their own importance?

Where To wrote: »

If you don't like it, how can you do it to the best of your ability? Give it 100% even when you are in bad form?

It's called being professional.

Boombastic wrote: »

Union pressure. They would rather stay on the dole for €188 / week, they don't seem to be starving on it if they can turn down a secure job offer with €27,000 salaries (and yes it is 27,000, unless you can show me a nurse that doesn't work shifts of doesn't work in any hospital department, therefore allowances must be included)

Does this include allowances? thought it was starting at €21,769.

Nurses aids will be paid more than the nurses, it's not right.

mlumley wrote: »

I think its gone off ops question, he wasnt asking about managers, he was asking about front line PS staff.

Remember the Retained Firemen who went into a burning building, but never came out alive. Or the Guard who got shot the other week. Ambulance personel who go out to help people and get bricks thrown at them. Same for fire fighters.

Then there is the stress that goes with the job.

Yes, they should get paid well, sometimes they litraly give their life to the job, and dont get much thanks when they do the job.

The hero is the one running into the burning building to save others.

He/she deserves to be paid well.

Cant see many TD's doing that.

Heroes don't go on strike.

tayto lover wrote: »

The exception to the rule i'd say though.
Someone still has to start at the bottom too but nobody taking it up.

Not directed at you tayto but personally speaking there's nothing exceptional when it comes to people and their potential, because there simply are no hard and fast rules that say you can't do this, that, the other, or whatever the hell you want to do as your chosen career path, and if that doesn't work out- choose another one. The only limits are the ones you put on yourself.


In 2006 a class of graduating nurses were told there were no jobs for them in Ireland, so it's not as if anyone could claim they didn't see it coming. There are a multitude of professional nursing bodies that would've known this was coming down the pipeline and there are fantastic support networks in place for nursing staff with worldwide opportunities available to them.

This stuff is all freely available to everybody on the internet so it's hardly as if anyone has an excuse.


Having said all that, there are nurses still here that do nothing short of an amazing job caring for their patients, more nurses then that are buried under mountains of bureaucracy and filling out forms all day which could be done far more efficiently by clerical staff that can fill a hundred forms in an hour, in triplicate, and have them transferred into a hospitals networked patient database another hour later.

The nurses that currently do those jobs would then be freed up to do the jobs they were actually trained to do. They didn't go to college for four years to become pen pushers in uniform. There are many nurses that are passionate about their jobs and aren't in it for the pittance money, they care about the patients, but all too often they're shoved behind a desk filling out forms, which isn't what they signed up for.


These are the things you notice sitting in an A&E room for ten hours in a priority queue behind the "Saturday night scrapper" who will be using their medical card, paid for by the government, to be seen by nurses, who the government says they can't pay for.


The irony is almost delicious, if it wasn't so distasteful.

tayto lover wrote: »

Come to think of it there were very few begrudgers complaining then too.

Private sector was booming back then, those people would not lower themselves working in the Public Service for crap wages, different story now.

Madam_X wrote: »

Well that's fair enough (if a little idealistic IMO - e.g. in relation to extremely mundane jobs which just require going through the motions in order to get them done properly anyway)

Idealistic only to those MX who lack the motivation to make it a reality. I started off my working life breading chicken in Supermacs, it wasn't rocket science, but I made it a responsible job by becoming efficient at it and making it interesting for myself- today I can do 24 pieces in ten minutes, tomorrow I'm going to aim for 24 in 7 minutes while retaining the same coverage quality. That's just a simple example of how the most mundane task can be made interesting by challenging yourself.

I trained into all the various behind the scenes work- burger prep, fries, lobby, front service (hell I even made the rank smelling Super Bunny costume look like hot shìt, til a kid took a run at me and headbutted me in the nads and floored me! ). I was eventually trained into management, but it wasn't what I wanted to do with my life, so I changed up careers when I went to college.

but it's not the same as saying "Anyone whose primary motivation for their job is money is a waster" which is a presumptuous, disingenuous, insulting and... fairly spiteful thing to say.

I'd never say something like that though, but if someone's primary motivation for doing their job is money, and they're only prepared to do their job "well" for said money, then they really don't have a right to complain that they're not getting paid enough when they're not doing any more than just the expected standard to get by. I've often come across people who I thought had the potential in them to do better, but they weren't really interested in doing better when you challenged them, they just thought they should be entitled to be paid extra for letting their untapped potential talent go to waste.

Depends on the person/job/stage in life really. I mean, a 17-year-old packing bags and cleaning the meat fridge in Tesco... obviously their primary motivation is money.

See my example above, I was 16 then, at 17 I was making myself responsible for the fruit and veg dept in Tesco, there wasn't so much as a discolored grape on display. I took pride in my work, and when I decided to move on, the store manager decided to put me on trash compactor duty for my weeks notice. I took exception to what I saw as a demotion and in disgust disrobed in his office and walked out naked through the store (even then clocking fastest naked mile run home I ever did and have had the sense never to do since! ). Last year I met a guy who was a shelf stacker when I was there and now 17 years later HE was the manager in a recently opened Tesco store I was in to do shopping. His "Oh shìt!" reaction upon seeing me walk in was priceless!

Well you shouldn't just quit and go on the dole either - it can take time to upskill and move jobs.

No way would I advocate ANYONE go on the dole, that shìt will drive you mad! You upskill while you're in a job- night courses, part time courses, distance learning, self taught and then apply for exams to get certified courses. Hell some employers will not only encourage you to upskill yourself but they'll even pay for your education and training and still pay your salary while you're upskilling yourself.


It's like I said earlier- the only limits you face in life are the limits you set on yourself.