Of all the stereotypical hospital portering characters that
I have identified, the serial releaver
is the only one I really cannot understand. A serial releaver is a HP who
basically spends his entire working life in HPing, but every so often, usually
two or three times a decade, he will leave portering for another job, most
often outside healthcare entirely; and then return after anything from a few
weeks to a couple of months. This behaviour makes no sense to me. They gain
nothing from it. Leaving the NHS can sometimes be a one-way ticket, even if you
don't get dismissed like I was. It is something that should never be taken on lightly.
You run the risk of not being allowed back in. You might think "but I'm a
good worker; they'll always take me back." That is a very naive thing to
say. The NHS does not care how good or bad you are at your job, as I have
explained before, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2016/12/nurse-sacked-for-praying.html.
If you are turned down for recruitment after reapplying then it will probably
be because you have made a personal enemy of somebody in authority; and who
doesn't ever do that? I have known a few serial releavers who were blocked from
rejoining because of this. Another disadvantage is that you break your service
and therefore lose all your long service benefits and pay increments. You have
to start again at the bottom from scratch. So why are so many porters serial
releavers? I suspect it may simply be virtue signalling at convention. Peer
pressure is one of the most powerful forces in most people's lives. Because
HP's are not supposed to love our work, some of us feel obliged to make gestures
to show other people we do not... even if we do. I notice that serial releavers
also engineer other persona displays along these lines. They say things to me
like "a job's just a job, mate"; and they also tell everybody all the
time that they are going to leave and that they are looking for other work,
even right in the middle of the HPing phase of their releaving cycle. One
Delivery Suite porter I remember used to leave a newspaper on the lodge table
open at the jobs ads page whenever he went off duty. He clearly wanted to drop
hints to the next shift about what his intentions were, or supposed intentions.
That is frustrating and tragic. If they are attached to the Hospital Portering
Service then why not just admit it, like I do, and stay in it permanently?
