Stop Expecting Better

 

I keep hearing complaints like this from my fellow HP's.
"Why do civilians talk down to me all the time?"
"Why does the head porter never take my side in a dispute?"
"Why do people have a go at me when I've done nothing wrong to them?"
"Why do senior staff lie about me or twist things?"
You might have noticed that I have made similar complaints about my own career, legitimately. The invention of the Dignity Statement is for the purpose of undoing and eliminating this situation, for example: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-gas-spanner-programme-2.html. It can't make the head take your side in a dispute, but it will work in all the other examples I gave. The first step to overcoming this bleak state of affairs is actually not learning the Dignity Statements, it is expecting these things to happen. I used to be like that too. Whenever one of the above scenarios unfolded I would storm around the lodge lamenting "That was so unfair!"... "Why did she do that!?"... "I can't believe he just told such a blatant and shameless lie about me!" I was not alone; nearly all my brothers and sisters did the very same, in fact hardly a shift passed without it. I only found a way to integrate these very unpleasant experiences when I realized that I should stop expecting better. We're part of a massive, heartless, mindless, gutless government bureaucracy. The NHS is the world's third biggest employer (after the People's Liberation Army of China and India Railways). It is a purebred mutant baby of the state. 1.27 million servicemen have to be organized into an effective healthcare provision unit with no natural incentives at all for justice, diligence, conscience and duty. More than that, these sentiments are actually discouraged, to say the least, by management. The unspoken truth very quickly sinks in that there are no rewards for honest hardworking service, quite the opposite in fact. Corruption waxes, discipline wanes. Is it any wonder people within it are so spiteful and backbiting? Battery hens peck at each other not the farmer. This realization is actually an incredible liberation. When you stop expecting better from your colleagues, including your brother porters sometimes, you can face the world for what it is rather than what it should be. That is when the Dignity Statements come in. That is the first step to creating a world that is as it should be.