as most of my work colleagues know, i’ve been off with stress leave this week. It’s been an interesting process and i’m still dealing with how this works…but in reality … how it doesn’t work.
I thought i was going to be given help with how to manage it, but seriously my Taxi driver, Eli gave me the best advice of anyone. And i’m not sharing that. email me if you need that info.
The process at The Bank doesn’t seem to acknowledge that’s there’s an issue within the workflow allocation, or the processes in place, or the management of these things… and that we have contract Project Managers (PMs)…not permanent PMs… that aren’t signed up to The Banks charter…and coz they are not full time staff of The Bank and they haven;t been educated in how permanent staff of The Bank are to be treated….but the work allocation seems to deem that it’s the person with the stress issue that is/has the problem ………hmmmm how very 1980′s.
I had my consultation with the Corporate Psych people, and they, while nice to talk to, were not in The Banks process as it turned out. I had a good chat though and that certainly re-inforced a few things for me. One was that The Bank was an “unsafe working environment” and subject to the full letter of the Law as far as OH&S laws go. Apparently i have a case to sue The Bank. I wont be doing that …it’s not in my nature, but i guess it’s out there if i need to fall back on it.
The Banks process seems to be a case of “OMFG…we have someone that’s stressed”. I was put on hold six times while they gathered my details. I was being “served” by a junior bloke, but still…being on hold when you are under stress and finally decide to phone up….fek…what if i was suicidal???
I’d be dead.
So i got a case number, but still it is not clear what i am to do. As mentioned above, i had my consultation with the Psych people…no one from HR has phoned me…i’ve had four days off…where do i go from here?? I’ll phone them this morning i guess and see what happens…sadly i have to work tonight 5pm – 6am as there’s no-one at The Bank that can really do this “change” that i’ve got to do…which is pretty scary given that this Bank brings in 5 Billion Aussie dollars profit.
Whilst i was winding down tonight…
Thankfully i was able to listen to RRR FM 102.7 and tonight/this morning the lovely Loz (‘scuse speeling) kept me up beat and sane with an amazingly wide variety of tracks from loads of artists. She must suffer a similar storage issue to me given the amount of CDs she had on hand and well i have lots of CDs and vinyl as well.
But it’s a good problem to have, i think 
Thanks sweetie
cheers
peter