Saturday 6th October

 

Someone in the corridors at work told me the other day about a hearing in the Supreme Court in Launceston. A witness for the defence was asked, by the defendant’s lawyer, who had, one would have thought, prepared his witness for his Special Moment in the limelight, whether he had received a certain crucial email in August.

 

“No.”

 

“Are you sure you didn’t receive it? I sent it to you and I understood you had read and responded to it.”

 

“No.”

 

Baffled silence from the lawyer

 

“So you are saying you definitely didn’t receive it?”

 

“Well I’m not good with computers; my wife does all of that. And probably she wasn’t speaking to me at the time so she didn’t pass it on.”

I

 wouldn’t be a lawyer for quids! A horrid mixture of stress and boredom…

 

Compiling a list of Worst Jobs Ever has always been a secret little time-wasting interest of mine. My friend Amanda, with whom I worked years ago in a completely different workplace, shared this fascination. We would sally out into the world visiting families and childcare centres and agencies, and would come back, all agog with yet another Worst Job. But I think we REALLY found the most difficult job you could imagine when we went to a conference, and heard some very saintly people describing their particular area of expertise. They were called something like Special Family Support Workers, and were paid not very much at all. They were expected to work with families at risk, and to stay with them for six week periods. And really stay with them, as in twelve hours a day. Breakfast, daytime, dinner, sometimes overnight.  Some of these families were in a state of crisis, with the very real threat of losing their children to what they all call The Welfare. Lots of violence, shouting, abuse, tantrums from children and adults alike. The support workers would model appropriate behaviour, mediate family and neighbourhood disputes and generally try to calm everything down and get the whole family out of a fragile state and into a more harmonious way of being.

 

Great.

 

And then when they had finished their time and could heave a sigh of relief…they would be sent off to yet another family with violence, abuse, tantrums, shouting….

 

Nightmare Job!!!