Who can honestly say they like working? How many of us get to do the job they wanted to do? How did one get the inspiration at a young age to know what career or job they wanted to do? Is work that simple?

I have had many different jobs over the years and some I have enjoyed and some I have hated but I have been lucky to have received an income from my services. Greengrocer assistant, engineering, warehousing, builder’s merchant, English Heritage tour guide, hospital porter, groundworker, self employed grass cutter/odd jobman, postman, dot com assistant for Tesco, distribution auditor for a prison and helping my wife do end of tenancy cleaning.

Okay they are nothing great and quite simple to do but most are physically demanding and require teamwork. The best jobs by far were grass-cutting and postman until it went privatized (as the greed of the bosses outshadowed the service needs of the job) and I was happy doing these. Health and personal problems made things very difficult in the end so a change was needed.

However, throughout my working life there has been a constant theme and that is bullying by bosses, supervisors or colleagues and this has resulted in resignation from jobs I would otherwise have probably stayed in. How do these bullies think its right to hurt other people? Even when one reports a problem it is rarely looked into and when it is the victim is the one who so often is the one to suffer even more and the bully continues in their position to prey again on another weaker victim.

I do feel angry at times for the workers in our present times as a job is hard to come by and with the rise in the cost of living bosses can capitalize on this as they know their staff will have little or no power to argue. Bullying, harassment and contempt are at an all-time high and moral, pay and conditions are at a low. This is no way to structure a business or service. Rarely will one see high productivity, efficiency and profits from an unhappy workforce but the bosses and bean counters seem to think this is the perfect recipe for success just because their pay-packets are swelling beyond eye-watering amounts and once they have bled one company dry off the trot to another to do the very same without any remorse for the carnage they leave behind.

Our Unions have been crushed, our many years of experience have been ignored, loyalty counts for nothing and failure is greeted with promotion. Demonstration are being ignored, hindered by new legislation or banishment so even our voices are slowly being silenced. How has this come about? It cant’t be as simple as seeing university graduates being fast-tracked into management (with little or no experience) at the expense of those working up from the ground who are kept down and ignored or the fact that investment in upper-management takes priority over equipment and staff at the sharp end? What is the point of trying when one can receive the same wage/salary as those who just turn up and do the bare minimum?

Is work then all about money, power, status and feeling better than everyone else? Do our kids at school now aspire to a career of bullying, power, money, dumb influencer careers and selfishness and gone are the days one could, when asked what do you want to do when you leave school, answer dustman, pilot, soldier, nurse, fisherman, welder, builder, doctor,musician, actor, accountant all in the same classroom?

Everything costs today and life is so fast and complicated that its almost suffocating and chasing the dollar to pay the bills is an endless race and that’s without the constant threat of scams and hackers intent on draining what little we have left. Its little wonder mental health problems are on the rise and more and more homeless are walking our streets or need help.

Work and the World have gone mad and the only way forward is to rebuild the ethics of work from the ground upwards and do away with the power/money greedy bosses (who are causing our businesses and services to become so bad) and restore our efficiency and productivity to levels never seen before. Then maybe we can all share from the fruits of our labour.

What a World we live in!