Staying in my current job will mean monthly team meetings that are 4 hours long. Well if today’s experience is anything to go by. OK so it was the first time most of them had got together and for the most part it was good humoured. But 4 hours? Don’t these people have better things to do with their lives? The whole thing took me back about 4 years to a time when I belonged to a newly formed smallish PCT with a Director of Nursing who liked to spend the first hour of the fortnightly nursing directorate meeting discussing the plans for any forthcoming social events. I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now.
It is interesting when you don’t actually feel you belong somewhere to watch people’s body language. The leader of the team who doesn’t quite know how she got into this position and is clearly quite uncomfortable with it. The people who have done a job of work a particular way for a good number of years and are clear that nothing will make them change. The idea that there can be a team within a team where everyone is equal, and democracy will reign.
Meanwhile I sit there wondering what I am doing in this place with this bunch of people. All are individually very nice people, all probably very good at their own jobs but the more I sit there the more I wonder what will ever make them into a team. I never thought I would say this, but I am glad I am not in charge of this lot, I pity the person who is and I want the job I am going for tomorrow than the one I was interviewed for in December. It sure is a funny place; the NHS.
