Things have been getting on top of me a bit lately. Lots of petty bickering between rotas, lots of office politics, everyone worrying about losing their jobs because of cuts and what's going to happen to their pensions. All in all, work is not a very pleasant place to be at the moment.
So when the opportunity came up I jumped at the chance to swap my office chair for the passenger seat of an Astra and spent a day out with one of our Response officers. It was a really nice little shift: nothing really major or out-of-the-ordinary happened, but we got a couple of blue light runs, did some really grassroots bread-and-butter police work, and helped a couple of nice elderly people. I'd borrowed a radio so I could follow what was going on, and finished up doing a lot of the updating so I really felt like I was part of the unit and helping out.
I've met some of the Response team before, but it was great to meet the others and put faces to the voices that I hear every day. They're a good crowd, young and keen.
It was a fantastic reminder of why we do what we do and I came home re energised, ready and willing to go back to the coalface and crack on. That feeling lasted until I got into the control room the next day, where our briefing included a pointless bollocking for a minor and fairly irrelevant mistake, and then read my emails which included a new way of running a certain part of our operation in a way which is a bit more complex, takes more work and doesn't seem to give any advantages, and a depressing update from the union about our pensions.
Like that young, keen crowd on the outside, I just want to do my job well and help people when they need it. I wish we could cut the crap and let us get on with doing just that.
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