Thursday 26 February 2009

Relationships make Work Worthwhile

I have now been with LawCare for eleven years, almost since it began. By a curious accident, I’m the only member of LawCare’s staff who was not formerly a lawyer. Prior to joining LawCare I had some pretty dreadful jobs– most of them during the summers when I was a student, admittedly.

When I think back to those weeks spent selling door to door, or serving breakfast in a hotel, or even trying to make sure all the street lights in Cardiff were working, I remember them with a fond smile and can still name the friends I made and think of those as good times because, however menial, degrading, tedious or perplexing the job, I had great people around me who made the hours fly by.

We know from the callers to our helpline that working relationships can make or break a job. I am sure we can all think of firms or jobs we have left where our greatest regret is leaving good friends, knowing that we will never really be able to maintain the relationship we had when we were working together. Several helpline callers, often working in very unpleasant circumstances, have said that they would leave were it not that they don’t want to leave their much-loved colleagues “in the lurch.”

All jobs get difficult at times. However much you enjoy your work, there will be tasks you are putting off, dull days, hours when you are very stressed and perhaps even times when you are thinking of moving on. A firm would do well to foster good working relationships between staff. Occasional social events, allowing colleagues to mix freely to share ideas and help each other with problems, and making sure those in authority are friendly and approachable can improve the working environment and create loyalty to the firm and to each other which ensures employees stay on during these tough periods.

Being a lawyer or working in a legal context may not be as physically demanding as being a door-to-door canvasser or breakfast waitress, but it can still be tough, tedious and perplexing, and it is the working relationships we have with those around us which will keep us at our desks.

LawCare’s free and confidential helpline is available 9-7.30 Monday-Friday, 10-4 weekends, on:
0800 279 6888 (Solicitors, Law Students and Legal Executives in England and Wales)
0800 279 6869 (Solicitors, Advocates and Law Students in Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man)
0800 018 4299 (Barristers, Clerks and Judges in England and Wales)
1800 991801 (Solicitors in the Republic of Ireland)

Wednesday 25 February 2009

The Wonderful World of Work at Home

Whenever I tell people that I work from home, they get extremely envious. Well, first they make sure I don’t simply make cheap trinkets which are never quite good enough, or mail out leaflets about amazing job opportunities mailing out leaflets. Then, once satisfied that I actually have a proper paying job, they get extremely envious. And quite right too. My husband, who works variously in Novosibirsk, Vladivostok and Krasnodar, greets me sarcastically each afternoon when I wander back into the house from my office in the garage with the words “Good commute?”

Yes, working from home is great. Not only does it save LawCare the cost of an office, but it means that I can go to work in my slippers. I’ve not been to work in my pyjamas yet, but give it time. I can eat lunch with my husband, when he’s home, and I don’t have to take days off to wait for deliveries.

This is supposed to be the part where I launch into the negative side of working from home, so that those of you who commute on an overcrowded train to a stuffy office each day, or spend three hours sat in traffic to reach your poky room above a Chinese takeaway, will banish your envy and purse your lips contentedly, happy that you don’t have to put up with the horrors of spending the entire day under your own roof. Unfortunately, I don’t find many of the supposed drawbacks to be a problem.

It can get lonely with no colleagues to talk to, I’m told, but if I feel the need to talk to a colleague I pick up the telephone, and in the meantime I can get on with my work undisturbed by office chatter about holidays and boyfriends.

Then, some people say, there can be the temptation to work when you shouldn’t – to answer the office phone when you're off duty because you can hear it ringing from the kitchen, for example. Personally, I find it more of a problem when I’m in the office and hear the washing machine in the kitchen beeping and find myself tempted to hang out the washing when I shouldn’t, so it cuts both ways. I once logged onto the LawCare server at half-past midnight to find that Trish was also logged on, but my washing never gets left out in the rain.

One small downside is that when the local schools were closed due to snow recently, and a quarter of the UK workforce were unable to get to work, I had no such excuse. But apart from that, I can’t think of any more downsides to working from home. Let me know if you come up with any. And if you come across any of the downsides of working generally, you know where the LawCare helpline is.

LawCare’s free and confidential helpline is available 9-7.30 Monday-Friday, 10-4 weekends, on:
0800 279 6888 (Solicitors, Law Students and Legal Executives in England and Wales)
0800 279 6869 (Solicitors, Advocates and Law Students in Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man)
0800 018 4299 (Barristers, Clerks and Judges in England and Wales)
1800 991801 (Solicitors in the Republic of Ireland)

Tuesday 24 February 2009

Commuting

A friend of mine commutes to London each day. Nothing unusual in that, except that he does it by bike. He cycles three miles uphill to reach the station, catches his train, stowing his foldaway bike safely as he does so, and then cycles across London to get to his desk. He works an eight-hour day and then cycles home again –downhill this time. He does this all year round, in all weathers.

LawCare helpline callers frequently tell us that their commute is a major part of the work stress they face, and I can understand why. during my last trip to London for a LawCare Board meeting I found myself very glad that I don’t have to commute every day. The meeting ended just in time for rush hour, I was squashed in so tightly on the tube that I could barely breathe, and was lucky to get a seat on the train home.

On the other hand, most of the people around me on the 17:25 Liverpool Street to Southend Victoria seemed pretty relaxed. Several were relaxed to the extent of being asleep, others were reading the paper, listening to music or texting friends on their phones. When I dropped the lid of my hand cream and it rolled away under the seats there was even a moment of sociable hilarity as several people dived for it, and it was returned with a warm smile.

I wondered whether the daily hour on the train might not be the only opportunity many of these people get to sit and do nothing. Perhaps it is even a vital opportunity to relax between frantic work time at the office, and a busy evening cooking, cleaning, chasing the children into bed, catching up with the email and going for a late session at the gym.

Whilst part of the stress of commuting might be the time it takes out of an overloaded day, time spent sitting doing nothing is never wasted. Perhaps a commute, however arduous, might be seen as “down time”, time to relax and recharge and, in the process, get from A to B, even if it might feel as though you are cycling uphill in the snow to do so.

LawCare’s free and confidential helpline is available 9-7.30 Monday-Friday, 10-4 weekends, on:
0800 279 6888 (Solicitors, Law Students and Legal Executives in England and Wales)
0800 279 6869 (Solicitors, Advocates and Law Students in Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man)
0800 018 4299 (Barristers, Clerks and Judges in England and Wales)
1800 991801 (Solicitors in the Republic of Ireland)

Monday 23 February 2009

Cycling through Adversity

I’m feeling somewhat virtuous this week. Positively holier-than-thou actually. The reason is that my husband is working in Baku for a week. (The geeks among you will recognise Baku as the Star Trek planet where the people never fall ill or get old. Unfortunately the Baku he has gone to is actually the capital of Azerbaijan.) His flight left and returned at such an unearthly hour that I refused to drive him to Heathrow – with the children in the back seat, of course, you try getting a babysitter at 4 a.m. on a Sunday - and with no convenient shuttles, flyers, buses or trains the only solution was for him to take the family car and park it at the airport while he was away. So we are carless. Or car free, as I prefer to say.

I’ve dusted off my bicycle, put the babyseat on the back, and we are cycling everywhere together like a Center Parcs commercial, the wind blowing our hair out behind us and the children laughing as they try to run over squirrels and reflect on their negative carbon footprints. This afternoon we will be cycling to the swimming pool, if I can figure out how to carry four sets of swimsuits and towels in my bicycle basket. On the face of it, a week without a car is a major inconvenience, even a problem. But I’m a born optimist who sees hurdles as challenges to be overcome.

Everyone handles adversity differently, and many people find their challenges so overwhelming that they have entirely lost the ability to see any way out, or any positives in their situation. For them, a week without a car is not an opportunity to get healthy and have a ready-made excuse not to attend meetings, but a disaster. If they even had a bike it would be discovered to have two flat tyres and faulty brakes, and it would rain every time they wanted to ride it somewhere. This is not merely the difference between an optimist and a pessimist; many people have become so stressed or worn down by their situation that they no longer have the ability to “make the best of it”.

One person’s minor inconvenience can, for another, be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. I’m welcoming my current challenge, but the support of family, friends and organisations such as LawCare can be so vital for those times when we encounter one challenge too many.

LawCare’s free and confidential helpline is available 9-7.30 Monday-Friday, 10-4 weekends, on:
0800 279 6888 (Solicitors, Law Students and Legal Executives in England and Wales)
0800 279 6869 (Solicitors, Advocates and Law Students in Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man)
0800 018 4299 (Barristers, Clerks and Judges in England and Wales)
1800 991801 (Solicitors in the Republic of Ireland)

Friday 20 February 2009

In Denial

Yesterday I mentioned my efforts to lose weight, and how successful they had been. I have, in fact, succeeded in losing weight on numerous occasions. I lost two stone after having my second baby (sponsored, and I raised almost £500 for LawCare’s Welfare Fund), a stone after having my third baby, and half a stone for my wedding. So if I’ve now lost a total of 3½ stone, why do I need to rejoin a slimming club?

I put it down to denial. I lose the weight, and then somehow I believe that all those rules no longer apply, that I can eat cheese, chocolate and crisps to my heart’s content without compromising my newly svelte figure. Our honeymoon to Florida was a typical case in point. My favourite jeans, which had fitted perfectly on the flight out, would no longer do up the day we went home and I was genuinely surprised. To my astonishment, having several trips to an all-you-can-eat buffet and four Krispy Kreme doughnuts each day had caused me to put weight on. Who knew?

Working for LawCare means I get to speak to a lot of alcoholics. Their firm denial of the problem used to amaze me. Lawyers regularly phone our helpline saying that their senior partner, wife or friend had insisted they call about their alcohol problem. What they are expecting to hear is “Only eight pints a night? No, you’re fine, tell your senior partner/wife/friend to stop wasting our time.”

Instead we are not shy about telling them that their pattern of drinking is harmful and might be called alcoholic, that we believe they have a problem which needs to be addressed, and that we would like to suggest ways they might be helped. They are often very surprised, defensive, and usually, in denial. They will offer excuses, in much the same way I do when dieting (“Carrot cake has no calories because it’s a vegetable”) and seem to really believe their ridiculous claims. One caller, for example, claimed that she only drank as much as she did because she had recurring problems with her throat, and alcohol was the only thing that soothed it. And had soothed it to the tune of two bottles of wine a day for the last six years. No, of course she hadn’t seen a doctor about her throat problem. She hadn’t even seen a packet of Strepsils. But she really believed that she needed to drink because of her throat.

Another example of denial came from a man who had recurring night sweats. He had looked up the symptom in a home diagnosis book and discovered that only three problems accounted for it – alcoholism, menopause and tuberculosis. He drank alcohol from noon, when the pub opened, until closing time, but told me, in all seriousness, that his night sweats were due to his undiagnosed TB.

It may seem blindingly obvious to us that these people have a problem, but I can sympathise. I am in denial too. When I finish the children’s leftovers, it somehow “doesn’t count”, and everyone knows that broken biscuits have no calories. Denial is a curious thing. When something is important to us – be it chocolate chip cookies or booze – we will happily distort reality rather than go without it.

LawCare’s free and confidential helpline is available 9-7.30 Monday-Friday, 10-4 weekends, on:
0800 279 6888 (Solicitors, Law Students and Legal Executives in England and Wales)
0800 279 6869 (Solicitors, Advocates and Law Students in Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man)
0800 018 4299 (Barristers, Clerks and Judges in England and Wales)
1800 991801 (Solicitors in the Republic of Ireland)

Thursday 19 February 2009

People Power

Like many women I am struggling to lose weight, and have been for several years. Last week, however, I lost four whole pounds When I stepped on the scales at my Weight Watchers meeting I thought my leader was going to dance a jig around the room, so thrilled was she at my success. She beamed from ear to ear and congratulated me with such warmth that I resolved never to let her down in the coming weeks. My modest weight loss had brought joy into her life – it might even have made her week (it certainly made mine). I wonder whether she gets commission on each pound lost by her members?

As good as the diet plans at slimming clubs are, it’s not rocket science – eat less and exercise more and you will lose weight. What makes these clubs work for me is the sheer terror of having to confess my dietary sins to a kindly and helpful leader at the scales each week. Being accountable to someone gives me just that little extra bit of impetus I need to keep ignoring the hunger pangs.

There is real power in personal, one-to-one support. Whether it’s my Weight Watchers leader, an AA sponsor or a LawCare volunteer, having someone take an interest in your efforts to lose weight or get your life back on track can make a huge difference. In moments of weakness or suffering you can pick up the telephone and hear words of encouragement. Your failures become twice as bitter but, on the flip side, your elation at your successes are doubled. Feelings of shame at letting down or disappointing someone who believes in you can be a strong motivator.

In many slimming clubs, the leaders are people who have lost weight as a club member, and, poor dears, their “fat pictures” are blown up to A3 size and displayed for all to see. Whilst there are no laminated posters of LawCare volunteers, they are very generous in talking frankly about their own experiences and/or addictive behaviour. Because therein lies the crucial and powerful message – If I can do it, You can do it too.

Many of those suffering from addiction or depression (as with many dieters) have lost faith in themselves, but having someone else who believes that they can do it, really wants them to succeed, and who takes as much pleasure in their achievements as they do, can make an enormous difference. Could you be a LawCare volunteer?

LawCare’s free and confidential helpline is available 9-7.30 Monday-Friday, 10-4 weekends, on:
0800 279 6888 (Solicitors, Law Students and Legal Executives in England and Wales)
0800 279 6869 (Solicitors, Advocates and Law Students in Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man)
0800 018 4299 (Barristers, Barristers Clerks and Judges in England and Wales)1800 991801 (Solicitors in the Republic of Ireland)