I have always marvelled at the support some people show for others when called upon to do so. I will clarify here that I have marvelled only, I have seldom participated myself. To date, I have almost exclusively turned down any appeals for my help when the effort seems too great on my part. One such request, that has forever shaped my view on helping those around me, occurred soon after I started in my first job out of school. I considered it a rather uninspiring introduction to the world of employment, that got worse some days into the job when my line manager took me aside for a quiet chat.
The manager in question, made a surprising request, all the more shocking because they seemed to think it was quite reasonable. With an incongruously cheerful and expectant demeanor they asked whether I would do some extra shifts over the next few weeks. Explaining that one member of the team was having time off due to an important operation and subsequent rehab and did not want to miss out on any income, by going over their statutory supported sick pay. There was, they explained, no obligation to do extra, but that everyone as a group was ‘pitching in’.
As someone who was not that keen to work for my own salary and even less motivated to work for someone else’s, I acknowledged the lack of obligation and declined their request. Arguing that I was new to the company and did not know the colleague in question. My line manager did not take too kindly to my decision, saying it would make my transition into my new workplace easier if I could cover just a few responsibilities. I suggested it would actually make it harder, as I would have more work to do. My decision was shared quickly with the team and I was subsequently ostracised by most of my new workmates.
It is funny how some are singled out for ire when others are feeling hard done by, despite being only partly at fault. With the colleague in question having subsequently left for their procedure, with well wishes and support, people’s disgruntled disposition turned towards me for not helping out.
It was a tough few weeks for everyone involved, long shifts, extra work and uncomfortable silences. Some, I am sure, gained satisfaction in helping someone in need, never missing the opportunity to talk about it loudly when I was within earshot, or whenever updates were delivered. We heard the operation was a success, we were told that recovery had taken longer than hoped and finally we heard they were coming back to work.
It is understandable, therefore, that there was some disharmony on the day of the confirmed return when we all, to a person, found out that the operation in question was a nose job and that some of the rehab had been conducted in a villa in Spain. The colleague in question wandering in looking significantly more symmetrical and deeper tanned than when they had left. People, it became apparent, are happy to support others if they are viewed as victims of misfortune. A nose job was seen by many I worked with as a personal choice and not worthy of cover. I am sure they would not have minded that person taking the time off work for such a procedure, as long as it cost only them the individual. However, once they became a burden on others the reasons for their absence were open to judgement by those tasked with picking up the pieces.
Similarly, if any largess were to cost us only, perhaps in extra bills or missed work, few would overly mind. It would be up to us to deal with it. But it now seems as if every other week headlines adjourn the front pages of our newspapers warning that us, the larger members of the population, are in danger of bankrupting our proud health service or country. It is ‘our’ turn to become the financial burden of our nation. Following greedy bankers, dishonest politicians and immigrants, the accusatory financial finger points at us.
Despite the identified cost, we remain a burden many are unwilling to treat. If we had a creative leader who proposed that health service provision should be driven to counter the growing ‘obesity crisis’, we would be sure to receive a few disgruntled readers’ letters expressing frustration that they were turned away from Accident and Emergency in favour of someone undergoing urgent cake-ectomy.
It doesn’t matter how much we try to argue otherwise; we have less sympathy for those who we feel should take some responsibility for their condition than those whose illness we perceive to be not of their doing. Such conditions run from those at one end whose causality we don’t understand, leaving the patient almost entirely blameless, to those at the other end in which we believe the causes to be easy to avoid and so have little sympathy for the sufferer. After all, we have managed to avoid them ourselves.
Weight related ill health now sits at the top of the blame stakes. It costs us an increasing amount and we know the cure: don’t eat too much. Hence, when predictions of financial ruin are aimed in the direction of those of us carrying a little more timber than necessary, the nation looks at its under resourced health services, schools and police and curses the extra biscuit we have been vulnerable to.
Such rapprochement misses the point. Undoubtedly there is an expense to treating any disease, no matter its origin, but the financial argument with weight gain in many ways confuses cost and cause. When balancing the books at the end of the day we may find that were we to take a little off the profits at one end, we may save a little on the outputs at the other. At the same time we should recognise that it is not necessarily the individuals who are failing the nation but perhaps the other way around.
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