Firstly, the work the organisation has you do in your first year if you are based in Exeter is pointless, mind numbing and frankly insulting to give to a fully grown adult. Some of the nonsense tasks I had to do include pressing send on an automated document that makes itself and being a human alarm system for the aviation bench to check if they sent the FOQNH alerts (they could have just got an egg timer to do that).
Very unfair with the allocation of admin days (days that are somehow even more of a doss than normal) with some people having had 30+ after 10 months there while others had fewer than 20. That’s a whole two weeks extra in having a chill 9-5 as opposed to horrid shift work the favoured ones got. I asked about if there was a reason behind this disparity but was never given a good answer.
The shift work is awful. In my case I felt physically too ill and mentally too down trodden to do much of anything the day the night shift ended and the following one after. However, the really crushing part is the needlessness of it all that makes it so much more unbearable. No they really didn’t need me to be working 3 night in a row or work Christmas Day to spell check and press upload on videos made by someone else beforehand.
The cons easily outweighed the benefits. Speaking of benefits, if I was put on them instead of working here everyone involved would have been better off. The Met Office wouldn’t have wasted their money and I wouldn’t have wasted my time.
