‘Bullying’ is a difficult phenomenon to assess, partly because staff might have been modifying their behaviour due to my pressure as observer, but also partly because the requirements of the staff roles meant that staff had to enforce customer compliance with the programme if they wanted to remain employed. This could be seen as bullying, or alternatively, as doing the job properly, depending on perspective. As one customer, Amos91 put it: “But yeah, they do give you some attitude here, telling you to get off your arse. So I did, anyway.”
While customer ‘Simon’92 said of his adviser: “She’s a bully sometimes. Yes. She’s not
a very good one. She tries to push me to do things, and I push back and I say that’ll be the day, and I’m not doing them.”
However, ten customers said that they had experienced or witnessed direct bullying by staff. Customer ‘Cliff’,93 for instance, stated that some advisers were
“proper twats” who were regularly “threatening people, with the sanctions,” while customer ‘Silvio’94 described his ‘relationship’ with his adviser in the following terms:
91 30s, JSA. 92 50s, ESA. 93 30s, JSA. 94 40s, JSA.
188 SILVIO: I don’t have one. It’s… she’s my bully. That’s the relationship. She’s not sympathetic to what it’s like, being in this situation. Not a clue. She’s not supportive of anything that I do or the positive steps that I make towards getting out of this. She’s a bitch, to be fair. She’s not got anything to do or say that is actually useful towards getting me onto the next step. If I ask her for anything she’s like, yeah, well… she’ll minimum effort something, but yeah, she’s just a bully.
This customer, despite also describing his adviser as “a member of the Gestapo,” later added that:
SILVIO: Erm… to give her credit I have to say she has done me a cracking CV. So that’s… yeah I know it’s all bullshit but that is like one thing that’s been… ok, I can say that’s something they’ve done that is what I expected. Nine customers claimed that staff were patronising in the way that they spoke to customers. Customer Janey95 explained what she found ‘patronising’ in staff
behaviours, and how she responded to this:
JANEY: Just like, you know, telling you what to do, and talking down to you. And that’s like, yeah… if you don’t like it there’s nothing you can do about it, that’s clear. So you’re better off just going along with it. Like, if you ever end up here, yeah, my advice is just go along with it because they do have the control, yeah?
Six of the eleven WP customers interviewed before the primary in-centre research phase also reported that they were subjected to patronising staff attitudes. One stated that she was subject to bullying. Two stated that the WP was a positive experience for them. Within the two centres observed for the thesis, some customers also spoke of the WP as a positive experience. Three new customers, i.e. customers who were still within their first three months at the centre,96 spoke of being cautiously optimistic given the
help that they had received thus far. For example, it was customer ‘Annamarie’s’ (40s, JSA) perspective that:
95 30s, JSA.
96 The data indicate that after three months customers tended to find the programme’s activities to be
repetitive and less useful than on the first three months when the activities and information presented by staff were new.
189 ANNAMARIE: Yeah. Overall good so far. See how it goes. I mean I know some people are really against it. I don’t judge. Everyone’s got their own story, haven’t they? But for me I’m seeing this as a good thing that’s opening up some opportunities. Maybe not as many opportunities as I’d like. Like I say, I understand now that if you want to make the most of this then you’re going to have to do a lot of the work yourself, but that’s the whole point of it, isn’t it? And I’m up for that.
Only two long-term customers were unequivocally happy with the service overall. As customer ‘Angelo’97 put it:
ANGELO: […] they’ve offered me… anything I’ve ever mentioned, even a slight interest in, they’ve given me avenues that I can take through them. And they’re always offering to, you know, put me on courses, pay for my CSCS card training,98 erm, you know, they’re just always willing to help me pay for my bus tickets, for my haircut. Anything they can do to help […].
Eight customers said that they had a good or very good relationship with their adviser. ‘Angelo’99 described his adviser as “fantastic,” while customer ‘Bert’100 stated that:
BERT: I’m getting a lot more help. That’s my secretary over there, Leonie. She keeps all my appointments in order, gets all the phone calls done. Dealing with the council for me at the moment. Yes, she’s great. She helps me. Tell her all my problems. I do that. […] Oh yeah, full service. So, I get help now, yeah. Not the kind of help they thought when they sent me over here, but I get help.