Joining the Police, attempt 1 - part 3

I never expected to be writing this part so quickly. It turned out that the second chance was never a possibility in the first place. A total waste of petrol, time and effort for a meeting which could have adequately happened over the telephone.

To spend ones own time, petrol, etc. and be met by this amount of complete inflexibility is insane. The demands and sudden speed of the recruitment process required flexibility of my employer well above and beyond the norm. When asking what flexibility the selection process makes for volunteers who work for a living, the answer is basically, very little, if any. You do it their way, or not at all.

Work practice is changing and my management structure is altering dramatically; the flexibility that enabled me to respond on Friday to a letter I received Thursday night to attend an interview on Monday, is now out the window which will make the next Specials application a very interesting series of events. That is if I can be arsed to put in for it again. I feel completely let down; as a volunteer wanting to do my bit and play a part; I just feel as if the whole thing has been unecessarily put beyond my reach for unrealistic reasons which are out of my control. The thing has just been so damn preventable.

The reason I failed the interview? Oh, yeh, while asking for my experiences with the, "public," which left me struggling, it turned out that my experience with, "customers," in work was perfectly adequate for what they wanted. To the police, "customers," and, "public," are one in the same. To someone who is outside that framework, they are two separate bodies. That interview was wasted so unecessarily, and the systems inflexability in allowing for this might just have cost them a promising volunteer. Could they not have accepted a joint missunderstanding and lack of clarity in their questions? Nope. The whole effort is now wasted, the process has to be started all over again and I've got to wait six months to do it.

I wonder if they've ever considered what a working person has to do in order to get the necessary time off at short notice? Officially, holidays have to be booked weeks in advance. I'm left feeling as if they don't appreciate what both I and my employer have done to meet their demands.

If I wasn't fit enough, or mentally agile enough, then I say fair enough, go away for six months and get fitter; but to fail and have to repeat the whole thing due to badly worded interview questioning when it is obvious to the recruiter that I have the skills required, just beggers belief.

What a complete balls up.

The only good thing to come out of this is that at least their human remains department (a pet phrase at work for HR) is aware of what failed and why; whether anything is done about it remains to be seen.