Willy has made it to the end of the year. Just.
His EEEC metrics are festive. Sickness is down (on paper), presenteeism is up (in reality), and the EAP leaflet has finally given up and crawled under the tree. Management are full of mince pies and hypocrisy. Willy is full of dread. Everybody is where they need to be.
Time, then, for a little seasonal reflection and a glance at the job market.
Season’s Beatings From Your Favourite Power Brand
The Cummins Christmas machine is in full swing.
There is a destination net zero bauble on the tree and a laminated Armed Forces Covenant next to the fire exit. Someone has blu-tacked an ethics award print-out to the canteen wall. HR have recycled last year’s email, deleted the phrase mental health and added resilience in three different fonts.
Willy has been on his best behaviour. He has:
- dialled down the sick calls
- dialled up the forced smiles
- nodded through three separate toolbox talks about wellbeing that never quite reach his actual mind
Every time he thinks about the reasonable adjustment obstacle course, his right eye twitches. Every time he remembers Dennis in recovery, his stomach turns. Every time he looks at his payslip, he wonders which line item covers the cost of being slowly broken in the name of engagement.
It is, as the intranet says, a magical time of year.
Willy Wonders If A Career Change Cures The Blues
Somewhere between the third Quality Street and the twentieth reminder that high attendance is a gift to the business, Willy does the unthinkable.
He opens a job site.
Not because he has suddenly discovered ambition. Because he is quietly wondering if a different kind of exploitation might, at least, be novel.
That is when he sees it.
A local firm. Different skills, familiar vibe.
Horseface Mensroom
Willy squints at the advert. Horseface Mensroom, more shark than horse, are recruiting. They are looking for:
A dynamic, resilient team player to support our litigation practice in managing complex disputes. Candidates must be comfortable working to tight deadlines, handling high-volume correspondence and maintaining professional detachment in emotionally charged cases.
Willy translates automatically.
Dynamic – permanently wired.
Resilient – breakable but slow.
High-volume correspondence – email carpet-bombing.
Professional detachment – we will make you do things that haunt you.
He scrolls.
Job Description: Trainee Litigation Hound
The duties section reads like an HR fever dream he already recognises.
- Draft strongly worded letters to disabled litigants in person reminding them that costs are a friend we are not afraid to introduce.
- Follow up with additional correspondence if they mention anxiety, depression or trauma, to test the limits of their regulation.
- Liaise with medical professionals to obtain information we will later pretend fell from the sky by accident.
- Assist counsel in presenting your target’s distress as unreasonable conduct at any available hearing.
Willy feels oddly at home. It is EEEC with stationery.
He imagines his new uniform. No hi-vis. No safety boots. Just a lanyard, a grim tie and a permanent whiff of printer toner and adrenaline. Instead of being sent down the line to clean up literal mess, he will be sent into inboxes to clean up disabled people with a PDF attachment.
He can almost hear the induction trainer:
Here at Horseface Mensroom we do not discriminate. We treat every disabled opponent as an equal opportunity threat.
Field Trips With Horseface Mensroom
The advert mentions occasional client-site visits. Willy’s mind helpfully fills in the blanks.
One week he is dispatched to deliver a carefully timed bundle that lands on a litigant’s doormat the day before a preliminary hearing. Not because it is necessary. Because it is destabilising.
Next week, he is encouraged to sit in on a strategy meeting titled Using Conduct To Reset The Board. The slides are tasteful. The subtext is not.
- Step one – ignore reasonable adjustment emails
- Step two – frame the volume of follow-ups as vexatious
- Step three – request a conduct hearing and rehearse phrases like serial litigant until they feel natural in the mouth
Dennis appears briefly in Willy’s mind, wagging his tail and wondering whether any of this counts as a walk. It does not.
The Jam Between Two Bastards
On one side, Willy has Cummins.
- The company that turned sickness into a compliance exercise
- That treated recovery as a form to complete
- That made him sit through wellbeing briefings while quietly punishing anyone who actually needed help
On the other side, he has Horseface.
- The kind of outfit that reads the Equality Act as a suggestion
- That measures success in how effectively it turns disability into conduct
- That finds time in the day to phone GPs, threaten costs and tell tribunals that distress is a management problem, not an outcome of their own behaviour
Willy realises, with a kind of bleak festive clarity, that he is the jam between two bastards. One sells diesel and ethics awards. The other sells paperwork and pain. Both demand his emotional credit card.
Seasons Greetings From The Compliance Carousel
Willy does what any responsible employee does when faced with this kind of existential fork in the road.
He closes the tab and goes back to pretending everything is fine.
He will not be joining Horseface Mensroom for Christmas. Not yet. But the thought has lodged. Willy has discovered there is a whole other industry built on the same disregard for people, only now they wear suits and call it a profession.
For now, he will stay where he is – sitting in the middle of EEEC, sick-call blues and obstacle courses, watching emails fly between Cummins, aggressive law firms and tribunals that call this fairness.
He will take his seasonal break, such as it is, and work out whether his blues are better managed with diesel fumes or legal threats.
Either way, he is not done. Not by a long shot.
Willy’s Seasonal Sign-Off
So from Willy, a few honest wishes.
To Cummins – may your wellbeing webinars glitch, your ethics awards tarnish and your reasonable adjustments finally cost more than a bullet point on a slide.
To Horsfield Menzies – who he hopes hold seperate values to the similarly named Horseface Mensroom – may your costs schedules be scrutinised, your conduct applications backfire and your next trainee decide that maybe they do not want a career in grinding disabled people into dust.
And to everyone stuck in the middle, like Willy – surviving on dark humour, stubbornness and whatever is left of your nervous system – seasons greetings.
Willy will be back in the new year. Whether he is still on the line, sitting in a law firm reception or somewhere in between remains to be seen. But he has his eyes open now.
That is more than can be said for the people who run this circus.
Lee Thompson – The Cummins Accountability Project