to resent the census requiring details of employer from years ago

I am confused.
You were a store detective?
A hitman?
A professional shoplifter?

You are talking in ever decreasing circles and you know what happened to the jub-jub bird* don’t you?

* it flew round and round in ever decreasing circles

Is it like the oozlum bird, that rare Australian creature which flies in ever-decreasing circles until it manages to fly up its own backside?
That is why it is so rare.

None of those, it was a perfectly reasonable job description in the same general area as my original job. Had it worked out and been honourable I might have been there for years, quite content. I was happy there until the need to tell lies was put to me. It came as quite a shock but was explained as necessary. I refused to tell lies.

Why didn't you take your employer to court for unfair dismissal?Most of all why are you still so obsessed by something that happened so many years ago and cannot affect you in anyway now.

Your experience was clearly very unpleasant, but why let it cloud your retirement. Since I retired I am rarely asked what I did during my working life nor is DH, obviously it comes out at times because, we call upon our experience or career to explain our under standing of something, but the answer will always be in terms of our professional description, not generally a detailed description of who we worked for when and why we left.

As I said, I think you need professional help.

M0nica

Why didn't you take your employer to court for unfair dismissal?Most of all why are you still so obsessed by something that happened so many years ago and cannot affect you in anyway now.

Your experience was clearly very unpleasant, but why let it cloud your retirement. Since I retired I am rarely asked what I did during my working life nor is DH, obviously it comes out at times because, we call upon our experience or career to explain our under standing of something, but the answer will always be in terms of our professional description, not generally a detailed description of who we worked for when and why we left.

As I said, I think you need professional help.

I didn't think of going to court. I had been encouraged to do that when I was made redundant from my original job, but I didn't want the stress. There was also the risk of losing and having to pay the employer's legal costs. I just wrote it off. It had gone. It was many years later when the census started asking, out of the blue, for people to provide name and address of most recent employer that brought it back. 2021 census brought it back again.

Monica is right, no one will know for at least 100 years, in fact the 1921 census will not be made public until 2022 so more than 100 years. If you are concerned about your grandchildren finding out maybe you could do a little autobiography for them. Don't know how old you are but I've been down as employed on various censuses since 1981, and they will as they become available show my life to anyone interested in 2081, as will my life and parents in the decades before that
So if you for example worked your way up through the legal ranks and ended up as a high court judge, they will find out about that first, and only in 100 years that you then became a cleaning lady, which is an honorable profession, I've done that at times, and if you had written what happened they will understand.
I'm sorry that it has brought up bad memories for you, but this is going to happen from time to time, people asking about your life, far better to get help coming to terms with it, any injustice is hard to cope with but it can be good to not be so upset every time you think about it.

And I believe that your occupation is on your death certificate so you would proba ly be down as in the example high court judge (retired) rather than cleaner (retired) and anyone can get a copy of your death certificate as soon as all the beurocracy is finished should anyone be interested. Not that you'll care by then

When I registered the death of an uncle, I put his occupation down as 'civil servant', which he was for 40 years, and quite a senior one, despite the fact that after he retired, he had worked on the assembly line of a shoe factory because he disliked not working and wanted to understand what life was like for those who did jobs like that. He made life long friends.

NotSpaghetti

ElderlyPerson
I assure you that you are not the sum of your last (miserable) job experience. You are beyond that now and have survived. Good for you!

If you are really really bothered by it maybe you could do a week or two proofreading for someone or maybe write poetry and attempt to get it published in the next 10 years for example. Maybe you can become a self-employed artist or craftsperson? I don't know your skills...
If you really want to I think you may be able to "overwrite" this bit of your past with a one-off short term job.

Otherwise, please try to be pleased you are out! I left one job where my manager was both horrible and incompetent - I'd be happy to put that job on the census to be honest.
It was a miracle I survived!

Thank you all for being so kind
Your kindly posts help me unwind
Sharing your stories has helped me
To forget what happened, that's the key!
I've shared my story with all of you
I hope that has been helpful too
A kind suggestion brought me cheer
I've written a poem - now published here!

I posted the above, but the thread did not appear on the active list.

So, try again.

Ha ha!
Well done!

You should have written "Poet" on the census form, *ElderlyPerson"

The question is, what to do
When census questioning bothers you
To me the answer seems quite plain,
Write a poem, ditch the pain!

I’ve just been reading this today Elderly Person, and I hope you genuinely do feel better. I enjoyed the poem, you have a talent there. I’ve been researching my family history over the years (a very absorbing hobby which I can highly recommend) and the censuses are very helpful. However there was a time when people were required to state how many years they had been married and the ages of their children, the age of the eldest child not infrequently equalling or exceeding the number of years of marriage. I reckon that might have been a little embarrassing for the illiterate people who had to give that information to the enumerator to write down for them! And of course many poor souls were just listed as ‘inmates’ of a workhouse or asylum. I think none the less of them for that or indeed anything contained in each decennial snapshot. Honest work of whatever kind is no shame. Please don’t worry about all this when you complete the next census, or indeed at all - as they say, the past is another country! If it comes to mind send it packing back where it belongs and find something pleasant to do or think about. Enjoy the here and now; it is finite and we are so very lucky to have it.

A second poem whilst I was typing! You really do have a gift. Could you be the next (gentleman) Pam Ayres?! (I have probably mis-spelled her surname.). Please post more poems!

Thanks for that, I well might,
But first must think, what to write

This is a very odd thread - it sounds like you’re bothered by your last job before you retired and don’t want to fill it in on the census? And then you compared it to the disgusting indignity of slavery and you completely lost me. There’s no nice way of saying it, but based on this and your previous thread, you might want to start putting things into perspective.

MawBe

I am confused.
You were a store detective?
A hitman?
A professional shoplifter?

You are talking in ever decreasing circles and you know what happened to the jub-jub bird* don’t you?

* it flew round and round in ever decreasing circles

Rather like the fkawi bird…

AmberSpyglass

This is a very odd thread - it sounds like you’re bothered by your last job before you retired and don’t want to fill it in on the census? And then you compared it to the disgusting indignity of slavery and you completely lost me. There’s no nice way of saying it, but based on this and your previous thread, you might want to start putting things into perspective.

My point about slavery was that after it was abolished, instead of giving people a fresh start, perhaps offering them a choice of surnames they were locked in to the indignity of the name of their oppressor.

Likewise, I no longer work for that employer that wanted me to tell lies, no connection whatsoever, no pension or anything like that, no connection, so why am I saddled with it decades afterwards simply because it was the most recent paid employment that I had. Apparently the telephone directory of at least one country in the Caribbean lists many instances of the surname of a previous so called slave owner, as the descendants of those victims of slavery still have that name.

The census only started asking for name and address of a PREVIOUS employer in 2011. Disgusting.

To which previous thread are you referring?

You do realise that if you wanted you could have put a different employer's details, and nobody would be any the wiser? do you honestly think that anyone has time to check out every census entry, and to contact the named employers, many of whom would have gone out of business years ago?

I think your suggestion that this is as bad as slavery is misguided at best, to be honest. I am trying hard to be sympathetic, as I realise that just because something doesn't bother me is not to say that it won't bother someone else, but I'm struggling a bit now.

Let’s face it ElderlyPerson this is not about the fairness or otherwise of Census questions but some long buried grudge you have about a previous employment which has been reawakened by the Census questions.
This is another matter altogether and one which you might benefit rom talking over with a suitably qualified person.
Your views on slavery, on dubious practices by a previous employer or about the job you ended up doing after being made redundant or suffering constructive dismissal - all of these have nothing to do with the Census.
And no, it is not “disgusting” for questions of this type to feature and Yes you are being totally unreasonable if not obsessive.

MawBe

Let’s face it ElderlyPerson this is not about the fairness or otherwise of Census questions but some long buried grudge you have about a previous employment which has been reawakened by the Census questions.
This is another matter altogether and one which you might benefit rom talking over with a suitably qualified person.
Your views on slavery, on dubious practices by a previous employer or about the job you ended up doing after being made redundant or suffering constructive dismissal - all of these have nothing to do with the Census.
And no, it is not “disgusting” for questions of this type to feature and Yes you are being totally unreasonable if not obsessive.

It is about both.

Certainly if I had not been made redundant and had retired normally with pension straightaway then I might have just filled in the answer to the question.

But the question is still unfair.

I don't feel so bad about the original redundancy now. I have the pension now - not as much as it might have been but for redundancy, but more than if I had never had that job, and it was very enjoyable and satisfying until all the restructuring exercise started. It was a long commute that I had started when much younger and it was a bit of a trek in some of the winters and so I avoided over ten years of commuting. Maybe I would have survived, maybe I might have been in a bad accident. Maybe as I got older I would have become worn out. Maybe not. I have attended courses that I could not have attended otherwise.

Maybe there are other census questions that upset other people due to their circumstances that just passed me by.

Did they ask if people were divorced for example?

Someone who is divorced is legally single, and some employers record them as that unless in the appropriate situation someone specifically requests being recorded as divorced, perhaps to show that their children were born whilst the person was married. Similarly with widows.

I think it wrong that some government forms insist on married or single. They should allow people to put widow or widower, treating them the same as single, but why should a widow or widower be required to answer single.

A nasty thing they do too is treat partner as including spouse, when partner and spouse are two different statuses.

So they ask Do you have a partner? Then define partner as including spouse. So why should a married person be required to answer yes to having a partner when they are married.

I consider that it is disgusting to ask about name and address of former employer decades later. How does that help plan for the future?

But I asked AIBU and you have replied, so thank you.

You have got so much out of proportion on this issue- as I said my strong feeling is that there is more to it.

Some beautiful music.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl6WH-3I_gM

Pretty sure this is a troll, GNHQ