Private and Professional Lives

I’m having a great time at the moment being a volunteer in Nepal. And I’ve been a volunteer in other countries with other organisations before. I’ve also been staff on volunteer programmes too. I’ve done residential programmes of varying descriptions and lengths as well, as a participant and as staff. And as a result of stitching all of this experience together, I have some thoughts about having private and professional lives when living and working in a residential environment.

When you live and work together, especially in an environment where there are restrictions on your movements (eg a curfew for when you have to be back at base / the hostel / the hotel / the conference centre / the accommodation block / etc) then it is difficult to find the difference between your private and your professional life. In this case, when I talk about professional life, I mostly mean staff members who are actually paid to be working throughout (even when they are not actually on duty). But I probably do also mean volunteers and participants etc as well. Basically, if there might be a difference in acceptable behaviour during an actual work session and acceptable behaviour in an evening after dinner then that’s the professional / private distinction I’m looking at.

I would argue that for both participants and for staff in this sort of space that even in the off-duty times you are never completely off duty. For example, in my personal life there are very few constraints on my behaviour. There are some laws that constrain my behaviour but even many of them can be flouted in my private life (sure I’ll have to deal with the consequences if I get caught), but I could write and practice delivering pseudo-political speeches full of hatred, vitriol, offensive language in my living room and that would be fine. (Obviously, this isn’t a life choice that I’m going to make, but nonetheless I could.) I could drink myself into oblivion. I could smoke weed or cigars in my bedroom. I could throw things around my living room and break stuff (drunk or sober). I could play loud music of the most offensive type I could find. I could play loud music of the nicest type I could find. I could wear as much or as little as I wanted to. I could leave dirty dinner dishes sitting on the carpet beside the sofa for a month. I could throw teabags and cigarette ash into the sink and let it get clogged up become a breeding ground for several previously undiscovered microorganisms. I could sing terribly and loudly and all the time.

If I was in a residential course setting, I probably couldn’t do most of these things. There would probably be some form of code of conduct or such that would constrain my behaviour to some extent. There would definitely be some social norms that would probably amend my behaviour. Personally, I think I’m unlikely to change much of my behaviour based on a code of conduct (I already try to be considerate, respectful, etc), but I am definitely cleaner and tidier in a group environment than I am living in a flat on my own.

When I’m staff, things are even more different. Even when I’m off-duty I’m still going to be keeping an eye on the people around, I’m going to answer questions, I’m going to be helpful. I’m going to respond if there is an emergency. And that means I’m going to need to be able to respond if there is an emergency. So I need to have the work phone on and charged and with me. I need to be sober (easy for me, I always am) and clear-headed enough to be able to respond if there is an emergency.

And there’s the rub. Should someone who is staff in a residential context have to be sober even when they are off-duty. And I think the answer is, well, no. If they want to have a few drinks after dinner then absolutely they should be able to. Should a staff member be able to have a personal relationship with someone else in the group (staff or participant, assuming both are legally able to consent) then yeah, probably. Except, well, maybe not. This will definitely depend on context. In some contexts there is a significant power difference between staff and participants and a sexual relationship between the two would be a very bad thing indeed. In other cases, they are both consenting adults, there is no abuse of power, there is no advantage to be gained, there is no detriment to anyone so why not?

If being off-duty involves being off-site then some of this is a bit easier to see. But if off-duty is still on-site and mixing with the other staff and participants then things get a bit murkier.

In all the experience I’ve had to date, I’ve not directly been aware of anything problematic occurring. So this isn’t a post arising from any specific instances of bad behaviour. And if I was privy to behaviour that was problematic then I would obviously report that through the appropriate channels rather than obliquely referencing it in a blog post!

But, as usual, it is the grey areas I am interested in. It is the spaces where one person makes one decision and another makes a different decision and neither is necessarily wrong but one might be more right than the other, perhaps.

I wonder whether any organisation that employs people to work in a residential context can ever guarantee that their staff will get time off. Perhaps it is better for them to admit that even off-duty staff when they are on-site are still subject to a particular set of behaviour standards. I worked in an residential educational setting where that distinction was made: three staff, one on-duty, the other on-site but off-duty the third off-site (with different behaviour expectations for the three). And that sounds good to me. It starts to sound less good if that involves curtailing someone’s personal freedoms for an extended period of time. What happens if the person who is off-site decides to just stay on-site because they can’t be bothered going somewhere else, etc?

Alternatively, maybe we do actually just need hats. When I wear my professional hat then I’m actually working, when I take off the hat, I’m just a regular human.

I guess, as people, we’re really good at seeing the person and less good at seeing the hat (I do think this actually bodes well for the human race by the way). There is an actor who I used to love watching (on TV and live in the theatre) and who wrote two albums that I bought and loved. I then discovered he had some political views I find thoroughly disagreeable (not illegal, he shouldn’t be stopped from having such views, I just want nothing to do with them). As a result, I can no longer watch anything he is in, and I deleted his music. The distaste I have of his personal life affected my ability to view his professional life. He could wear all the hats he likes and it would make no difference. There is an author who wrote some incredible books but his private life wasn’t brilliant (actually illegal this time) and yet, I still love his books and read them. In this case, I definitely see hats. Or maybe the author was just a much better author than the actor was an actor, or I just found the political opinions more abhorrent than the illegal activity.

Is there a difference between personal and professional life? Yes. Can the two exist completely independently of each other? Nope.

Here’s a radical thought: perhaps the behaviour standards I hold myself to in my personal life should be of the same high standard as I hold myself in my professional life. Or is that too much? Do I also deserve a break?

Now, where did I put that hat?