Switched my mobile phone on last Sunday afternoon to find a message from the standby co-ordinator of my company saying I was on standby and needed to do sickness cover that morning! This was a big shock to me as had no idea I was down for it despite scanning the schedules many times.

I was already five hours late when I listened to the message and so in a panic I just phoned a random company number and spoke to someone in another district who confirmed my name was indeed on the schedule but not in the predominant West Tokyo district column which I run my eye over when it appears at the end of each month in anticipation of the following month.

Obviously it was my fault and my fault only for not checking the schedule thoroughly but I honestly had no idea and to add insult to injury I stayed in on the Saturday night, had no plans for Sunday and only turned off my phone before I went to bed as my spam mail has been increasing throughout the night recently and one doesn’t want to be woken up by such a thing. To cap it all off it was blo*dy raining on Sunday and in my mind an ideal day to do an extra days work which was just the icing on a filthy tasting cake!

A fax or two has been sent round our schools recently regarding people basically taking the p*ss on the subject of the sickness cover system emplyed by the company and with it the threat of a days pay being docked which would have been a bitter pill for me to swallow as I have never called in sick and always been reliable in such situations.

Since I first penned this article it has been decided that I will indeed be singled out and made to pay the price for my first offence for which I will definitely appeal. The case continues.