John MacDonald: Are we surrounded by control freaks?

Is it just me? Or are we surrounded by control freaks? Don’t do this, don’t do that. You can’t do this, you can’t do that. That’s how it’s feeling to me with this ridiculous situation where some employers are telling their staff they can’t travel around the country, in case they catch Omicron. This isn’t just work travel we’re talking about - which maybe you could understand, because employers have obligations to look after the health and safety of their staff. No, it’s more than that. We’ve actually got bosses saying to their staff that they can’t take leave and they can’t go outside their home region for a holiday. Talk about panic stations! In one case, a care facility has cancelled all leave during February and doesn’t want any of its people travelling around the country. Auckland has apparently been pointed out as a hotspot - with one person working at this place saying she’s been told that if she goes there, there’s a high chance she’ll come back with Omicron. And so, her employer doesn’t want her going there. As this person said: “We’re all double vaxxed at work, we’re going to get our boosters, we thought that’s what we needed to have some freedom and do more things.” Well, that’s what we were told wasn’t it? But the control freaks are running roughshod over all that.  Unless the boss at this particular outfit is a world-leading authority on Omicron and knows more about Covid than the people running the health system. Which is probably unlikely. And my message to them - and any employer who thinks they can start dictating things in this way - is that we’re not in lockdown and, the last time I checked, we can go wherever we want. So why employers think they can start dictating what their staff do and don’t do in their own time in this way, I’ll never know. Well, I do know, actually. They’re getting themselves well and truly caught up in this control freak environment that has been allowed to develop over the last couple of years. And I think the time has come where people are well and truly sick of it - and employers are going to have to be very careful where they go with this. Especially when it comes to making up their own Covid rules and expectations and telling people what they can and can’t do, and where they can and can’t go, in their own time. Employers have no legal right to do this. It flies completely in the face of what the Government or legislation or the traffic light system says can happen - and they need to pull their heads in. People hate being told what they can and can’t do, if they think the person telling them what they can and can’t do has no mandate or right to do it. And if this continues, people will start to get very secretive about what they’re doing. And it won’t stop with where they might be going during the weekend or while they’re on holiday. They’ll start getting secretive about a sore throat they might have - and to avoid having to go into isolation, they won’t get a Covid test and they’ll just soldier on. They’ll rebel against the control freak state we’ve become - and then where will we be?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.