My Last Shift

My last day was great – obviously a lot shorter due to working less hours than normal (from around 32 weeks I decided to drop down from 8-10 hour shifts to a nicer 6 hour shift as I ended up coming home in agony thanks to back/sciatic pain and SPD pain) but I still had a blast, and did very little work!

When someone leaves, the tradition is to usually get ‘dirty refs’ / takeaway as your last meal together, so in keeping with tradition we got takeaway, however I fought with everyone to let me decided to buy and got a couple of pizzas, which I thought would be a nice treat. Feeding eight grown men is easier said than done when you’re watching the wallet and they have stomachs the size of tanks, but thanks for deal hunting and I did it!

As mentioned, I work in a team of boys (solely boys) and behave/get treated as their old sister, younger sister, and mother all at once, so I didn’t really expect anything special for my last day (maybe a card?) as most of the time it would be me reminding them to do something like this. Plus, my work don’t usually do anything like a collection until after the baby has arrived, so I was quite content with nothing happening.

However, during said last meal my team suddenly topped my treat with these…

I got a huge, gorgeous bouquet of flowers, a mini orchid, a massive carrot and walnut cake (my favourite!) and a card. The cake was actually planned weeks in advance and was baked by one of the boy’s mums, which one of the boys ALSO had to travel by train to collect as they only had a moped as their mode of transport – that hit a heart string for me. They also hinted that more will be on the way once Fidget arrives! It was magical, and if they’d caught me a week ago I would have cried my eyes out. They really blew my last shift out of the water and made me feel very loved – it was special.

My team is like a second family to me, which made leaving so very hard – I really didn’t want to say goodbye. I know it’s not forever and I’ll still speak to them via various social media forums, and don’t get me wrong I couldn’t wait to generally get the hell out so I could start the wind down for this baby, but when I’ve been used to seeing the boys almost every day I get used to them being part of my day. They’re a part of my life, so now not having that regular contact will feel very strange.

Once Fidget is born we’re planning to ‘wet the baby’s head’ and I’ll no doubt take Fidget into work so they can meet their many ‘uncles’ (and so I can have a catch up/gossip) but it’s still very alien knowing that at the moment, I’m not going back.

K