I was intrigued to read the words of John Dwyer, Cheshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner when he told a meeting of the county’s police and crime panel that other police forces (not Cheshire) are going through the process of recruiting officers who then quit the job after just a year.

Apparently, the rookie cops didn’t actually realise the job sometimes involved night shifts. Other ‘problems’ driving bobbies to turn in their warrant cards included sometimes having to deal with death and that they stood the chance of being assaulted while on duty.

I have to say I’m mystified by this. Surely there are enough ‘real life’ television shows following police interceptors and the like for newcomers to the profession to have had at least some insight into what is involved.

I can, however, understand it if new recruits give it a go and decide it’s not for them.

Not everyone wants to do a ‘death knock’, have a drunk take a swing at you outside a town centre pub and working nights can play havoc with digestion not to mention your love life.

From personal experience, I thought I was going to love my first job when I finished school but I absolutely hated it and I quit after less than a year.

It involved far too much maths for my liking and it wouldn’t have mattered how long I’d stayed there – hard sums is still hard sums.

Back in the day when I handed in my notice, it wasn’t the done thing and I was given some stern warnings that prospective employers took a dim view of people packing in their job so quickly.

But times have changed, apparently and now ‘quick quitting’ is a thing.

According to thestylist.co.uk this is a result of the world around constantly changing, and over the past few years, our working environments and what we expect from our jobs has altered dramatically

Prompted by the pandemic, the rise of remote working and the economic impact of the recession, the current generation of workers is operating in a very different landscape from the one I faced all those years ago.

 And it’s spawned a whole new attitude to work (and a whole new language to go with it).

So those handing in their notice in a year or less have a name. They are the ‘quick quitters’.

The logic (if logic plays any part in it) is that life is far too short to be in a job you dislike and that both for your own mental health and future prospects (you are extremely unlikely to climb the career ladder in a job you hate) it’s better to get out early without any regrets than to hold on and hope things will get better.

It’s best to trust your instincts if a job isn’t working out so maybe those police recruits who quit after a year should be applauded and not criticised.

Better to make a decision and get on with the rest of your life rather than becoming a ‘quiet quitter’ (there’s another one of those new employment buzzwords).

It appears the term quiet quitter originated with TikTok influencers talking about being burned out and fed up with work and applies to employees who stop taking the initiative and simply do the bare minimum required of them, often as a result of becoming demotivated, burnout, or stress.

I don’t think I would want a quiet quitter as my local police officer.

On another topic, I’ve been pondering last week’s budget. You may recall that Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has now scrapped the pensions lifetime allowance so theoretically you can add as much cash as you want into your pension pot providing you don’t put in more than £60,000 a year. (How many people do you know who earn enough to put £60,000 a year into their pension?)

Of course pensions enjoy beneficial treatment for tax purposes so the change to the regulations means a massive tax boost for the wealthiest one per cent of the population.

It was only a few months ago that the then Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng produced his ridiculously catastrophic ‘mini-budget’ when, among other ideas, he proposed the abolition of the 45 per cent higher rate of income tax.

Needless to say, that would have only benefited the very highest earners in the country.

That decision, coupled with other unfunded proposals, cost Kwarteng his job so congratulations to Jeremy Hunt for pulling off the trick of funnelling shedloads of cash to the very richest without sending the economy into freefall, something Kwasi Kwarteng couldn’t manage despite trying his best efforts.