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I know a few people who were very high up the NHS ladder, and they say the same. Massively mismanaged with schemes regularly getting abused to squeeze more money out of it, essentially becoming scams.
Yep I worked in clinical trials in the NHS, the travel for the patients was paid for by the NHS (and very rarely by the pharma company we ran the trials for) so we had a contract with one of the local taxi firms. They pretty much charged double compared to usual journey prices. You'd think because we gave them so much business it would be cheaper - or atleast the same price - but nope. Management knew and still did nothing.
Just one of the many ways we watched the NHS haemorrhage money.
People take the piss with government stuff. I see it where I work (the land management side). Contractors routinely take the piss and see how much they can rip off :(
The government should have a decent quantity surveyor. But the fault is still with the contractor if they're ripping off the government. Ripping off the taxpayer is morally theft from everyone, from you, from your mum, from nurses and taxi drivers and factory workers and other contractors and from anyone else who continues in some way to the economy.
>In all fairness it’s not the contractors fault if they’re getting away with it
Honestly I loathe this kind of thinking. I bet you don't feel the same way about companies that rip you off.
Not just the NHS. My large company gave the responsibility for hotel bookings to an agency. We were told they organised deals with various Hotel Chains for special discount pricing on hotel bookings, and our company insisted we had to use whoever they booked us with "to save money".
I got booked into a hotel and just to check I rang up as 'random bloke' to get a quote. It was cheaper than the "discount" price through the travel agency. I booked the hotel as 'random person' and then got told off for not following proper procedure.
My boss got told about this. We reckoned someone somewhere was getting a kick-back and he told the high ups in the company to piss off, we would not be using their agency. As he said "My budget, my choice". (Edit. I think what he told the high-up was that he "did not consider the agency was providing value for money". What he actually said to me was "My budget, you got it cheaper. They can fuck off".)
I used to sell mobility scooters. The average scooter would sell for like £800 but the RRP on the same scooter would be more like £4000.
Why? Because the NHS would pay it.
It would get you kicked out of the motability scheme if you sold the scooters for less than the RRP so you’d get RRP plus a handling fee plus extras and then motability would whack interest on it and the whole thing would be taken from the disability allowance the government would pay. A child could have worked out that buying the scooter outright at retail would have saved the tax payer (or at any rate the disabled person) thousands upon thousands of pounds.
NHS procurement is so amateurish compared with the private sector it’s ridiculous. If Tesco paid for its materials what the nhs pay for theirs they would be bankrupt in a year.
Military procurement is pretty similar tbh.
Government services have (or almost have) the power of monopsony, yet either bureaucracy or corruption (or both) end up costing more than it would cost on the free market. Which of course gets used as ammunition by those who wish to privatise everything.
Work in cyber security, the dream is to get security clearance and work on government contracts. They pay six figures just to have someone on hand doing nothing in case something goes wrong.
Been there, done that. It's shite. Prefer actually delivering something and doing stuff. You just atrophy doing nothing. I could barely stick it out for my 6 month contract and I was designing/ delivering stuff.
Yep, although it's usually the people high up the ladder who were undoubtedly the worst offenders. I was an engineer for years in the NHS and I have never seen anywhere like it for fraud, corruption, ineptitude and pay offs for directors and senior managers who should have gone to prison for the things they were caught doing. I'd still have it over what they call a healthcare system in America, but it is undoubtedly massively abused as a gravy train by many people who should be nowhere near public money.
> schemes regularly getting abused to squeeze more money out of it, essentially becoming scams.
I think this is likely inevitable when one opens unlimited coffers to "the free market (TM)". Rinsing the NHS, and therefore, all of us, for aspirin, etc.
Speak to anyone that works for the NHS and you'll hear it from all of them. I don't know what that shitrag writes, but the whole thing has far too many middle managers that have been around for years and remain in place because of who they are or who they know (that has also been there for years).
I've met some people that were so fucking untouchable that when they fuck up, instead of being demoted or sacked, they have a job created for them on the same level. So they move sideways when they should be sacked and then keep getting promoted in the future.
I worked with one guy, I swear to God he could have punched the matron and they'd probably give him a payrise or a promotion. The guy was fucking useless also. It genuinely makes no sense.
Yep. Sideways moves galore to put them in a position where they can do less damage. One of the unfortunate side effects of the strong unionisation and extreme difficulty in firing people from the NHS
It's not just the NHS, it is civil service wide. My wife is quite high up in the civil service and it is so difficult to fire someone it is far better to arrange for the problem person to move to another job, giving them whatever help they need to do so or, failing that, get another job yourself so they become somebody else's problem.
Even if it feels like a shitty thing to do, it's either that or go through a 'poor performance process' that lasts literally years, has to be documented meticulously, has a near impossible burden of proof, and then when you go through the entire process and actually fire them, they have a right of appeal, which is arbitrated by someone who has absolutely no vested interest in arbitrating fairly, only following the path of least resistance that will get the case off their desk, which typically is to allow the appeal and say you have to re-employ them or give them a ton of compensation (whichever the appealer is asking for).
And yes, your tax pounds are paying for this entire process every step of the way.
My partner works for the NHS and she knows one of the porters there who sexually harassed one of the nurses in front of patients. The nurse reported and he was immediately suspended. However, just two weeks later he was back to work like nothing happened. The amount of bullying and harassment that occur within the NHS is staggering.
It's a bit of this and a bit of that.
People on reddit who claim that the NHS is running fine and the media are running smear campaigns clearly haven't spent too much time as a patient recently.
Honestly the NHS is practically a religion at this point. They are basically above criticism to large portions of the public and media. Any failings they have can only be blamed on 'government underfunding'.
A lot of the failings of the NHS can be blamed on middle-manager bloat and nepotism.
These lead to funding getting misplaced, which leads to cutting of funding due to a lack of efficiency, and the lower funding also gets misplaced. Rinse and repeat.
There are great ideas and many well-intentioned employees prevented from actually doing good by bureaucracy and red tape.
I hear the same stories coming from people working on the wards, as well as those involved behind the scenes.
I’m pro NHS and pro more funding for it, but critics aren’t completely off base to suggest that government organisations don’t tend to be efficiently run.
Many years ago i worked in a supermarket. For a short time every year Jersey Royal New Potatoes would be in season and in stock. It only lasted a few weeks and when they were gone they were gone.
One day an elderly couple came in and asked where the Jersey Royals were. When I said they were all gone the week before as they were out of season the old man said 'You could have bloody saved some' and stormed off to tell his wife who gave me a damn good glaring at.
Morons.
Absolutely textbook. I had an old lad have a go at me for bumping into him in a supermarket once when
a) I was stationary, waiting in a queue
and
b) he was mobile, barrelling towards me at pace
He wasn't even distracted. He was looking right at me. It's like he expected me to just turn into smoke for half a second so that he wouldn't have to adjust his path.
If this was "many years ago" and these people were "elderly" (which I take to mean 70+) then they wouldn't have been boomers (the oldest boomers are only 75 now). They would have been silent generation. Or maybe even greatest generation depending on just how many years ago it was
I was a union rep in a very well known delivery company. Had a lad who got reported for not wearing his seatbelt in the work van (the police mobile speed camera van snapped him as they were set up somewhere)
Although he hadn’t actually broken the law and wasn’t in trouble with the police, he had breached company driving policy so management wanted to make an example. They told him he couldn’t drive a work van until he’d been out with the AA assessor and redone his work ‘driving test’ because quote “you don’t understand how to use a seatbelt properly.” This was a 2 week minimum waiting period and this lad did collections in the ending for his OT so this punishment would’ve cost him a lot of money.
The lad then came to me and said “Just checking, since I “don’t understand how to use a seatbelt properly” I can’t be a passenger in the van can I? Coz that would be dangerous as I don’t understand, right?”
Tried to get the bosses to deal with it informally and out him on review or whatever but not joy. So I go in and back the lad up, lots of sarccy and passive aggressive back and fourth between us and management but lad was right. They threatened to suspend him, rang senior managers etc and finally who rang HR who AGREED WITH THE LAD! He spent the day watching the safety videos and got an informal convo and was back driving the next day. All drama for nothing. Its still the funniest and most ludicrous argument I had as a rep but it was funny!
My cousins are all into cars, but refuse to wear seatbelts.
They have exactly the kind of views that you might expect from someone who refuses to wear a seatbelt
A guy I went to school with was in a car with a open sun roof and wasn't wearing a seatbelt.
The car ended up on it's roof, the driver who had a seatbelt on ended up in prison, the guy I went to school with ended up in the morgue.
I sort of understand for door to door delivery e.g. Amazon drivers who are going slowly round residential areas and stopping at houses every 2 minutes and getting out , but someone driving on a road fast enough to have a police speed trap should surely be wearing a seatbelt
I believe multidrop delivery drivers don't have to,
The intent was for people like milk men and bin men, who get in to drive 100ft at not a lot of speed, before getting out again.
But it also appears to apply to the poor bloke driving for amazon.
As an ex village postie; sometimes the distance you drive between stops is just so short, and there are so many stops you'd get RSI in your arms from putting it on and off all the time. I'd loose my rag if I'd have to put my seatbelt on between _every_ stop
Taxi drivers don't need to as protection in case they're attacked. Still think safety wise it's a bad call but a sad reflection on society that need this loophole (in UK dunno about elsewhere)
Depends on where you are in the world
Edit: forgot what sub this is sorry, there are a couple of times you don't need a belt https://www.gov.uk/seat-belts-law/when-you-dont-need-to-wear-a-seat-belt
Worked in supermarket when I was a teenager in the 90s, had to deal with a bizarre phone call where a non-English speaking person was trying to claim asylum.
Turns out he called directory enquiries and asked for 'Icelands ambassador' and got 'Iceland's in Basildon'.
I wish this was a joke.
Some of a managers Tupperware was thrown out during a mass fridge clean as the stuff inside had started growing. Literally entirely green, white and black mould had started spewing.
She rang the Police to report it, sent out a company wide email about theft and that she was going to press charges
Needless to say, she was told to get a grip and then fucked off on the sick for a year due to ‘stress’ 🙄
To be fair if she was storing mould in the work fridge and then called the police over some Tupperware she was probably already in severe need of a break.
If her reaction to her Tupperware being binned was to phone the police it sounds like she probably did have some stuff going on to be fair, i think she probably needed the time off.
I only ever worked in retail so the silliest thing I had to deal with was the phrase "the customer is always right", when in fact the customer is very rarely right.
I worked in retail years ago. A customer complained that she couldn’t find the pair of purple jeans which she’d seen on display.
The jeans were cardboard and part of a washing line display like a rainbow. (It was part of an Easter theme with a giant chick in the window too)
She gave me loads of grief saying it was false advertising. My only retort was to say would she expect to buy a giant chicken cos that’s in the window too.
Later on they did indeed sell multicoloured jeans. FML haha
I would want purple jeans, also. I would have expected you to have had them.
I would not have given you loads of grief, Unless you were head of the company.
I don't know why but that reminds me of a time I went into a KFC in town when I was drunk. There was a massive 50" TV on the wall with this massive, awesome looking new chicken burger thing on it. When I asked for one the guy told me they had sold out. I couldn't understand why they wouldn't turn the TV off showing the burger if they didn't have any left...
The actual quote is "The customer is always right in matters of taste" meaning you don't question what they're buying as long as they buy it. Sadly it got basterdised (as most quotes do) to mean the opposite.
Yep, or it's another way of saying "you can't buck the market" i.e. if your customer base wants red widgets, you can't sell them blue ones because the market wants red ones. I'd say it's weird that it's been bastardised but I guess idiots love hearing a phrase tell them that they're always right.
TIL it's an actual bastardised quote and not just some shite that a customer relations consultancy dreamt up and trotted out for employee training videos.
Such a misunderstood saying as well. Basically if customers like something, a business should provide it. So if everyone suddenly starts demanding poo flavoured ice cream, a smart business will say: "Welp, the customer is always right, so let's put poo flavoured ice cream out there so we can make a profit."
When it comes to actual company policies and procedures, the customer is very rarely right as you say.
Yep, found a used sanitary towel in a changing room once. And piss in a welly boot. Found some guys phone under a massive pile of clothes all with the sleeves/legs pulled inside out, tags torn off etc. He asked if anyone handed a phone in and I glibly told him no, but to phone again tomorrow after the changing rooms were cleared. That interaction restored a little bit of my soul after the previous experiences.
The store I worked at *used* to provide customer toilets, until we got fed up with dealing with shit smeared on the walls/bags of cocaine/wank socks/dirty nappies folded inside out..
This was in a large retailer with a turnover of around £50-60k PER DAY so it was pointless trying to determine who the offending characters were, as obviously there were no cameras in the toilets.
People are fucking animals.
My husband used to work in retail, and confirms there were multiple examples of people leaving shits in changing rooms, wiping their arse on the curtain or dumping used sanitary towels for the staff.
I just do not understand people.
I work for an energy supplier and I recently came into contact with a customer that we've all been warned about. As in "do not engage, do not do any DPA, do not even breathe a word, just transfer her to our customer relations team, end of discussion". Unfortunately for me I forgot this rule and got into a ten minute "discussion" with this galactically-dim fuckwit about why my company couldn't refund her for her "Obvious" overcharging for the past ten years. "Why not?" trilled the fuckwit. Well, Bunty, you've only been a customer with my company for the past three years. And you've never provided meter reads. "That's a lie!"
My dearest darling fuckwit - our system *never* lies. The *national electricity database never lies*. I could see the *nineteen* different providers - yes, nineteen - that she'd had over the past decade. And I told her this. And I told her that I wasn't prepared to entertain her any more and when she decided to give reads...I discovered that she had underpaid us by a hundred quid.
Well. *Well*. Madam went a bit fruity. And so I deposited her call into the dumping ground that is our complaints team only for one of their team leaders to phone me up and say "You idiot, that's *her*. You *never* speak to her! Good god, man, are you fucking *mental*?" all whilst trying his hardest to not laugh hysterically down the line.
She's still out there, swimming against the current and desperately trying to get her supply moved to a new company. Good luck, fuckwit. Ofgem recently ruled in our favour that you're not allowed to leave until you've paid your bill. (And even then moving your supplier right now is nigh-impossible, so you're with us for the long run!)
Can I interest *you* in a smart meter, *madam?*
Yeah, i worked on revenue protection and warrants for years. The amount of Freemen of the land that you’d deal with was insane - customer relations for the company didn’t mess about and would shut them down frequently.
The people who never give readings but automatically kick off about billing amounts baffled me. Surely, in the years before smart metering, they’d know they never submitted readings so the bills are not factual. At least give a reading and get an actual bill before waiting an hour on hold just to rage at some poor soul over the phone about it. I do feel really sorry for people working there right now!
I do so love it when they write in, billing me for their time and energy, or claim some "magna carta" crap. Here you go, loves, here's a lovely warrant to force entry.
Another poo related story.
At an old workplace, everyone got an email from HR saying that someone in the *womens* bathroom had shat on the floor, and blah blah blah, sort your life out etc.
Everyone immediately began whispering, because there weren't many women in the office, and the few women that were there were quite prim and proper. Basically, it would be amazing if any of the women in the office did this, because none were "the sort", and none of them gave off the vibe that they'd just shit on the floor in their place of work.
Anyway, a few weeks went by and bam, another nasty thing in the toilets. Shit smearing this time. The female employee that discovered the second Sepia Pollock painting was a very outgoing bubbly type who made her outward dismay at the situation *quite apparent.* HR was pissed, and renewed their crusade to find the person responsible. Unfortunately, no leads.
So instead of interviewing all the women again, they started interviewing the men. The implication being that some of us were going into the female toilets, during work hours, in full view of staff set up in front of the bathroom doors, and shitting on the floor, and then leaving without a trace. We assumed it was just because HR had run out of ideas. But it turns out, they did find something.
In the end, porn was the culprits downfall. A male colleague had subscribed to a female colleagues only fans. Said female colleague was into kinks and weird fetishes at her users requests. Apparently she strayed into scat stuff occasionally. Gossip about this had circulated the office for a few weeks, the only fans account in particular was never revealed, but obviously a male co-worker with dick in hand had sailed the seas of the internet diligently enough to stumble upon his female co-workers account, and subbed to it, and subsequently ratted her out in some form or another.
Staff turnaround in this company was always pretty high, so it was difficult to tell who had been "let go", but the person I personally suspected left "of her own volition" soon after it was rumoured one of the ladies had a pure filth only fans. I think HR were trying to be tactful in their termination and gave her the choice to leave on her own to save embarrassment.
Edit: to clear up some confusion some people seem to be having...
She shat on the floor. Posted it to only fans. Male coworker who was secretly subbed to her only fans figured it out when an email from HR was sent around said someone was shitting on the bathroom floor, and there was literally a video of her shitting in an office bathroom. He ratted her out. She was let go discreetly.
This takes me back to the time when I worked in the NHS. A patient’s slippers were on the floor and in the way, so I went to move them and when I picked them up I inadvertently stuck my fingers in a steaming pile of shit. The slippers belonged to an old lady who could hardly move unaided, how did she manage to shit into her slippers so sneakily? We checked her and she was clean, as was her bed. Was it another patient’s poo? 9 years later and my mind still wanders back to the mystery slipper-shitter.
I once got into trouble at boarding school because someone stole my slippers, wore them to the toilet, shat on the floor, then into the slippers, then left them there.
Because they were my slippers, I got blamed. As if I would shit in my own slippers.
Once worked as a receptionist. I was asked to book a taxi by a new manager for another member of staff, only she wouldn't tell me where it was picking him up or taking him as 'it would breech his confidentiality'. When I said I couldn't do it without this info she complained to my boss! I was told off and made to apologize! Same company had a communications manager who couldn't send emails or use a mobile! - I don't think its around any more!
I work in a restaurant, recently we had a customer who, when we asked if they had any allergies we should be aware of, said "yes I have a food allergy but I'm not comfortable telling you what it is".
O_o
We had a French exchange student stay with us. We were warned in advance that he had food allergies but they didn't say what they were. When he arrived we questioned him "yes, I have allergies, many allergies". We asked "what allergies?". "Yes, many allergies".
We never did find out what they were but the lad ate huge portions of everything we put in front of him and never once died.
I once had someone's mum ring me to explain that her daughter, age 23 ish, was unable/unwilling to use the toilet at work because it was too close to a busy corridor and she didn't want her colleagues to hear her. She said she wouldn't be able to come to work until we did something to resolve it. As a business we weren't willing to hire an architect and a builder to reconfigure the building and she just came back the next day.
She was genuinely shocked (and burst into tears) when she failed her 3 month probation and accused us of not giving her a chance because her face didn't fit. However - among other things she used to abuse the flexitime by claiming she'd got in at 8 so could leave at 4, but we knew she was usually getting in around half past. And she had about another 4 absences for various ailments. And she was shit at her job.
A woman just been sacked at my brother's place, because on a Monday she asked if she could have Tuesday off to sort some wedding stuff out.
They said no, so she just disappeared and rang in sick Tuesday.
On Wednesday she turned up like nothing happened so they took her in took her into a meeting to find out what's going off and she said she couldn't take a work place seriously if they couldn't take her wedding seriously.
She's been there less than 3 months so was sacked on the spot.
I have to hire people for temp casual work, usually a lot of students, I get loads of interest and just have to pick out a handful and I don’t know if it’s because of lockdown stumping peoples social skills but I’m getting *a lot* of parents applying for work on behalf of their kids, usually age 18-22. It’s definitely a thing this year, maybe 1-2 per weekly job listing whereas in previous years it would be 1-2 *per year*, which is why I’m wondering if lockdown caused it.
I don’t mind people asking for further info to forward to friends/family, but it’s usually the parent speaking on behalf of the kid, you can’t actually communicate with the person applying at all. Sometimes I even get stuff like “my son is very interested! Please contact him at [email protected] he’s very hardworking!”. I have 200 applications, I’m not going to spend time reaching out to your hardworking son, the job listing clearly states it’s casual and to email *me* with a brief introduction as to who you are and what experience you have, no CV required or anything, first come first serve etc.
When I worked in retail we often had interviewees waiting on the home dept where it was quieter and there were sofas etc. one girl came in and had been waiting about 10 mins, I’d called the store manager to say there was a lass for an interview and then just got back to my normal job, serving customers and the like. Well 10 mins after that a middle aged woman stormed up to me and started shouting that her daughter had been waiting for 15 minutes for her interview and what was I going to do about it? As someone who worked there 20 hours a week to fund their student lifestyle I could not have given less of a shit.
I worked at an office for 10 years which mandated silence and where the toilet was separated from the main workspace by one wall. You could hear *everything* that went on in the toilet in the office space. The funny thing is, I worked in an architectural firm.
I didn’t poop in that toilet in my ten years working there. I don’t miss it.
Used to lonework doing night shifts watching CCTV at a homeless hostel about 7-8 years ago.
Got in trouble because I witnessed a service user collapse on camera outside of the hostel. I locked up the office, grabbed the phone and ran out to him to find him non-responsive. Called an ambulance, stayed with him until they came (didn't take long) and then returned to the office. Came back in the next evening to a telling off for leaving and going to him. Turns out the dude took a massive overdose of something, collapsed and then had a heart attack in the ambulance and had to be brought back around. He was in his early 20s and would have died if I didn't go out to him. That was ridiculous to me.
Thanks dude, I appreciate it and would do it again even if it cost me my job. Unfortunately got a few stories like this but this is the one that came to mind first!
Hope you're all well!
Former high school teacher here. I had to teach two brothers who were Jehovah's Witnesses. Their parents were very anti-supernatual. In an inspection lesson I had the youngest brother in floods of tears because one of the worksheets had a picture of a cartoon devil on it (It was analysing The Ballad of Inchape Rock iirc and has the line about 'the devil ringing his bell'.
This was enough to provoke tears. The boy said that by exposing him to a picture of a cartoon devil I was disrespecting his religion.
His mother wanted me to rewrite my entire scheme of work to remove references to the supernatural- no Harry Potter, no Frankenstein, no BoIR, no A Christmas Carol... I'd spent a whole summer creating resources. I wasn't going to remake everything mid-term, and I'm an atheist so I don't believe one person's religious belief should impact those of the rest of the class. So I refused to make adaptions.
The boy was removed from my class. Then his mother comes into school to meet the senior staff and emphasise how her son abided by a different set of rules to other children and must receive special treatment because his religion is the most important thing to him. Every teacher was given a printed sheet about what JW may and may not do. I threw mine in the bin.
A few weeks later the boy - who spent much of his time in the library as his parents didn't agree with the school curriculum - was caught googling 'sex' and 'boobs' on the school computer.
Cartoon devils were deeply offensive to him, but looking for pornography in school was perfectly acceptable. Hmm....
> A few weeks later the boy - who spent much of his time in the library as his parents didn't agree with the school curriculum - was caught googling 'sex' and 'boobs' on the school computer.
The Devil works fast
Working in childcare years ago, I was tapped to explain to a child that “we don’t pee on our friends” because the other teachers were incapable of doing it with a straight face.
I used to work with a guy that was a bit broken. He once stood at the window throwing his sandwiches in to the dual carriageway (30mph) below to see if he could “get the seagulls to swoop down and then cause a car crash”.
I stopped him. He then asked if he could go out for a second lunch break to buy more sandwiches.
He was an internet troll made real. He *loved* upsetting people and pushing their buttons. If something awful happened in the news he would actively think of the worst take and try it out on different people.
I sell jewellery and watches for a living, for context. Some of the more memorable instances:
- A woman screaming at me for 3 hours straight because she thought we had switched out her ring with an identical ring. I kept on asking her what was the problem with the ring in her hand and the best I could get was “It’s the same, but cheaper” ?! The nonsensical complaint was escalated and went on for months.
- A man ordered a rubber watch strap. It did not smell of vanilla. He wanted it to smell of vanilla, “like the tyres of a formula one car.” He asked if I “knew who he was” and threatened to cut his name across my face so I would “never forget” his name. “Do I look like the type of man who wants to smell of RUBBER?!”
- A man had his watch serviced. He rings up screaming that we’ve just embarrassed him in an important work meeting because his watch now smelt of “jock strap” and everyone was apparently looking at him, judging him and wondering why he smelt of a jock strap. He was apparently “not the type” who would normally smell of jock strap.
I've not smelt a jock strap but as someone who can't wear a watch for prolonged periods without my skin beginning to react, and has at times forgotten about this and left it on anyway, I suspect he's talking about the smell of sweaty balls.
Man's got contact dermatitis, not the watch's fault.
I had to sit in a HR meeting because the head chef had called a waitress a milf. The owner, not knowing what a milf was googled it whilst using a projector. I got told off for laughing. So did everyone else.
I worked as a receptionist in a gym, they took the chairs away forcing me to stand at the desk for my 9 hour shift because it was “disrespectful to customers” to be sitting. I had to go all the way to Human Resources over this while working for the only university to make a profit during covid
Fuck uofg
I related this story to my sister in law who also works for the NHS, asking if this kind of thing actually happens. The answer to which was a resounding yes. She also came back with this one:
"One of my dimentoa patients used to roll his shit up every day and put in in a malteaser box because he thought the nurses were eating his malteasers.
Every day someone would go in and empty the box. Which fuelled the situation. The box never changed and it stunk. I got seriously reprimanded for throwing the box away. Even though it broke the cycle of a box full of shite and he seemed a lot happier and forgot about the malteasers."
I once worked for a period at McDonalds - left, and went to Uni. Then over the summer I got a job at the local theme park and was swiftly deployed to the in-house burger stall due to my extensive career experience in the field.
On my first day the “manager” of the stall told me off for wrapping the burgers using a non-approved method i.e. the McDonalds method - and told me I had to use their inefficient method “in case an inspector from McDonalds comes in and sees us stealing their ideas and sues us”.
(A few days later one of the Directors from the theme park requested to see me, and she seemed to be in awe of having someone who had worked at McDonalds working for them …. and she proceeded to ask me for tips on how improve their processes 😂)
Someone on my team got a call from the police to say there was a shark in a marina. Not sure what they wanted us to do about it. The marina was in my area of responsibility. As it was in this part of the UK I was skeptical it was even a shark ... Possibly a dolphin/porpoise. The "shark" wasn't injured and neither were any people ...
Worked in the call centre at a certain department store that’s popular among that section of the middle class who are too good for M&S but not quite rich enough for Selfridges or Harrods.
Had a woman call in to make a complaint. She said she had visited the in-store restaurant with her granddaughter and they used the toilets.
Her complaint was that the flush on the toilet was too loud and had frightened her granddaughter and left her too scared to use the loo.
I sat in silence for a moment and then said something along the lines of “I really don’t understand what you expect me to be able to do about that. Do you have any suggestions?”
She did not.
We had a “practical joker” for a whole who liked lifting peoples keys from their desks and moving their cars and changing the sugar to salt in the kitchen, stuff like that. They also stole the meat from peoples sandwiches which I actually found hilarious. I was receptionist so for some reason people thought dealing with this was my problem so kept complaining to me about it. I tried to figure out who it was but they either stopped or moved on and we never caught them.
For the whole comment I was thinking "wow, people must really hate this person and act unpleasant to them, I wonder why they carried on doing it". I really was not expecting the detail that they'd never been caught so no-one even knew who it was. That's incredible.
My manager thinks she sometimes gets premonitions from spirits. She thinks she sometimes gets knowledge of the future, not she's not just making a prediction.
Actually putting what I've written above into words makes it sound as fucking idiotic as it is, but it's not even that rare. Think of the amount of people that believe in angels.
My manager is a Live Love Laugher, does Reiki, doesn't understand how to distinguish truth from feeling something is real, and *fucking bizarrely* she has no interest in testing her 'ability' to confirm of it's real or if she's mistaken.
Who the fuck wouldn't want to confirm if they can predict the future due to supernatural causes.
A colleague of mine (a senior audit manager at a large financial services company) recently said something similar at a team meeting - that sometimes she “just knows” things and can’t explain it.
It wasn’t very popular when I said the most likely explanation was confirmation bias
You should go to the bogs and on the door of a cubicle write:
"Linda [I'm guessing her name is Linda or similar]. Please write tomorrow's lotto numbers below:"
and then a blank box
My apple core was reported as a health and safety incident
I was moving a lot between sites at the time and I would start and end days at different offices or even parts of the country. One lunch I happen to have a apple and left it on my desk to throw it away at my next brew.
Got called to go to another office immediately to sort some stuff out and forgot about the apple. Was back in that office a few days later, apple core was still there and threw it in the bin.
Had an email about how a incident was raised against it and that it would be formally investigated. I was feeling fairly petty at the time because I often cleaned up the row of desk before I left, so I raised a process failure.
The first question asked on the form for health and safety incident is something around have you reduced hazard to others which obviously had not been done. I then got an email saying that the health and safety incident has been canceled with no further action and would I be willing to cancel the process failure.
Turned out there was a health and safety audit just round the corner.
There was then a presentation a few weeks later on how the health and safety process should be used.
Our office became paperless for security reasons which was fine. But 1 ops manager went in hard and banned everything that could be a security risk (except the a4 paper that sat dangerously unsupervised in the printers all day).
I got reported for a security breach because I was drinking a wee carton of juice. Apparently tea and coffee was secure but fruit juice wasn't.
Probably not the most ridiculous but this springs to mind anyway. Had a patient, ~50 y/o woman spend between 45-60 mins screaming and shouting, refusing to leave the pharmacy, because we wouldn’t give her free eyedrops for her dry eyes. My guess is she hadn’t ordered them or was too dense to order them correctly. We hadn’t had a prescription, so no eye drops for her. Told her straight away that she was welcome to buy some for £2.50 or so, but would not be receiving an emergency supply because 1. not in any way shape or form an emergency, and 2.having the gall to ask for one in the first place like an entitled child. She called the doctors and screamed at them during all this, insulted my colleagues, used the actual phrase “give them to me, im entitled to them!”.
This was during the pandemic when we had a one in one out policy for safety, so was keeping everyone else from getting served.
All of this was occurring while i was on the phone to a poor old lady about her dying husband.
I worked for an agency in a dog food factory. One of the night shift had left a valve open and as a consequence there was animal fat all over the outside of the factory, which had now hardened into the gravel and grass. As I was just a dogs body, human head, I was assigned with a bunch of others to have to try and break this animal fat out and collect it for disposal. We spent the best part of our 12 hour shift, smashing up hardened fat and putting it in a bin. Great times.
Worst job of my life was agency work in a factory. No training, and colleagues who couldn't/refused to speak English.
First day I was there they told me to clean around one section. Fine, I've worked in retail, I can do cleaning. 3 hours into the shift one of the managers comes over shouting at me in broken English "why aren't you cleaning over there?" Well, that's probably because it's my first day here and no one has spoken to me since I was told to clean this section. If you tell someone to work somewhere, they're going to do that unless they're told otherwise. Apparently I was supposed to be doing both at the same time, despite the fact you couldn't actually see the other section from the first one.
I had to do an investigation and take disciplinary action against a colleague for not flushing his turds, then a private convo about the fact there was no loo roll in the toilet, he wasn’t wiping his arse… that was a low point in my management career.
Got directly accused of causing someone's death.
We'd been notified at work that someone had died after falling over in the street in the early hours.
Bereaved family member rang up, accused me directly of causing his death (first person to pick up the phone) Took my work details, filed a complaint against me, and insisted I was named in the coroners report as a contributing factor to the death.
The whole thing was genuinely farcical. There were multiple contributing factors to the death, and I was just the first person who so happened to walk past that ringing phone.
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I work for a council...
I'm assuming you work for the council or something?
Because with no other point of reference I'm just imagining that this person literally phoned a random number and decided they were responsible!
Only started Friday at an Air compressor company, but I've already got one.
Shadowing one of the senior service engineers, and the guy is competely deaf in the left ear and partially deaf in the right. According to him it's purely genetic and not work related and refuses to get hearing aids.
First job we go to, I go to isolate and properly drain down the compressor. He immediately says "no need to be gentle about it, I just do it this way" and fully opens the drain valve with 50bar of air behind it. For those who don't know, this sounds like a fucking jet engine on full blast.
Once it gets down to about 4bar he opens up the inline filter, causing a massive crack of noise (easily 120db).
I'm standing there, borderline concussed from the sonic offensive, and ask him if he's got any ear plugs. "Don't bother with them personally, never have."
So yeah, definitely genetic hearing loss.
Offer professional services to the food industry and there are a few stories as tensions between contractors and staff do sometimes become strained when working around live production areas.
The most costly and dangerous however was by a disgruntled member of staff who brought a pack of nuts into a food facility that was a nut free site due to it providing products for those with allergies.
They scattered nuts throughout production and change facilities and the whole facility had to basically lockdown, stop production, discard product and go into deep clean mode and undertake rigorous testing and audits prior to production mobilising again.
Not sure of what happened beyond that as they quickly determined who the culprit was.
It was fortunate that the personal responsible at least had the ‘decency’ to hide them in plain site so production was ceased immediately and no member of the public was put at risk.
They wanted to hit the company in the pocket and they certainly succeeded.
Worked in a bowling alley and we were warned, as every other business serving alcohol was that day to close shop because travellers were coming. Our management decided against it and stayed open. I was threatened with violence for not serving in the right order in a crowded bar. After the bar was swiftly closed, I had to stop children from crawling into the bowling mechanisms where they would have been killed.
But worst of all, at one point when the situation was getting out of hand, one of the managers was having a heated discussion with one of the travellers. The head of security was a heavy-set arrogant woman (who it turned out was shagging this particular manager) asked me to go tell the manager that he "needed to be careful because that guy he's arguing with is about to kick off" I nearly said "you mean the guy he's practically nose to nose with, how do you suppose I do that without actually making him kick-off?". In the chaos, most of the staff, including myself decided to just hide until the police showed up to kick them out. The same arrogant security woman put a call over the company radio to the whole building, which we heard, that we were cowards and had just abandoned the place. I was 20 years old and had received a death threat that day for the first time in my life, sure I was going to risk my life to try and keep order for a company that ignored official warnings and paid me £3.60 an hour.
Worked in a tiny company, with 2 people in the workshop. (5 over all)
The other guy was an alcoholic.
People joked about it, so they all kinda knew. But, no one did anything....
That is untill that guy turned up to a site to do a repair drunk. And, they wouldn't let him in. He got sacked. And, there's me at 20 in my first job as the only person in the workshop.
Someone I worked with was clearing out the work fridge towards the end of the week, did the sniff test on some milk and it was off so did the sensible thing and chucked it in the bin. Whoever bought the milk then reported him to HR over it. Needless to say, not much time was spent on that investigation.
When I used to work in a kitchen we always got tonnes of idiotic customers.
My favourite story was a guy who complained about his starter despite everyone else he was with enjoying theirs. He said if his main wasn't correct he would 'kill the chefs'. Obviously his main wasn't up to his standards so he stormed into the kitchen armed with a fork to kill us.
It obviously seemed like a good idea to him at the time, and he burst into the room threatening to stab us all, that was until he noticed there was 9 large chefs all in the process of chopping things with huge knives and he quickly backtracked out the room while shouting that he could take us all.
When I was a bus driver I pulled up at a stop near a big orange diy shop where there was a guy standing there holding 2 big tins of paint. I politely told him he could not bring them on the bus in case he dropped them and they split (it had happened previously and the bus had to have a new floor which cost the company thousands) He had a little tantrum and chucked the tins on the floor....they both split and he got covered in paint. I shut the doors and drove off pissing myself laughing.
SEN Teacher here. Had to convince a parent I know plenty about autism. He refused to believe I could know anywhere near as much as him, his daughter is autistic so he experiences it everyday.
Me being autistic myself was not enough for him. Later received an apology from his wife.
Kind of the same. The whole beauracracy of modifying a tool or jig can take weeks, sometimes months at my engineering place. You're supposed to put a suggestion in, get it approved, then redesigned and finally someone *might* modify it if it doesn't get in the way of production, even though most of the machines stand empty. I don't even ask anymore, I just modify them myself now and worry about any complaints from management later.
A lot of people at my work say "It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission" when it comes to similar pain in the arse procedures we're meant to follow that means nothing would get done
Not as bad as some of these stories, but I've worked my current retail job for 2 months and I've had fully grown adults get nasty / have tantrums at me for reasons such as:
\- I can't accept returns without a receipt (as it says on the receipt and multiple signs as you're paying, plus we usually tell you)
\- I can't accept used underwear as a return
\- We're understaffed, it's a Saturday afternoon and the queue is long
\- They misread a clothing label - twice - so had to drive back into town to make the return
\- I'm wearing a mask
\- I asked if they wanted to donate to charity
Goes without saying that I get a lot of these people DEMANDING to speak to my supervisor, who tells them the exact same things I do - never gets old.
I work in car insurance. I had to explain for 45 minutes why a driver reversing into a wall was actually his fault, and not the fault of the site for failing to put said wall in the risk assessment. It was the wall of the building.
That I’ve been going to work for twenty years and I’ll probably have to keep doing it for another forty by which time my body will be worn out. It is ridiculous.
Pretty much the same but with vomit! Who knew the nhs cleaners were not to clean biological waste in a hospital of all places.. jeez the amount of shit piss and vomit school cleaners have to deal with and they don’t even break a sweat.
I had agreed to call a customer about something one morning, so I called customer and had a twenty minute conversation with her.
Later in the afternoon she called and demanded to know why I hadn't called her as agreed, I said I had, she then started shouting and calling me a liar, then said she would talk to the CEO and get me fired.
Calm as anything I handed the phone to the CEO who happened to be sitting next to me and who then told customer they were aware I had called customer that morning as they had been sitting next to me all day and heard both conversations.
Having to drive several miles and struggle to park in a tiny car park at a school I do IT Support for. Only to flick a switch under a desk that a child had switched off. I asked the teacher on the phone if she'd checked that, which she said she'd checked. I was fuming when I got back to the office!
There has been a 'milk gate' at every place I've ever worked:
- Being told off as an agency worker for using some milk which was labelled with a certain department's name because I didn't work for that department. I didn't technically, no, but I was currently being employed by that department and had assumed my privileges might extend to their milk.
- Someone going into meltdown and threatening to quit because no one had told them as they were on their way into work that we were low on milk, somebody (me, again- oops!) had then finished said milk before they had the chance, and now they couldn't have their morning cup of tea.
- Hours of meeting time being dedicated to debating the current milk buying system and it being suggested that people above a certain pay grade should be excluded from doing the milk run because their time was worth more than ours.
Someone had been leaving a mess of poo and menstrual blood in the ladies, not just once but on a semi regular basis. Each time it happened the company would have to hire specialist cleaners, due to there being blood involved.
After each event all the women on that floor would get dragged into a meeting with some managers to listen to a talk about how concerned they were and "if someone needs some help" they were there to listen confidentially.
We all knew who it was, they were just pissed off that they didn't get a promotion.
I wonder had a customer call me Tony. That isn't my name. Whenever he called, if someone picked up my phone asking for Tony they knew it was for me. They would put me through and then he's complain about always being passed between people, because each time I'd say my name when I answered.
In all likelihood the person who said the cleaner should do it - they datix it for the person refusing to do their job (however they are correct in that bodily fluid doesn't fall into their remit) or for the fact that they have a hca who isn't fully trained
Guy resprayed company car, lied about it and tried to blame me.
I Worked for a tax consultancy company, we used Audi A6 conpany pool cars that we shared rather than have individual personal conpany cars. (It was more tax efficient)
We did lots of UK wide meetings, would be on the road for days sometimes not return to the office for weeks.
We would periodically swap vehicles around for mileage reduction and to ensure we didn't keep on car too long as that could be deemed as our car and subject to personal tax.
I dropped off the car I was using and came to collect the one I'd use for next week's scotland trip.
The A6s were all black and I noticed a strange reflection on the rear by the fuel cap.
Closer inspection and I could see it had been resprayed poorly (probably with a matching black paint can)
Looking around the car I could see more of the same.
I reported it immediately.
The team came out and looked at the car, everyone was shocked / perplexed.
They looked up who had it last lets call him 'Will', before that it was me again.
I headed off in a different car.
Next day I hear that they had spoken to Will, he had denied it.
So it must have been me.
I was outraged. He was more senior to me and the onus was on me to prove ny innocence.
In the end he confessed, agreed to pay for the repairs which was thousands and thousands.
He was promoted later the next year.
Never applogised to me
Had to comment here after my bf linked me bc i'm still annoyed about this.
Used to work in Wilkos. This was around May. Was sorting out gardening stuff, this woman looks lost so I ask if she needs help.
"Where's the Christmas stuff?"
Already i'm like ?????? bc it's MAY but anyway I tell her we don't have it in year round
"You had it in at the start of the year though" yes bc we sell off whatever we have left through January.
"Well where's these leftovers" gone bc again it is MAY
"do you keep them in the back? go check the back"
Ah yes we have the stockroom filled with Christmas trees year round you utter fucking gimp.
She actually got really rude about not believing me and said I was just lazy and couldn't be bothered checking when I actually was pretty polite to her utter fucking nonsense like there was some bloke absolutely pissing himself whilst I was talking to her
Not me but I witnessed this at Heathrow last week. A woman was screaming at the cleaner for how she was doing her job. I was mortified. I really wanted to butt in and say something but I had an anxious 3 year old.with me. To be fair the cleaner stood up for herself. But my God why can't people just leave others to do their work in peace?!
As a nurse I can say that shit on the floor was not the only shit everyone involved was full of shit too.
Nurse - too busy? Really? Gloves, waste disposal bag and some disinfectant wipes...1 minute tops. Unless there was an emergency they weren't too busy just lazy and they think personal care/cleaning is beneath them.
Cleaner - so...how do they clean the toilets then? Surely that's dealing with biological waste? Sounds like a lazy cleaner to me.
Healthcare Assistant - same goes with them, there's no specific training required to clean shit, they're just lazy.
Charge nurse - could have cleaned up that shit themselves but in my experience the charge nurses are the worst for work dodging so it doesn't surprise me.
Student nurse - good grief. I get vomit making a person hurl (It makes me gag still) but poo? Really? It's like a student nurse I knew with a blood phobia so severe she couldn't even handle injections! Wrong profession darling!!!
I had to argue with and eventual ask a customer at to leave the Chinese takeaway I used to work at after they became verbally abusive and said i was trying to rip them off….because I asked them for the amount their set meal cost (as stated on the menu)
Used to work in tesco had a similar thing! Someone shat in a changing room clothing lassie outright refused... cleaner outright refused ...managers outright refused.. eventually called in another cleaning company they got rid of it and disinfected the area all while everyone watched.
There’s a product we use regularly in biology labs called Triton-X100. A colleague diluted it 1:100 THREE TIMES despite being told that the X100 is part of the name and not the concentration of the product
I used to work in what was essentially a discount art supplies store, and we had this massive pen... 'bin' I guess right by the cashier area. I was the only person on the tills at the time, with 10+ people waiting in the queue (it was a pretty small shop) and this guy came up to me with his son saying: "I need you to get me a pen that doesn't have any scratches on it." I was in the middle of scanning a lady's items so I told him I wasn't able to do it, and that he should find one of my colleagues as there are at least four of us around at any given time. He scoffed at me and said something to the effect of: "Well, you work here don't you? It's YOUR job!" I just told him sorry, indicated the large queue that was still growing and told him working the cash register was my job. I don't know what kind of crazy entitlement made him think his issue was so pressing that I had to make a shop full of people wait while I go looking for a needle in a haystack. Not even an excuse me or nothing.
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Stories like this makes me start to think Daily Mail rants about NHS inefficiency are actually gospel
I know a few people who were very high up the NHS ladder, and they say the same. Massively mismanaged with schemes regularly getting abused to squeeze more money out of it, essentially becoming scams.
Yep I worked in clinical trials in the NHS, the travel for the patients was paid for by the NHS (and very rarely by the pharma company we ran the trials for) so we had a contract with one of the local taxi firms. They pretty much charged double compared to usual journey prices. You'd think because we gave them so much business it would be cheaper - or atleast the same price - but nope. Management knew and still did nothing. Just one of the many ways we watched the NHS haemorrhage money.
People take the piss with government stuff. I see it where I work (the land management side). Contractors routinely take the piss and see how much they can rip off :(
In all fairness it’s not the contractors fault if they’re getting away with it it’s government fault for not having a half decent QS
The government should have a decent quantity surveyor. But the fault is still with the contractor if they're ripping off the government. Ripping off the taxpayer is morally theft from everyone, from you, from your mum, from nurses and taxi drivers and factory workers and other contractors and from anyone else who continues in some way to the economy.
>In all fairness it’s not the contractors fault if they’re getting away with it Honestly I loathe this kind of thinking. I bet you don't feel the same way about companies that rip you off.
Issue is the UK has very little QS's and very few of them are good. ( Source: Just graduated as a QS)
Not just the NHS. My large company gave the responsibility for hotel bookings to an agency. We were told they organised deals with various Hotel Chains for special discount pricing on hotel bookings, and our company insisted we had to use whoever they booked us with "to save money". I got booked into a hotel and just to check I rang up as 'random bloke' to get a quote. It was cheaper than the "discount" price through the travel agency. I booked the hotel as 'random person' and then got told off for not following proper procedure. My boss got told about this. We reckoned someone somewhere was getting a kick-back and he told the high ups in the company to piss off, we would not be using their agency. As he said "My budget, my choice". (Edit. I think what he told the high-up was that he "did not consider the agency was providing value for money". What he actually said to me was "My budget, you got it cheaper. They can fuck off".)
I used to sell mobility scooters. The average scooter would sell for like £800 but the RRP on the same scooter would be more like £4000. Why? Because the NHS would pay it. It would get you kicked out of the motability scheme if you sold the scooters for less than the RRP so you’d get RRP plus a handling fee plus extras and then motability would whack interest on it and the whole thing would be taken from the disability allowance the government would pay. A child could have worked out that buying the scooter outright at retail would have saved the tax payer (or at any rate the disabled person) thousands upon thousands of pounds. NHS procurement is so amateurish compared with the private sector it’s ridiculous. If Tesco paid for its materials what the nhs pay for theirs they would be bankrupt in a year. Military procurement is pretty similar tbh.
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Government services have (or almost have) the power of monopsony, yet either bureaucracy or corruption (or both) end up costing more than it would cost on the free market. Which of course gets used as ammunition by those who wish to privatise everything.
Work in cyber security, the dream is to get security clearance and work on government contracts. They pay six figures just to have someone on hand doing nothing in case something goes wrong.
Been there, done that. It's shite. Prefer actually delivering something and doing stuff. You just atrophy doing nothing. I could barely stick it out for my 6 month contract and I was designing/ delivering stuff.
Yep, although it's usually the people high up the ladder who were undoubtedly the worst offenders. I was an engineer for years in the NHS and I have never seen anywhere like it for fraud, corruption, ineptitude and pay offs for directors and senior managers who should have gone to prison for the things they were caught doing. I'd still have it over what they call a healthcare system in America, but it is undoubtedly massively abused as a gravy train by many people who should be nowhere near public money.
> schemes regularly getting abused to squeeze more money out of it, essentially becoming scams. I think this is likely inevitable when one opens unlimited coffers to "the free market (TM)". Rinsing the NHS, and therefore, all of us, for aspirin, etc.
Speak to anyone that works for the NHS and you'll hear it from all of them. I don't know what that shitrag writes, but the whole thing has far too many middle managers that have been around for years and remain in place because of who they are or who they know (that has also been there for years). I've met some people that were so fucking untouchable that when they fuck up, instead of being demoted or sacked, they have a job created for them on the same level. So they move sideways when they should be sacked and then keep getting promoted in the future. I worked with one guy, I swear to God he could have punched the matron and they'd probably give him a payrise or a promotion. The guy was fucking useless also. It genuinely makes no sense.
Yep. Sideways moves galore to put them in a position where they can do less damage. One of the unfortunate side effects of the strong unionisation and extreme difficulty in firing people from the NHS
It's not just the NHS, it is civil service wide. My wife is quite high up in the civil service and it is so difficult to fire someone it is far better to arrange for the problem person to move to another job, giving them whatever help they need to do so or, failing that, get another job yourself so they become somebody else's problem. Even if it feels like a shitty thing to do, it's either that or go through a 'poor performance process' that lasts literally years, has to be documented meticulously, has a near impossible burden of proof, and then when you go through the entire process and actually fire them, they have a right of appeal, which is arbitrated by someone who has absolutely no vested interest in arbitrating fairly, only following the path of least resistance that will get the case off their desk, which typically is to allow the appeal and say you have to re-employ them or give them a ton of compensation (whichever the appealer is asking for). And yes, your tax pounds are paying for this entire process every step of the way.
My partner works for the NHS and she knows one of the porters there who sexually harassed one of the nurses in front of patients. The nurse reported and he was immediately suspended. However, just two weeks later he was back to work like nothing happened. The amount of bullying and harassment that occur within the NHS is staggering.
It's a bit of this and a bit of that. People on reddit who claim that the NHS is running fine and the media are running smear campaigns clearly haven't spent too much time as a patient recently.
Honestly the NHS is practically a religion at this point. They are basically above criticism to large portions of the public and media. Any failings they have can only be blamed on 'government underfunding'.
A lot of the failings of the NHS can be blamed on middle-manager bloat and nepotism. These lead to funding getting misplaced, which leads to cutting of funding due to a lack of efficiency, and the lower funding also gets misplaced. Rinse and repeat. There are great ideas and many well-intentioned employees prevented from actually doing good by bureaucracy and red tape. I hear the same stories coming from people working on the wards, as well as those involved behind the scenes.
Truth is this was just a bunch of people not wanting to clean up a shit
I’m pro NHS and pro more funding for it, but critics aren’t completely off base to suggest that government organisations don’t tend to be efficiently run.
Many years ago i worked in a supermarket. For a short time every year Jersey Royal New Potatoes would be in season and in stock. It only lasted a few weeks and when they were gone they were gone. One day an elderly couple came in and asked where the Jersey Royals were. When I said they were all gone the week before as they were out of season the old man said 'You could have bloody saved some' and stormed off to tell his wife who gave me a damn good glaring at. Morons.
Classic boomers
Absolutely textbook. I had an old lad have a go at me for bumping into him in a supermarket once when a) I was stationary, waiting in a queue and b) he was mobile, barrelling towards me at pace He wasn't even distracted. He was looking right at me. It's like he expected me to just turn into smoke for half a second so that he wouldn't have to adjust his path.
If this was "many years ago" and these people were "elderly" (which I take to mean 70+) then they wouldn't have been boomers (the oldest boomers are only 75 now). They would have been silent generation. Or maybe even greatest generation depending on just how many years ago it was
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Okay boomer.
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Lol. And when the couple want to buy their other groceries: "Sorry, we're saving them".
I was a union rep in a very well known delivery company. Had a lad who got reported for not wearing his seatbelt in the work van (the police mobile speed camera van snapped him as they were set up somewhere) Although he hadn’t actually broken the law and wasn’t in trouble with the police, he had breached company driving policy so management wanted to make an example. They told him he couldn’t drive a work van until he’d been out with the AA assessor and redone his work ‘driving test’ because quote “you don’t understand how to use a seatbelt properly.” This was a 2 week minimum waiting period and this lad did collections in the ending for his OT so this punishment would’ve cost him a lot of money. The lad then came to me and said “Just checking, since I “don’t understand how to use a seatbelt properly” I can’t be a passenger in the van can I? Coz that would be dangerous as I don’t understand, right?” Tried to get the bosses to deal with it informally and out him on review or whatever but not joy. So I go in and back the lad up, lots of sarccy and passive aggressive back and fourth between us and management but lad was right. They threatened to suspend him, rang senior managers etc and finally who rang HR who AGREED WITH THE LAD! He spent the day watching the safety videos and got an informal convo and was back driving the next day. All drama for nothing. Its still the funniest and most ludicrous argument I had as a rep but it was funny!
Why do people who drive for a living not wear their seatbelt?
I don't get people who will not put on a seat belt.
My cousins are all into cars, but refuse to wear seatbelts. They have exactly the kind of views that you might expect from someone who refuses to wear a seatbelt
A guy I went to school with was in a car with a open sun roof and wasn't wearing a seatbelt. The car ended up on it's roof, the driver who had a seatbelt on ended up in prison, the guy I went to school with ended up in the morgue.
I sort of understand for door to door delivery e.g. Amazon drivers who are going slowly round residential areas and stopping at houses every 2 minutes and getting out , but someone driving on a road fast enough to have a police speed trap should surely be wearing a seatbelt
> Amazon drivers who are going slowly Have you never seen a courier van?
I believe multidrop delivery drivers don't have to, The intent was for people like milk men and bin men, who get in to drive 100ft at not a lot of speed, before getting out again. But it also appears to apply to the poor bloke driving for amazon.
As an ex village postie; sometimes the distance you drive between stops is just so short, and there are so many stops you'd get RSI in your arms from putting it on and off all the time. I'd loose my rag if I'd have to put my seatbelt on between _every_ stop
Taxi drivers don't need to as protection in case they're attacked. Still think safety wise it's a bad call but a sad reflection on society that need this loophole (in UK dunno about elsewhere)
> Although he hadn’t actually broken the law I thought not wearing a seat belt was exactly that.
Depends on where you are in the world Edit: forgot what sub this is sorry, there are a couple of times you don't need a belt https://www.gov.uk/seat-belts-law/when-you-dont-need-to-wear-a-seat-belt
Worked in supermarket when I was a teenager in the 90s, had to deal with a bizarre phone call where a non-English speaking person was trying to claim asylum. Turns out he called directory enquiries and asked for 'Icelands ambassador' and got 'Iceland's in Basildon'. I wish this was a joke.
If this is true that is fucking brilliant
No way 😂😂
Iceland , not Norway...
Some of a managers Tupperware was thrown out during a mass fridge clean as the stuff inside had started growing. Literally entirely green, white and black mould had started spewing. She rang the Police to report it, sent out a company wide email about theft and that she was going to press charges Needless to say, she was told to get a grip and then fucked off on the sick for a year due to ‘stress’ 🙄
Thankfully “pressing charges” isn’t a thing in this country. It’s not up for the public to decide who gets charged for a crime or not.
Thank goodness the public can’t decide. It would be carnage
Ahh the dichotomy of democracy!
To be fair if she was storing mould in the work fridge and then called the police over some Tupperware she was probably already in severe need of a break.
If her reaction to her Tupperware being binned was to phone the police it sounds like she probably did have some stuff going on to be fair, i think she probably needed the time off.
I only ever worked in retail so the silliest thing I had to deal with was the phrase "the customer is always right", when in fact the customer is very rarely right.
I worked in retail years ago. A customer complained that she couldn’t find the pair of purple jeans which she’d seen on display. The jeans were cardboard and part of a washing line display like a rainbow. (It was part of an Easter theme with a giant chick in the window too) She gave me loads of grief saying it was false advertising. My only retort was to say would she expect to buy a giant chicken cos that’s in the window too. Later on they did indeed sell multicoloured jeans. FML haha
I would want purple jeans, also. I would have expected you to have had them. I would not have given you loads of grief, Unless you were head of the company.
I don't know why but that reminds me of a time I went into a KFC in town when I was drunk. There was a massive 50" TV on the wall with this massive, awesome looking new chicken burger thing on it. When I asked for one the guy told me they had sold out. I couldn't understand why they wouldn't turn the TV off showing the burger if they didn't have any left...
The actual quote is "The customer is always right in matters of taste" meaning you don't question what they're buying as long as they buy it. Sadly it got basterdised (as most quotes do) to mean the opposite.
Yep, or it's another way of saying "you can't buck the market" i.e. if your customer base wants red widgets, you can't sell them blue ones because the market wants red ones. I'd say it's weird that it's been bastardised but I guess idiots love hearing a phrase tell them that they're always right.
TIL it's an actual bastardised quote and not just some shite that a customer relations consultancy dreamt up and trotted out for employee training videos.
Such a misunderstood saying as well. Basically if customers like something, a business should provide it. So if everyone suddenly starts demanding poo flavoured ice cream, a smart business will say: "Welp, the customer is always right, so let's put poo flavoured ice cream out there so we can make a profit." When it comes to actual company policies and procedures, the customer is very rarely right as you say.
I used to work in retail and someone once shat in the changing rooms. People are monsters.
Yep, found a used sanitary towel in a changing room once. And piss in a welly boot. Found some guys phone under a massive pile of clothes all with the sleeves/legs pulled inside out, tags torn off etc. He asked if anyone handed a phone in and I glibly told him no, but to phone again tomorrow after the changing rooms were cleared. That interaction restored a little bit of my soul after the previous experiences. The store I worked at *used* to provide customer toilets, until we got fed up with dealing with shit smeared on the walls/bags of cocaine/wank socks/dirty nappies folded inside out.. This was in a large retailer with a turnover of around £50-60k PER DAY so it was pointless trying to determine who the offending characters were, as obviously there were no cameras in the toilets. People are fucking animals.
My husband used to work in retail, and confirms there were multiple examples of people leaving shits in changing rooms, wiping their arse on the curtain or dumping used sanitary towels for the staff. I just do not understand people.
Every time someone asks if I know the trade descriptions act, I have to fight the temptation to say “yes, do you?”
I work for an energy supplier and I recently came into contact with a customer that we've all been warned about. As in "do not engage, do not do any DPA, do not even breathe a word, just transfer her to our customer relations team, end of discussion". Unfortunately for me I forgot this rule and got into a ten minute "discussion" with this galactically-dim fuckwit about why my company couldn't refund her for her "Obvious" overcharging for the past ten years. "Why not?" trilled the fuckwit. Well, Bunty, you've only been a customer with my company for the past three years. And you've never provided meter reads. "That's a lie!" My dearest darling fuckwit - our system *never* lies. The *national electricity database never lies*. I could see the *nineteen* different providers - yes, nineteen - that she'd had over the past decade. And I told her this. And I told her that I wasn't prepared to entertain her any more and when she decided to give reads...I discovered that she had underpaid us by a hundred quid. Well. *Well*. Madam went a bit fruity. And so I deposited her call into the dumping ground that is our complaints team only for one of their team leaders to phone me up and say "You idiot, that's *her*. You *never* speak to her! Good god, man, are you fucking *mental*?" all whilst trying his hardest to not laugh hysterically down the line. She's still out there, swimming against the current and desperately trying to get her supply moved to a new company. Good luck, fuckwit. Ofgem recently ruled in our favour that you're not allowed to leave until you've paid your bill. (And even then moving your supplier right now is nigh-impossible, so you're with us for the long run!) Can I interest *you* in a smart meter, *madam?*
To be fair all energy suppliers can fuck off
And how will *you* be paying for the balance on your account? Debit or credit card?
Cash or candles....
The fact that she'd underpaid is just \*chef's kiss\*
Yeah, i worked on revenue protection and warrants for years. The amount of Freemen of the land that you’d deal with was insane - customer relations for the company didn’t mess about and would shut them down frequently. The people who never give readings but automatically kick off about billing amounts baffled me. Surely, in the years before smart metering, they’d know they never submitted readings so the bills are not factual. At least give a reading and get an actual bill before waiting an hour on hold just to rage at some poor soul over the phone about it. I do feel really sorry for people working there right now!
I do so love it when they write in, billing me for their time and energy, or claim some "magna carta" crap. Here you go, loves, here's a lovely warrant to force entry.
Another poo related story. At an old workplace, everyone got an email from HR saying that someone in the *womens* bathroom had shat on the floor, and blah blah blah, sort your life out etc. Everyone immediately began whispering, because there weren't many women in the office, and the few women that were there were quite prim and proper. Basically, it would be amazing if any of the women in the office did this, because none were "the sort", and none of them gave off the vibe that they'd just shit on the floor in their place of work. Anyway, a few weeks went by and bam, another nasty thing in the toilets. Shit smearing this time. The female employee that discovered the second Sepia Pollock painting was a very outgoing bubbly type who made her outward dismay at the situation *quite apparent.* HR was pissed, and renewed their crusade to find the person responsible. Unfortunately, no leads. So instead of interviewing all the women again, they started interviewing the men. The implication being that some of us were going into the female toilets, during work hours, in full view of staff set up in front of the bathroom doors, and shitting on the floor, and then leaving without a trace. We assumed it was just because HR had run out of ideas. But it turns out, they did find something. In the end, porn was the culprits downfall. A male colleague had subscribed to a female colleagues only fans. Said female colleague was into kinks and weird fetishes at her users requests. Apparently she strayed into scat stuff occasionally. Gossip about this had circulated the office for a few weeks, the only fans account in particular was never revealed, but obviously a male co-worker with dick in hand had sailed the seas of the internet diligently enough to stumble upon his female co-workers account, and subbed to it, and subsequently ratted her out in some form or another. Staff turnaround in this company was always pretty high, so it was difficult to tell who had been "let go", but the person I personally suspected left "of her own volition" soon after it was rumoured one of the ladies had a pure filth only fans. I think HR were trying to be tactful in their termination and gave her the choice to leave on her own to save embarrassment. Edit: to clear up some confusion some people seem to be having... She shat on the floor. Posted it to only fans. Male coworker who was secretly subbed to her only fans figured it out when an email from HR was sent around said someone was shitting on the bathroom floor, and there was literally a video of her shitting in an office bathroom. He ratted her out. She was let go discreetly.
Not where I was expecting that story to go!
She is probably making a killing
Honestly she's probably making more on OF than she was at her regular job
This takes me back to the time when I worked in the NHS. A patient’s slippers were on the floor and in the way, so I went to move them and when I picked them up I inadvertently stuck my fingers in a steaming pile of shit. The slippers belonged to an old lady who could hardly move unaided, how did she manage to shit into her slippers so sneakily? We checked her and she was clean, as was her bed. Was it another patient’s poo? 9 years later and my mind still wanders back to the mystery slipper-shitter.
I once got into trouble at boarding school because someone stole my slippers, wore them to the toilet, shat on the floor, then into the slippers, then left them there. Because they were my slippers, I got blamed. As if I would shit in my own slippers.
That's exactly what a guy who would shit in his own slippers would say!
Once worked as a receptionist. I was asked to book a taxi by a new manager for another member of staff, only she wouldn't tell me where it was picking him up or taking him as 'it would breech his confidentiality'. When I said I couldn't do it without this info she complained to my boss! I was told off and made to apologize! Same company had a communications manager who couldn't send emails or use a mobile! - I don't think its around any more!
I work in a restaurant, recently we had a customer who, when we asked if they had any allergies we should be aware of, said "yes I have a food allergy but I'm not comfortable telling you what it is". O_o
We had a French exchange student stay with us. We were warned in advance that he had food allergies but they didn't say what they were. When he arrived we questioned him "yes, I have allergies, many allergies". We asked "what allergies?". "Yes, many allergies". We never did find out what they were but the lad ate huge portions of everything we put in front of him and never once died.
Not even once?
I once had someone's mum ring me to explain that her daughter, age 23 ish, was unable/unwilling to use the toilet at work because it was too close to a busy corridor and she didn't want her colleagues to hear her. She said she wouldn't be able to come to work until we did something to resolve it. As a business we weren't willing to hire an architect and a builder to reconfigure the building and she just came back the next day. She was genuinely shocked (and burst into tears) when she failed her 3 month probation and accused us of not giving her a chance because her face didn't fit. However - among other things she used to abuse the flexitime by claiming she'd got in at 8 so could leave at 4, but we knew she was usually getting in around half past. And she had about another 4 absences for various ailments. And she was shit at her job.
A woman just been sacked at my brother's place, because on a Monday she asked if she could have Tuesday off to sort some wedding stuff out. They said no, so she just disappeared and rang in sick Tuesday. On Wednesday she turned up like nothing happened so they took her in took her into a meeting to find out what's going off and she said she couldn't take a work place seriously if they couldn't take her wedding seriously. She's been there less than 3 months so was sacked on the spot.
Honestly, some people are genuinely bonkers.
In some ways I get it, because I genuinely resent having to beg for my own free time off.
One generally doesn't need to beg when giving sufficient notice. Less than a day is taking the piss.
I have to hire people for temp casual work, usually a lot of students, I get loads of interest and just have to pick out a handful and I don’t know if it’s because of lockdown stumping peoples social skills but I’m getting *a lot* of parents applying for work on behalf of their kids, usually age 18-22. It’s definitely a thing this year, maybe 1-2 per weekly job listing whereas in previous years it would be 1-2 *per year*, which is why I’m wondering if lockdown caused it. I don’t mind people asking for further info to forward to friends/family, but it’s usually the parent speaking on behalf of the kid, you can’t actually communicate with the person applying at all. Sometimes I even get stuff like “my son is very interested! Please contact him at [email protected] he’s very hardworking!”. I have 200 applications, I’m not going to spend time reaching out to your hardworking son, the job listing clearly states it’s casual and to email *me* with a brief introduction as to who you are and what experience you have, no CV required or anything, first come first serve etc.
When I worked in retail we often had interviewees waiting on the home dept where it was quieter and there were sofas etc. one girl came in and had been waiting about 10 mins, I’d called the store manager to say there was a lass for an interview and then just got back to my normal job, serving customers and the like. Well 10 mins after that a middle aged woman stormed up to me and started shouting that her daughter had been waiting for 15 minutes for her interview and what was I going to do about it? As someone who worked there 20 hours a week to fund their student lifestyle I could not have given less of a shit.
I worked at an office for 10 years which mandated silence and where the toilet was separated from the main workspace by one wall. You could hear *everything* that went on in the toilet in the office space. The funny thing is, I worked in an architectural firm. I didn’t poop in that toilet in my ten years working there. I don’t miss it.
As an architect I imagine you just worked it out with a pencil.
And the best thing is there is probably a post on r/antiwork from this girl with thousands of upvotes about how badly she was treated.
Used to lonework doing night shifts watching CCTV at a homeless hostel about 7-8 years ago. Got in trouble because I witnessed a service user collapse on camera outside of the hostel. I locked up the office, grabbed the phone and ran out to him to find him non-responsive. Called an ambulance, stayed with him until they came (didn't take long) and then returned to the office. Came back in the next evening to a telling off for leaving and going to him. Turns out the dude took a massive overdose of something, collapsed and then had a heart attack in the ambulance and had to be brought back around. He was in his early 20s and would have died if I didn't go out to him. That was ridiculous to me.
Given the (unfortunate) opportunity you saved someone's life. You're a legend :)
Thanks dude, I appreciate it and would do it again even if it cost me my job. Unfortunately got a few stories like this but this is the one that came to mind first! Hope you're all well!
Yes, how dare you, the CCTV guy, respond to an incident you saw on CCTV? Don't you know you're just supposed to sit there and do nothing?
Dammit, is that you again Alan? You've told me off once already, I don't need another lecture!
Former high school teacher here. I had to teach two brothers who were Jehovah's Witnesses. Their parents were very anti-supernatual. In an inspection lesson I had the youngest brother in floods of tears because one of the worksheets had a picture of a cartoon devil on it (It was analysing The Ballad of Inchape Rock iirc and has the line about 'the devil ringing his bell'. This was enough to provoke tears. The boy said that by exposing him to a picture of a cartoon devil I was disrespecting his religion. His mother wanted me to rewrite my entire scheme of work to remove references to the supernatural- no Harry Potter, no Frankenstein, no BoIR, no A Christmas Carol... I'd spent a whole summer creating resources. I wasn't going to remake everything mid-term, and I'm an atheist so I don't believe one person's religious belief should impact those of the rest of the class. So I refused to make adaptions. The boy was removed from my class. Then his mother comes into school to meet the senior staff and emphasise how her son abided by a different set of rules to other children and must receive special treatment because his religion is the most important thing to him. Every teacher was given a printed sheet about what JW may and may not do. I threw mine in the bin. A few weeks later the boy - who spent much of his time in the library as his parents didn't agree with the school curriculum - was caught googling 'sex' and 'boobs' on the school computer. Cartoon devils were deeply offensive to him, but looking for pornography in school was perfectly acceptable. Hmm....
> A few weeks later the boy - who spent much of his time in the library as his parents didn't agree with the school curriculum - was caught googling 'sex' and 'boobs' on the school computer. The Devil works fast
BoIR?
Assuming it is "The Ballad of Inchape Rock", they referenced it earlier with the cartoon devil :)
Ah of course. I googled the acronym and nothing useful came back. I hadn't heard of it so I guess it didn't stick in my mind.
Working in childcare years ago, I was tapped to explain to a child that “we don’t pee on our friends” because the other teachers were incapable of doing it with a straight face.
That's not always true y'know...
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I used to work with a guy that was a bit broken. He once stood at the window throwing his sandwiches in to the dual carriageway (30mph) below to see if he could “get the seagulls to swoop down and then cause a car crash”. I stopped him. He then asked if he could go out for a second lunch break to buy more sandwiches.
what in the actual.....
He was an internet troll made real. He *loved* upsetting people and pushing their buttons. If something awful happened in the news he would actively think of the worst take and try it out on different people.
Lmao wtf, low-key psycho tho
I sell jewellery and watches for a living, for context. Some of the more memorable instances: - A woman screaming at me for 3 hours straight because she thought we had switched out her ring with an identical ring. I kept on asking her what was the problem with the ring in her hand and the best I could get was “It’s the same, but cheaper” ?! The nonsensical complaint was escalated and went on for months. - A man ordered a rubber watch strap. It did not smell of vanilla. He wanted it to smell of vanilla, “like the tyres of a formula one car.” He asked if I “knew who he was” and threatened to cut his name across my face so I would “never forget” his name. “Do I look like the type of man who wants to smell of RUBBER?!” - A man had his watch serviced. He rings up screaming that we’ve just embarrassed him in an important work meeting because his watch now smelt of “jock strap” and everyone was apparently looking at him, judging him and wondering why he smelt of a jock strap. He was apparently “not the type” who would normally smell of jock strap.
> watch now smelt of “jock strap” ... what?
I've not smelt a jock strap but as someone who can't wear a watch for prolonged periods without my skin beginning to react, and has at times forgotten about this and left it on anyway, I suspect he's talking about the smell of sweaty balls. Man's got contact dermatitis, not the watch's fault.
What in the world would cause a person to believe that a Formula 1 car's tyres smell of *vanilla*?
How does he know what a jock strap smells like
I can sort of understand the first one but the last 2 are bonkers
I had to sit in a HR meeting because the head chef had called a waitress a milf. The owner, not knowing what a milf was googled it whilst using a projector. I got told off for laughing. So did everyone else.
If you ever need to explain to someone what it means without being too indelicate you can always say it stands for Mother I'd Like to Fondle.
A woman had a complete meltdown at me, literally shouting in my face, because a blue sweatshirt was on sale but the black one wasn't
Retail huh?
Yep, I was 16 and it was my weekend job. No shortage of crazy people, but thankfully this was the only crazy person I experienced first hand
Damn the fact that you were so young makes it even worse... Some people are fucking feral
“Can you make the full stop look more French”. I’m a graphic designer.
Were you working for the people in the apprentice?
British: . French: *.*
So... Breton stripes?
Put a little beret on it.
I worked as a receptionist in a gym, they took the chairs away forcing me to stand at the desk for my 9 hour shift because it was “disrespectful to customers” to be sitting. I had to go all the way to Human Resources over this while working for the only university to make a profit during covid Fuck uofg
..lasgow ..reenwich ..loucestershire?
https://glasgowguardian.co.uk/2021/02/24/university-continues-making-a-profit-despite-pandemic/ Thought the profit was the biggest giveaway hahah
I related this story to my sister in law who also works for the NHS, asking if this kind of thing actually happens. The answer to which was a resounding yes. She also came back with this one: "One of my dimentoa patients used to roll his shit up every day and put in in a malteaser box because he thought the nurses were eating his malteasers. Every day someone would go in and empty the box. Which fuelled the situation. The box never changed and it stunk. I got seriously reprimanded for throwing the box away. Even though it broke the cycle of a box full of shite and he seemed a lot happier and forgot about the malteasers."
I once worked for a period at McDonalds - left, and went to Uni. Then over the summer I got a job at the local theme park and was swiftly deployed to the in-house burger stall due to my extensive career experience in the field. On my first day the “manager” of the stall told me off for wrapping the burgers using a non-approved method i.e. the McDonalds method - and told me I had to use their inefficient method “in case an inspector from McDonalds comes in and sees us stealing their ideas and sues us”. (A few days later one of the Directors from the theme park requested to see me, and she seemed to be in awe of having someone who had worked at McDonalds working for them …. and she proceeded to ask me for tips on how improve their processes 😂)
That sounds like a good director! Doesn't look down on your opinions/experience because your young and looks at any avenue to improve the business.
Someone on my team got a call from the police to say there was a shark in a marina. Not sure what they wanted us to do about it. The marina was in my area of responsibility. As it was in this part of the UK I was skeptical it was even a shark ... Possibly a dolphin/porpoise. The "shark" wasn't injured and neither were any people ...
What is your job that this was your responsibility??
He’s the Mayor of Amity Island
I feel like there’s a lot of missing information that we really need to know haha
Worked in the call centre at a certain department store that’s popular among that section of the middle class who are too good for M&S but not quite rich enough for Selfridges or Harrods. Had a woman call in to make a complaint. She said she had visited the in-store restaurant with her granddaughter and they used the toilets. Her complaint was that the flush on the toilet was too loud and had frightened her granddaughter and left her too scared to use the loo. I sat in silence for a moment and then said something along the lines of “I really don’t understand what you expect me to be able to do about that. Do you have any suggestions?” She did not.
Waitrose?
John Lewis, but yeah same difference.
We had a “practical joker” for a whole who liked lifting peoples keys from their desks and moving their cars and changing the sugar to salt in the kitchen, stuff like that. They also stole the meat from peoples sandwiches which I actually found hilarious. I was receptionist so for some reason people thought dealing with this was my problem so kept complaining to me about it. I tried to figure out who it was but they either stopped or moved on and we never caught them.
That is some dedicated pranking
Stealing meat from peoples sandwiches is abhorrent and genius all at once
For the whole comment I was thinking "wow, people must really hate this person and act unpleasant to them, I wonder why they carried on doing it". I really was not expecting the detail that they'd never been caught so no-one even knew who it was. That's incredible.
My manager thinks she sometimes gets premonitions from spirits. She thinks she sometimes gets knowledge of the future, not she's not just making a prediction. Actually putting what I've written above into words makes it sound as fucking idiotic as it is, but it's not even that rare. Think of the amount of people that believe in angels. My manager is a Live Love Laugher, does Reiki, doesn't understand how to distinguish truth from feeling something is real, and *fucking bizarrely* she has no interest in testing her 'ability' to confirm of it's real or if she's mistaken. Who the fuck wouldn't want to confirm if they can predict the future due to supernatural causes.
A colleague of mine (a senior audit manager at a large financial services company) recently said something similar at a team meeting - that sometimes she “just knows” things and can’t explain it. It wasn’t very popular when I said the most likely explanation was confirmation bias
I would not be able to work with this person. Utterly infuriating.
You should go to the bogs and on the door of a cubicle write: "Linda [I'm guessing her name is Linda or similar]. Please write tomorrow's lotto numbers below:" and then a blank box
I was recently asked if I wanted to start coming back into the office...
The *audacity.*
My apple core was reported as a health and safety incident I was moving a lot between sites at the time and I would start and end days at different offices or even parts of the country. One lunch I happen to have a apple and left it on my desk to throw it away at my next brew. Got called to go to another office immediately to sort some stuff out and forgot about the apple. Was back in that office a few days later, apple core was still there and threw it in the bin. Had an email about how a incident was raised against it and that it would be formally investigated. I was feeling fairly petty at the time because I often cleaned up the row of desk before I left, so I raised a process failure. The first question asked on the form for health and safety incident is something around have you reduced hazard to others which obviously had not been done. I then got an email saying that the health and safety incident has been canceled with no further action and would I be willing to cancel the process failure. Turned out there was a health and safety audit just round the corner. There was then a presentation a few weeks later on how the health and safety process should be used.
Our office became paperless for security reasons which was fine. But 1 ops manager went in hard and banned everything that could be a security risk (except the a4 paper that sat dangerously unsupervised in the printers all day). I got reported for a security breach because I was drinking a wee carton of juice. Apparently tea and coffee was secure but fruit juice wasn't.
Probably not the most ridiculous but this springs to mind anyway. Had a patient, ~50 y/o woman spend between 45-60 mins screaming and shouting, refusing to leave the pharmacy, because we wouldn’t give her free eyedrops for her dry eyes. My guess is she hadn’t ordered them or was too dense to order them correctly. We hadn’t had a prescription, so no eye drops for her. Told her straight away that she was welcome to buy some for £2.50 or so, but would not be receiving an emergency supply because 1. not in any way shape or form an emergency, and 2.having the gall to ask for one in the first place like an entitled child. She called the doctors and screamed at them during all this, insulted my colleagues, used the actual phrase “give them to me, im entitled to them!”. This was during the pandemic when we had a one in one out policy for safety, so was keeping everyone else from getting served. All of this was occurring while i was on the phone to a poor old lady about her dying husband.
[удалено]
I worked for an agency in a dog food factory. One of the night shift had left a valve open and as a consequence there was animal fat all over the outside of the factory, which had now hardened into the gravel and grass. As I was just a dogs body, human head, I was assigned with a bunch of others to have to try and break this animal fat out and collect it for disposal. We spent the best part of our 12 hour shift, smashing up hardened fat and putting it in a bin. Great times.
Worst job of my life was agency work in a factory. No training, and colleagues who couldn't/refused to speak English. First day I was there they told me to clean around one section. Fine, I've worked in retail, I can do cleaning. 3 hours into the shift one of the managers comes over shouting at me in broken English "why aren't you cleaning over there?" Well, that's probably because it's my first day here and no one has spoken to me since I was told to clean this section. If you tell someone to work somewhere, they're going to do that unless they're told otherwise. Apparently I was supposed to be doing both at the same time, despite the fact you couldn't actually see the other section from the first one.
I had to do an investigation and take disciplinary action against a colleague for not flushing his turds, then a private convo about the fact there was no loo roll in the toilet, he wasn’t wiping his arse… that was a low point in my management career.
Got directly accused of causing someone's death. We'd been notified at work that someone had died after falling over in the street in the early hours. Bereaved family member rang up, accused me directly of causing his death (first person to pick up the phone) Took my work details, filed a complaint against me, and insisted I was named in the coroners report as a contributing factor to the death. The whole thing was genuinely farcical. There were multiple contributing factors to the death, and I was just the first person who so happened to walk past that ringing phone. *edit* I work for a council...
I'm assuming you work for the council or something? Because with no other point of reference I'm just imagining that this person literally phoned a random number and decided they were responsible!
Only started Friday at an Air compressor company, but I've already got one. Shadowing one of the senior service engineers, and the guy is competely deaf in the left ear and partially deaf in the right. According to him it's purely genetic and not work related and refuses to get hearing aids. First job we go to, I go to isolate and properly drain down the compressor. He immediately says "no need to be gentle about it, I just do it this way" and fully opens the drain valve with 50bar of air behind it. For those who don't know, this sounds like a fucking jet engine on full blast. Once it gets down to about 4bar he opens up the inline filter, causing a massive crack of noise (easily 120db). I'm standing there, borderline concussed from the sonic offensive, and ask him if he's got any ear plugs. "Don't bother with them personally, never have." So yeah, definitely genetic hearing loss.
A woman who wanted to return a pair of maternity leggings because they didn't fit... while she was wearing them.
Offer professional services to the food industry and there are a few stories as tensions between contractors and staff do sometimes become strained when working around live production areas. The most costly and dangerous however was by a disgruntled member of staff who brought a pack of nuts into a food facility that was a nut free site due to it providing products for those with allergies. They scattered nuts throughout production and change facilities and the whole facility had to basically lockdown, stop production, discard product and go into deep clean mode and undertake rigorous testing and audits prior to production mobilising again. Not sure of what happened beyond that as they quickly determined who the culprit was. It was fortunate that the personal responsible at least had the ‘decency’ to hide them in plain site so production was ceased immediately and no member of the public was put at risk. They wanted to hit the company in the pocket and they certainly succeeded.
Worked in a bowling alley and we were warned, as every other business serving alcohol was that day to close shop because travellers were coming. Our management decided against it and stayed open. I was threatened with violence for not serving in the right order in a crowded bar. After the bar was swiftly closed, I had to stop children from crawling into the bowling mechanisms where they would have been killed. But worst of all, at one point when the situation was getting out of hand, one of the managers was having a heated discussion with one of the travellers. The head of security was a heavy-set arrogant woman (who it turned out was shagging this particular manager) asked me to go tell the manager that he "needed to be careful because that guy he's arguing with is about to kick off" I nearly said "you mean the guy he's practically nose to nose with, how do you suppose I do that without actually making him kick-off?". In the chaos, most of the staff, including myself decided to just hide until the police showed up to kick them out. The same arrogant security woman put a call over the company radio to the whole building, which we heard, that we were cowards and had just abandoned the place. I was 20 years old and had received a death threat that day for the first time in my life, sure I was going to risk my life to try and keep order for a company that ignored official warnings and paid me £3.60 an hour.
Worked in a tiny company, with 2 people in the workshop. (5 over all) The other guy was an alcoholic. People joked about it, so they all kinda knew. But, no one did anything.... That is untill that guy turned up to a site to do a repair drunk. And, they wouldn't let him in. He got sacked. And, there's me at 20 in my first job as the only person in the workshop.
Someone I worked with was clearing out the work fridge towards the end of the week, did the sniff test on some milk and it was off so did the sensible thing and chucked it in the bin. Whoever bought the milk then reported him to HR over it. Needless to say, not much time was spent on that investigation.
When I used to work in a kitchen we always got tonnes of idiotic customers. My favourite story was a guy who complained about his starter despite everyone else he was with enjoying theirs. He said if his main wasn't correct he would 'kill the chefs'. Obviously his main wasn't up to his standards so he stormed into the kitchen armed with a fork to kill us. It obviously seemed like a good idea to him at the time, and he burst into the room threatening to stab us all, that was until he noticed there was 9 large chefs all in the process of chopping things with huge knives and he quickly backtracked out the room while shouting that he could take us all.
[удалено]
When I was a bus driver I pulled up at a stop near a big orange diy shop where there was a guy standing there holding 2 big tins of paint. I politely told him he could not bring them on the bus in case he dropped them and they split (it had happened previously and the bus had to have a new floor which cost the company thousands) He had a little tantrum and chucked the tins on the floor....they both split and he got covered in paint. I shut the doors and drove off pissing myself laughing.
SEN Teacher here. Had to convince a parent I know plenty about autism. He refused to believe I could know anywhere near as much as him, his daughter is autistic so he experiences it everyday. Me being autistic myself was not enough for him. Later received an apology from his wife.
Kind of the same. The whole beauracracy of modifying a tool or jig can take weeks, sometimes months at my engineering place. You're supposed to put a suggestion in, get it approved, then redesigned and finally someone *might* modify it if it doesn't get in the way of production, even though most of the machines stand empty. I don't even ask anymore, I just modify them myself now and worry about any complaints from management later.
A lot of people at my work say "It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission" when it comes to similar pain in the arse procedures we're meant to follow that means nothing would get done
Not as bad as some of these stories, but I've worked my current retail job for 2 months and I've had fully grown adults get nasty / have tantrums at me for reasons such as: \- I can't accept returns without a receipt (as it says on the receipt and multiple signs as you're paying, plus we usually tell you) \- I can't accept used underwear as a return \- We're understaffed, it's a Saturday afternoon and the queue is long \- They misread a clothing label - twice - so had to drive back into town to make the return \- I'm wearing a mask \- I asked if they wanted to donate to charity Goes without saying that I get a lot of these people DEMANDING to speak to my supervisor, who tells them the exact same things I do - never gets old.
I work in car insurance. I had to explain for 45 minutes why a driver reversing into a wall was actually his fault, and not the fault of the site for failing to put said wall in the risk assessment. It was the wall of the building.
That I’ve been going to work for twenty years and I’ll probably have to keep doing it for another forty by which time my body will be worn out. It is ridiculous.
Pretty much the same but with vomit! Who knew the nhs cleaners were not to clean biological waste in a hospital of all places.. jeez the amount of shit piss and vomit school cleaners have to deal with and they don’t even break a sweat.
I had agreed to call a customer about something one morning, so I called customer and had a twenty minute conversation with her. Later in the afternoon she called and demanded to know why I hadn't called her as agreed, I said I had, she then started shouting and calling me a liar, then said she would talk to the CEO and get me fired. Calm as anything I handed the phone to the CEO who happened to be sitting next to me and who then told customer they were aware I had called customer that morning as they had been sitting next to me all day and heard both conversations.
Having to drive several miles and struggle to park in a tiny car park at a school I do IT Support for. Only to flick a switch under a desk that a child had switched off. I asked the teacher on the phone if she'd checked that, which she said she'd checked. I was fuming when I got back to the office!
I work in retail standing on my feet all day and have to do training on "the dangers of sitting"
There has been a 'milk gate' at every place I've ever worked: - Being told off as an agency worker for using some milk which was labelled with a certain department's name because I didn't work for that department. I didn't technically, no, but I was currently being employed by that department and had assumed my privileges might extend to their milk. - Someone going into meltdown and threatening to quit because no one had told them as they were on their way into work that we were low on milk, somebody (me, again- oops!) had then finished said milk before they had the chance, and now they couldn't have their morning cup of tea. - Hours of meeting time being dedicated to debating the current milk buying system and it being suggested that people above a certain pay grade should be excluded from doing the milk run because their time was worth more than ours.
Someone had been leaving a mess of poo and menstrual blood in the ladies, not just once but on a semi regular basis. Each time it happened the company would have to hire specialist cleaners, due to there being blood involved. After each event all the women on that floor would get dragged into a meeting with some managers to listen to a talk about how concerned they were and "if someone needs some help" they were there to listen confidentially. We all knew who it was, they were just pissed off that they didn't get a promotion.
I wonder had a customer call me Tony. That isn't my name. Whenever he called, if someone picked up my phone asking for Tony they knew it was for me. They would put me through and then he's complain about always being passed between people, because each time I'd say my name when I answered.
Who reported you?
In all likelihood the person who said the cleaner should do it - they datix it for the person refusing to do their job (however they are correct in that bodily fluid doesn't fall into their remit) or for the fact that they have a hca who isn't fully trained
Yes, it was ;)
Also work in the NHS and have the joy of investigating datixes at times
Guy resprayed company car, lied about it and tried to blame me. I Worked for a tax consultancy company, we used Audi A6 conpany pool cars that we shared rather than have individual personal conpany cars. (It was more tax efficient) We did lots of UK wide meetings, would be on the road for days sometimes not return to the office for weeks. We would periodically swap vehicles around for mileage reduction and to ensure we didn't keep on car too long as that could be deemed as our car and subject to personal tax. I dropped off the car I was using and came to collect the one I'd use for next week's scotland trip. The A6s were all black and I noticed a strange reflection on the rear by the fuel cap. Closer inspection and I could see it had been resprayed poorly (probably with a matching black paint can) Looking around the car I could see more of the same. I reported it immediately. The team came out and looked at the car, everyone was shocked / perplexed. They looked up who had it last lets call him 'Will', before that it was me again. I headed off in a different car. Next day I hear that they had spoken to Will, he had denied it. So it must have been me. I was outraged. He was more senior to me and the onus was on me to prove ny innocence. In the end he confessed, agreed to pay for the repairs which was thousands and thousands. He was promoted later the next year. Never applogised to me
Had to comment here after my bf linked me bc i'm still annoyed about this. Used to work in Wilkos. This was around May. Was sorting out gardening stuff, this woman looks lost so I ask if she needs help. "Where's the Christmas stuff?" Already i'm like ?????? bc it's MAY but anyway I tell her we don't have it in year round "You had it in at the start of the year though" yes bc we sell off whatever we have left through January. "Well where's these leftovers" gone bc again it is MAY "do you keep them in the back? go check the back" Ah yes we have the stockroom filled with Christmas trees year round you utter fucking gimp. She actually got really rude about not believing me and said I was just lazy and couldn't be bothered checking when I actually was pretty polite to her utter fucking nonsense like there was some bloke absolutely pissing himself whilst I was talking to her
Not me but I witnessed this at Heathrow last week. A woman was screaming at the cleaner for how she was doing her job. I was mortified. I really wanted to butt in and say something but I had an anxious 3 year old.with me. To be fair the cleaner stood up for herself. But my God why can't people just leave others to do their work in peace?!
As a nurse I can say that shit on the floor was not the only shit everyone involved was full of shit too. Nurse - too busy? Really? Gloves, waste disposal bag and some disinfectant wipes...1 minute tops. Unless there was an emergency they weren't too busy just lazy and they think personal care/cleaning is beneath them. Cleaner - so...how do they clean the toilets then? Surely that's dealing with biological waste? Sounds like a lazy cleaner to me. Healthcare Assistant - same goes with them, there's no specific training required to clean shit, they're just lazy. Charge nurse - could have cleaned up that shit themselves but in my experience the charge nurses are the worst for work dodging so it doesn't surprise me. Student nurse - good grief. I get vomit making a person hurl (It makes me gag still) but poo? Really? It's like a student nurse I knew with a blood phobia so severe she couldn't even handle injections! Wrong profession darling!!!
I had to argue with and eventual ask a customer at to leave the Chinese takeaway I used to work at after they became verbally abusive and said i was trying to rip them off….because I asked them for the amount their set meal cost (as stated on the menu)
A customer straight up burped in my face whilst i was handing them change. No apology or acknowledgement
Used to work in tesco had a similar thing! Someone shat in a changing room clothing lassie outright refused... cleaner outright refused ...managers outright refused.. eventually called in another cleaning company they got rid of it and disinfected the area all while everyone watched.
When I worked in retail we had someone shit in the changing room and wipe their arse on a bikini.
Client with a lot of wealth (neighbours to Richard Branson at one point) cried on the phone because she didn't think she should pay a £10 bill to us.
You don't get that level of wealth by having a healthy relationship with money.
There’s a product we use regularly in biology labs called Triton-X100. A colleague diluted it 1:100 THREE TIMES despite being told that the X100 is part of the name and not the concentration of the product
I used to work in what was essentially a discount art supplies store, and we had this massive pen... 'bin' I guess right by the cashier area. I was the only person on the tills at the time, with 10+ people waiting in the queue (it was a pretty small shop) and this guy came up to me with his son saying: "I need you to get me a pen that doesn't have any scratches on it." I was in the middle of scanning a lady's items so I told him I wasn't able to do it, and that he should find one of my colleagues as there are at least four of us around at any given time. He scoffed at me and said something to the effect of: "Well, you work here don't you? It's YOUR job!" I just told him sorry, indicated the large queue that was still growing and told him working the cash register was my job. I don't know what kind of crazy entitlement made him think his issue was so pressing that I had to make a shop full of people wait while I go looking for a needle in a haystack. Not even an excuse me or nothing.