Being Kept Waiting..

[mumof4]

Do you know what really pi55es me off..i was late for an appointment with the headmaster today...ok so the school rang me at five past 2 to remind me that i had an app at 2,...why is it...that i got told that being late was a sign of tardiness...yet this same person kept me waiting half an hour the other week and that was fine!!..

 

yesterday, the doc was running nearly an hour late..but you have to sit there and wait coz if you leave..tough..but its ok for docs to run late and i understand these things happen.

But if you are late for your appointment by more than 10 mins..it gets cancelled!!!!!!!1..why is ok for the person you have an appointment with to be late, but if you are late..it isnt!!..if we have an app with the doc/school/hosp etc..we make sure we are on time..but if they run late which i know does happen..then its tough!!..i wasted nearly an hour of my time yesterday waiting to see the doc in bloody agony..and he never appologised..fookin manners cost nothing these days.

 

anyway...my point is..why is it bad if we are late for an app..but not them??..how many of you have sat in a waiting room for gawd knows how long but if you have run late, that would be the day the appointment system miraculously works and everythings running on time and your app gets cancelled coz you are late.

[big_kev]

Nope........it doesn't happen to anyone esle it must just be you.

[mumof4]

Doesnt bl00dy surprise me.

[seatkid]

Life's a bitch. :P

 

Most people today are self opinionated, selfish, greedy barstewards.

 

You've gotta to try and switch off when things get too much.

 

Believe me, I been there, got the tea shirt etc.

 

Have more confidence in yourself, be hard, don't rely on so called friends or family - I found they eventually sh*t on me too! :P

Edited July 6, 2007 by seatkid

[El Dingo]

It doesn't have to be like that.

 

Just my opinion.

 

In my experience, the more positive my attitude with people, the more positive the reaction I get. Therefore, if I am going to be late, I make sure that I'm absolutely positively definitely late.

 

:P

[big_kev]

What did the big J say...........

 

Do unto others.....as you would have them do unto you......

 

 

Quite right in my book....just because other people are selfish I do not act the same.

 

Turn the other cheek ( in your case you may have several ) and just take a deep breath and smile.

 

 

 

Life is too short......enjoy the good bits and ignore the bad.

[mumof4]

Well thats not nice BK, saying that woofy has several cheeks to turn!

[El Dingo]

I don't think BK was referring to me. I'm generally a happy soul.

 

If you really want to know, I have four. All turnable.

[katman]

Likewise with schools.....

 

Why is it you cant take your child out of school for one day without permission as it is an unauthorised absence (unless you ring and tell them the child is sick) yet 4 or more snowflakes and they shut the school forcing one of the parents to take a day off work to look after the child.

 

I can NEVER remember MY schools being shut because of the snow yet my daughters schools have been closed on a dozen or more days because of bad weather. All the kids live less than a mile from school but I know that several of the teachers live 20 miles away so they probably think "its snowing...I cant be arsed to drive.... lets shut the school"

 

You cant take your child out of school for a holiday during term time as "there education would suffer" but surely that depends on the type of holiday. A week on the beach in Benedorm probably wont teach them much but a holiday visiting places of interest is quite likely to teach them quite a bit.

 

Agree totally about the appointments. My doctor NEVER runs on time. I had the second appointment one da, it was 30 minutes late when he finally called me in. You cant tell me that the first person was in there for 40 minutes!!!! And I dont think I have ever got my full 10 minutes anyway !!!!

 

Last night I had to take Amber to the hospital A&E department as she fell off her bike. We arrived at 8:10 and got seen at 10:15, by the time we had been to X-ray and back to A&E for a bandage we left at 11:15

Edited July 6, 2007 by katman

[mumof4]

Please dont start me on schools........i had the education welfare officer round as my kids had been late by 5 mins for a couple of weeks when everything went doolally here.I wouldnt mind but he turned up over half an hour late !!!!!!!!!!!

 

Hope your daughter is ok Katman.

[johnb80]

Why is it you cant take your child out of school for one day without permission as it is an unauthorised absence (unless you ring and tell them the child is sick) yet 4 or more snowflakes and they shut the school forcing one of the parents to take a day off work to look after the child.

Thats a legal reuirement set by government NOT the schools

 

 

I can NEVER remember MY schools being shut because of the snow yet my daughters schools have been closed on a dozen or more days because of bad weather. All the kids live less than a mile from school but I know that several of the teachers live 20 miles away so they probably think "its snowing...I cant be arsed to drive.... lets shut the school"

 

The decision to close the school due to weather is taken by the Headteacher in conjunction with the schools senior management team. The decision is purely Health & Safety based and will take into account the conditions on site and the likelyhood of the staff getting to school. In my day and probably yours at school, snowball fights, slides like glass on playground were all part of winter fun, not any more. Snow balling is not allowed and ditto making slides. This is a H&S reuirement in the workplace and in some ways I agree, I'm a first aider in the school where I work and I've seen some pretty horiffic injuries from snow balling. Some of the not so nice little darlings make a snowball and keep compacting it and warming it slightly until it becomes an ice ball, when thrown it can cause serious injury, one particularly pretty girl in our school got hit by one of those at my school, it split her eyebrow open needing 22 stitches and also damaged her eye. We then get one set of parents complaining we shouldn't have opened the school another saying were being too harsh not allowing snow balling,

 

You cant take your child out of school for a holiday during term time as "there education would suffer" but surely that depends on the type of holiday. A week on the beach in Benedorm probably wont teach them much but a holiday visiting places of interest is quite likely to teach them quite a bit.

 

Short sighted, so you're happy for your child to miss a couple of weeks of all lessons to go on holiday, why can't you go when the school holidays are on, there's plenty of them for heavens sake. Teachers have enough workload planning lessons and delivering them with an ever changing national curriculum without having to make special provision for your child. Remember also it wont just be yours, it would be someone else the week after etc etc. Then when they come back they need additional help from the teacher to explain subject matter that they've missed. This takes the teacher away from the other 29 kids in the class who suffer because you took your kid away. I personally would fine parents that took kids out of school for a family holiday.

 

 

Agree totally about the appointments. My doctor NEVER runs on time. I had the second appointment one da, it was 30 minutes late when he finally called me in. You cant tell me that the first person was in there for 40 minutes!!!! And I dont think I have ever got my full 10 minutes anyway !!!!

 

Complain to the practice manager. It's entirely possible he was late for work on that occasion or had some form of emergency he had to deal with.

 

Last night I had to take Amber to the hospital A&E department as she fell off her bike. We arrived at 8:10 and got seen at 10:15, by the time we had been to X-ray and back to A&E for a bandage we left at 11:15

 

I assume you're also complaining about this, I have direct experience in this area too as a First Responder working for the NHS. You only see one side of A&E, you don't see the other side where ambulances are bringing in more serious cases. A&E have finite staffing and resources a very quick assesment will have been done to decide how urgent your case was at 8:10, clearly it wasn't very high on the list compared to other casualties. What would you do? the fact that someones leg is hanging off allow them to bleed to death because Amber needs a bandage? Or are you saying they should be staffed better? I would agree they should have more staff, I suspect where our views would differ is that I'd be prepared to pay for it by way of taxation, I suspect you'd probably complain about that too.

 

I find pretty much all of what you have written extremely selfish, you're only considering yourself and not looking at the bigger picture. The world is not perfect, we ALL need to work at making it a better place. Schools need the support of parents and parents need to understand school. Have you considered doing a first aid qualification? you could have avoided the trip to A&E, treated the casualty instantly which is much better and one day possibly save her life, do you know what to do if she started choking, or had a severe cut and started bleeding heavily or had a bump on the head and was unconcious? dial 999 of course you would, how long does the ambulance take? 5 mins? 10 mins? 15 mins?, I have waited 45 minutes with a cardiac arrest casualty who lived because of my first aid skills, everyone should do first aid, it would reduce considerably the workload on A&E.

 

Rant mode off

 

Regards - J

[Dave-G]

I think you're being a bit harsh there JB.

 

I have had to have outpatient surgery to my hands three times, fair enough with that - an operation can take longer than anticipated.

 

The incessant "aftercare" appointments seem to be a way of boosting the consultants earnings. I don't even have too much of a problem with that either but: "they" cram something like 50 "lets see the healed up result" appointments into a four hour afternoon. The result has been an average of 50 patients + their companion's waiting two hours each for the consultant.

 

Yup - some two hundred "customers" hours wasted because the NHS thinks it's doctors time is SOOOOO much more valuable than their patients. And guess who pays the pay and display overstay fines if we don't put in a pocket full of money just in case of a long wait?

 

The third time it happened to me I complained loudly to the reception desk and got told thats how it works - bring a book!

I am now playing them at their own game and cancellelling each appointment they re-make with me hours before it's due. This should help the queue a tad huh? :blink:

 

Like wise my health centre - they have this flashing display detailing how many doctors hours were wasted due to missed appointments last month. That would ease their workload right? Oh - yea like they could have made everyone wait even longer for their very late appointments. Dentists too!

 

There arn't many industries that could get away with pi55poor customer service like that - but they all know we're stuck with the shoddy treatment government calls a health service.

[mikeohope]

Do you know what really pi55es me off..i was late for an appointment with the headmaster today...ok so the school rang me at five past 2 to remind me that i had an app at 2,...why is it...that i got told that being late was a sign of tardiness...yet this same person kept me waiting half an hour the other week and that was fine!!..

 

I hope you bloody well tore them off a strip, sound like a right bunch of self righteous pompous gits!!!!!

[mumof4]

Ummm...well i was a wee bit narked at the time so i just said F*** this , and walked back out.

[johnb80]

I think you're being a bit harsh there JB.

Maybe I was but only a little. People are very selfish and I see it all the time, yes it's frustrating when we have to wait but just what is the alternative?

 

For example you have a heart specialist, he's in great demand, his time is finite so what would you do have him wait for you? would you be happy with the longer waiting lists that this would create AND the extra tax burden? No, you like many others would complain about that too.

 

Sorry if I'm coming on strong on this one, it does make my blood boil a bit.

 

Regards - J

[big_kev]

As an ex-NHS employee I can assure you that they are not perfect.

 

However...before people start slagging them off they need to realise what is actually happening.

 

The current practice when a member of the NHS leaves/retires is not to replace them in around 75% of cases.

This workload is placed on the existing staff.

 

For example I ended up with less staff than were actually required to do the job, which was based on a 24/7 shift pattern, there were not physically enough staff to cover the shifts even with lone working.

Overtime was actively discouraged by the higher management....who were receiving their orders from above.

As a department we had to consider the implications of obeying the senior management or putting patients lives in risk.

Needless to say we ignored senior management and got severe flack about the overtime.

 

 

The NHS is held together by the dedication and hard-working core staff.

They are paid a wage far below that they would receive in the private sector.

The majority of clerical and ancilliary staff are on the minimum wage...some were actually on less than this for a while ( yep this is true ).

They have just been kicked in the teeth ( again ) by the Labour government who lied to them about their pay rise ( except in Scotland...there's a suprise ! ).

 

Any other public company would have had their workers out on strike by now....however the government knows that the majority of NHS workers will not strike under any circumstances and therefore gets away treating them like sh!te.

[big_kev]

Yes....sorry........touched a nerve there !

 

Maz you been playing again.....just noticed my sig.

[mumof4]

me??????????

 

 

i flippin will now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Bigjeeze]

Unless your time is so valuable that it can't be wasted just shut up and be grateful that you will be treated - even if it's a bit late. If a Dr or Dentist is running late it's usually because the previous patient or an emergency caused a delay - it's nopt because they want to pi55 you off. Likewise the same for anybody delaing with the public or running a large institution like a school - Most heads of large comps have staff in excess of 70 - or 80 and of course a couple of thousand students - It isn't easy making all that run on time.

 

With schools what's really needed is for parents to support their teachers and for Teachers to go the extra mile - Ban PC - stuff Health & Safety and give all the first aiders a good kicking - bloody self satisfied jumped up know it all prigs!!!

 

Wanna know how to stop a child choking? take your fist out of their throat!! Want to stop them bleeding - don't hit them with sharp objects - use blunt ones then theres only bruising!!

 

A Slap a day keeps the b******s at play!!!! :D

[johnb80]

With schools what's really needed is for parents to support their teachers and for Teachers to go the extra mile - Ban PC - stuff Health & Safety and give all the first aiders a good kicking - bloody self satisfied jumped up know it all prigs!!!

And of course there the time wasted dealing with the rebelious ones :D more time wasted with kids that have Trouble With Attitude and Timekeeping, perhaps you wer/are one of those?

 

Regards - J

Edited July 8, 2007 by johnb80

[Dave-G]

So patients don't have equally important things needing their personal attention then? Look at the average doctors waiting room, look really hard and fair now guys - does it seem morally right that so many people wait so long for so few?. I dont have a problem with 10~20 minutes but be realistic - nearing an hour seems to be the norm.

 

Appointments are a two way street guys - not just to favour the flowpath of a precious public servant's day.

[Bigjeeze]

With schools what's really needed is for parents to support their teachers and for Teachers to go the extra mile - Ban PC - stuff Health & Safety and give all the first aiders a good kicking - bloody self satisfied jumped up know it all prigs!!!

And of course there the time wasted dealing with the rebelious ones ;) more time wasted with kids that have Trouble With Attitude and Timekeeping, perhaps you wer/are one of those?

 

Regards - J

 

I think people are too full of their own importance. If I need to see a Medico - then I will wait - I don't feel that I am made to wait longer than is necessary. Likewise with schools - Yes I do think that there is a serious management issue and that the PC brigade have completely ruined our lives and those of our children but -none of this can or will be changed because no matter how bad we think it is and that "those" people are the ones that need sorting - we are not prepared to be sorted - we don't see we are as much a part of the problem as they are - even if that is by saying or doing nothing - failing to stand up and be counted - we are all complicit.

 

But luckily me and mine are perfect so leave me out.

 

John - I was an A student - never late, never rude, perfectly attentive and a joy to teach.

 

I haven't changed much at all!!!!