Should customers show more respect for customers or staff that need first aid?

@llamali what are you talking about? What do you actually know about police training? Were you there to see how the situation was dealt with? Police deal with all sorts of incidents so are probably better at assessing a situation than anyone else. Talk about slagging off the emergency services at any given opportunity.

A customer had a seizure (supermarket) we phoned an ambulance and put screens at the ends of the aisle. Customers were trying to sneak round the screens and moaning that they “just need this” The poor lady needed privacy, in the end we put a member of staff at each end of the aisle until the ambulance arrived.

I think it's always worth considering there maybe a reason someone isn't acting as you may expect /hope. A lot of people have their own shit going on or just don't think. Of course a lot of people are just knobheads

Fair enough thought that might be the case

I used to work in A&E. A patient had a cardiac arrest in a bay, only surrounded by curtains. We always tried to move nearby beds/family, but their is no sound proofing for such events and it was only curtains!
After a long battle with shocks, adrenaline, CPR, which could clearly be heard nearby, the gent sadly died, RIP x

I went to the patient/relatives next door afterwards to say how sorry I was that they might have heard some upsetting things from next door etc.
The first thing the relative said was:
'You do realise, I've been sat here an hour and not 1 person has offered ME a cup of tea yet!'

I find the sense of entitlement is rife these days. Sadly it's usually the bad mannered people who stand out, even though plenty of well-mannered people exist.

That must've been absolutely awful for him

I can see why calling the police seemed like a good idea to anyone witnessing it.

Not because he was doing anything 'wrong', but for his own personal safety.

I think that's what the PP (who another poster jumped on) was trying to say.

You would think...

I was doing CPR on someone and people kept stepping over my legs and carrying on browsing. The guy was dead on the floor and they were still shopping
I had to yell at someone because they were getting in the way of me swapping over chest compressions

My only similar experience was trying to get my husband at the time up stairs at our local station. After he had been severely triggered by a tuna allergy. After dinner out in London. He was stumbling, absolutely unable to bear his own weight, was clearly suffering the start of a massive migraine. I was smaller than him by a lot and was trying to help him up the stairs. Not a single individual came to my assistance because clearly everyone, nearly all professionals, on their way home from work or after evenings out, clearly thought he was drunk. He wasn't. He was having a huge allergic reaction. I was able to get him to our car and drive him home. He was very unwell. But the judgement - fake - still resonates with me today.

Unfortunately this does not surprise me at all, it would seem that customer service must over ride everything, general health & safety, common sense, manners, the law, other people's health or safety People have become obsessed with it.

It's got ridiculous, and I don't even think it's so much to do with getting free stuff for a complaint as validation and ego stroking.
"Look! I've been the victim of poor customer service, it's tragic, disgusting, appalling and any other over emotional word I can think of" 🙄.

The reactions towards anything slightly going wrong in a customer service environment are becoming more and more disproportionate to what is actually happening. Having to wait a few minutes to be served, having to leave a shop because someone has taken ill, something not being available - it's not exactly a life changing tragedy that's going to affect you for the rest of your life, it's a mild annoyance.

I mean radically, had I been in your shop I'd have offered to help the lady, or you. People have become so individualistic and self absorbed they will actually put their 'experience' buying a pint of milk above someone else's life.

That is horrendous. I would most likely have been sacked for shouting at them that they were fucking arseholes. Would have been worth it.

I'm SO glad I left retail!!

No, was just struck by the several posts in a row suggesting different excuses for awful behaviour. Reminded me slightly of the MN classic "have you considered dementia?"

Yeah, they were just knobs who wanted to get home in time for the football.

Woah, is there some backstory here with you and @llamali ?

They were knobheads.

That happened to my friend too. He is now banned from a pub for having a meltdown (they don't understand), but the police were great. He ended up in hospital with a head injury that he can't remember getting.

He was not in danger, but he was in meltdown and thought he was. He shouts and swears when he has meltdown. It was handled very badly, as in people shouted back at him. He just needed calm, and removal to a calm space.
He now constantly wears a sunflower lanyard with a card saying he is autistic.

I genuinely couldn't get my head around it at all.

I genuinely don't see why someone shouldn't call the emergancy services during those situations. Someone called the police for someone close to me who was having a severe meltdown on a night out. They thought he was drunk. The police were great and took him somewhere safe. They kept him safe.

It must be that bystander effect

See that's just weird there's no excuses for EVERYONE to do that

My daughter collapsed in a residential street in the middle of the day and people just stepped over her. Not one person asked her if she was OK or stopped to help her. I was flabbergasted.

Have you got some kind of compulsion to repeatedly make excuses for absolute arseholes or is it just a weird hobby?