Secrets of your trade.

Water analysis, hmm, so when I tested my tap water for nitrates and nitrites it was too high to use in the fish tank, I didn't find the bottle water high. So I don't understand. Does it make sense to you?

There's an awful lot more to water analysis than nitrates, and what's OK for people may not be OK for fish (and vice versa). I too worked in water analysis in what was then a government department (35 years ago!) and there was a massive range of things that were tested for, and I remember being told that bottled water didn't have to stick to the same standards as tap water.

Some of the issues we found were quite scary e.g. the time SW Water managed to get aluminium contamination in the supply & people's hair was turning green, or the time someone put heating flush in the wrong tank in the roof in a building and someone filled a kettle from the wrong tank (hospitalised, but survived).

One lesson I took was whenever you're in an older building that has taps marked as drinking water, never EVER use any other taps for drinking or washing cups/food items. The drinking water taps will be mains water and the others will be from a tank in the roof and only intended for washing hands etc, and all sorts of stuff can get into those tanks (dead pigeon anyone? ).

Blatant placemark to read properly later.

I’m a civil servant. Over the 27 years I’ve worked in various government departments I could name about 20 people who literally did nothing all day.

For the person upthread who said the foster carers threw out the 17 year old. My mum still has 2 mid 30’s adults living with her as they have learning difficulties and couldn’t live alone, yet there is no social services provision for them as they aren’t “bad enough”. She doesn’t get paid for this!

Your mum is lovely.

Treat for teaching staff or cupcakes I spent ages on?! Head actually stopped me and asked for recipe of a tray bake I made - I’m now gutted but impressed at her acting skills! What a waste of cash!!

My daughters a teacher and she’s very happy to eat the cakes and other food items she’s given. So are her collegues. I’m also happy to eat what she’s given and there’s two parents in particular who are fabulous bakers and I look forward to their cakes every year.

Yes about the patient experience forms per Pp. I was admin for complaints in an nhs trust and they thoroughly investigated and dealt with every complaint and thanked staff directly for compliments. It was heartening to see that the managers and directors do actually care and want to improve.

@snuggle I agree with you completely and totally understand what you mean. I think you are right

tripe the official line is that having flowers on the ward is 'against infection control'. Something to do with the water, and some folk are allergic

What isn't random about random drug tests, please? In what context?

Thank you for your kindness Helen.

I may start my own thread about this in 30 days only.
I need to process it.

When we remove a child we ask the rspca to remove the pets. They don't always and are quite useless.

Am still reading the thread but this has made me sad!

I also wanted to ask the nurses, a few have said they used to lay a flower on a deceased patient but that they aren't allowed to anymore. Why aren't you allowed??
Your stories of caring for deceased patients have been so very touching and I'm sure a comfort to many of us who've lost a loved one, so thank you!

And I am never eating Chinese take away again 🤢

I work in Sexual Health. We don't care about the look or lack of your pubic hair! We also don't care about the amount of sexual partners you have had or your sexual kinks. It's more important that you give us the right / truthful info so we can test or treat correctly.
All NHS have patient experience forms and these do get read dealt with whether good or bad so it's always worth filling one in or asking for one. If it's a praise and we are named it goes on our HR file, so it's always nice to get one of these forms back.

Water analysis, hmm, so when I tested my tap water for nitrates and nitrites it was too high to use in the fish tank, I didn't find the bottle water high. So I don't understand. Does it make sense to you?

I work in a water analysis lab. UK tap water standards and regulations are stricter than the bottled water regulations. Spring and mineral waters are regulated as you where they come from, but just bottled water can be as simple as tap water put in a bottle. (This is what coca cola were doing with dsani water in the UK before they pulled the brand after a PR and treatment disaster).

@ChanklyBore I've had the same midwife since my 8 week booking in, have her name and mobile number but wouldn't dream of messaging at crazy hours or pictures of baby poo.

I was only reading something on the police force the other day and, as a public service, it doesn't seem to get as much mention in the media compared to the NHS and education in terms of cuts. I couldn't do your job @hellenbackagen. I really glad you're in a better place, and sorry again for my post being off point/not correctly explained.

@aurynne
Love this! I'm 34 weeks pregnant,. lovely to hear the other side! I'm shocked people thinks it's acceptable to text you at midnight.. I wouldn't dream of contacting a healthcare professional outside of clinic hours (A&E etc excepted!)

SnuggleI mean! Can't get the bloody name right!

snuggles I'm not offended. 💐 I'm sure you're right. Some will swing the lead.

But I got to the point at one stage where I'd considered suicide and had found the "lost all hope" website.

Some jobs are harder than others. Some things are harder to forget than others. Some people are more resilient than others.

I think I'm ok now. I'm off meds. I still sometimes get gripped with panic re my kids but it's short lived. It's hard to not worry when you see stuff like I do daily I suppose. I try to remember that. I've also lived through loss (sis died in car accident). I have no parents or support network and I am everyone else's support so I can't be needy.

@amadalily I work in general practice accountancy and we have a similar % where we won't bother looking for a discrepancy because it's not worth it!

I agree with a PP, random drug and alcohol testing is not generally random.

Also the yellow lines on the road are different shades of yellow depending on the authority responsible for managing those lines

@FelicityBeedle @hellenbackagen @Prequelle

I’m really sorry if I’ve upset or offended you in anyway. The question was asked of the most common people issues I face in HR, and I answered honestly that in my personal experience, mental health illness have become a “thing” and in summary, my role had a common theme, which I s to distinguish between the real cases and the not so real ones. Twenty years ago, to get time off work, you had a bad back, today, mental health illnesses are more commonly found on sicknotes. Are all of them accurate and 100% depression? Unlikely. Can I distinguish between the ones that are real and are not? Normally.

Mental health management is difficult to manage because:

A) I’m not trained, and so actually I can’t and shouldn’t make a judgement on whether someone has depression or not but I have an opinion and I have to rely on my gut on occasions. I also rely heavily on the persons disclosures to me and on OH (which is a whole other thread) as well as good management (also an issue) to support them. Yet there is more and more pressure on companies to support individuals, with no funding or provisions in place to do so (more so in the public sector, and I’m sorry the police force has not supported you) I’m in the private sector and bang my drums a lot to get mental health support in place including training my first cohort of mental first aiders this year. Do not judge me on my comments above that I’m dismissing all people with depression, I’m not. I answered a question and gave no personal details, but I actually help people with mental health more than you know and way above my role, as a small example, including visiting a colleague who made an ‘off’ comment as she left one night which concerned me, and I popped by her house on the way home to find her literally contemplating suicide at that moment

And B) i worry that we are going too far the other way with the next generation, with so much awareness of mental health, that everyone has something wrong. It’s good we’re aware but we are raising a generation where we’re leading on this line. To put this in context, I asked a group of new qualified teachers recently to put their hands up if they’d heard people say to them that they’re “mad to go into teaching” and all of the 80 people in the room did. We’re setting people up to be afraid of doing something that might be hard / difficult, instead of teaching them the tools to brave the difficulties. I feel real mental health problems, like the one hellenback described, are being clumped together with people who either have a situation in their life they’re finding difficult (personal or work related) and need support to get through that particular difficulty; they are under performance management at work which causes stress and requires an intervention and choices to be made; or they’re are having a low period in the life brought on by poor diet/sleep/exercise/hormones (as examples) and label themselves ‘depressed’ to be prescribed medication, which is only a plaster.

In answer to your question, yes, I do show empathy and yes, I offer more than just telling someone to change their diet. And honestly, I’m fighting your corner as employees to get things changed. I’m one person.

Bless you jasper - Scottish law is actually different to English law so I'd be probably misinformed if I even tried to explain! Sounds horrible. One thing I do always bear in mind is being accused, or suspected of an offence does not mean guilty of committing it! Police are just duty bound to investigate an allegation. Sounds like it rightly came to nothing?
I hope you're ok.

Travelled about ten miles I think. I was held in a cell for about 4 hours, though hard to tell as they took my watch.
There was no struggle , no resisting of being taken away or anything.

I was very calm but it was still one of the worst nights of my life as I was worried police would believe him not me.