What are refusal shoes?

Former Immigration Officer. If you go through the non-EU channel and you are a frequent visitor or have indefinite leave to remain and the IO spends a long time chatting to you, it is not because they are interested in you. It’s more that they have spotted someone with “Refusal Shoes” in the queue and if they spend more time with you then another IO will get them.

I used to work in a shoe shop as a Saturday job. If shoes were often a little tight, we'd offer to take them round the back and 'just give them a gentle stretch with the machine'. In reality, we squeezed them on our sweaty feet ourselves and stamped around in them for a few minutes.

If you die during routine surgery and you don’t have a relative/family friend waiting in the hospital, they’ll get a phone call from the surgeon telling them that there’s been a ‘complication’. They’ll never be told over the phone.

Mortuaries aren’t cold.

Dead people often fart when turned.

If you donate skin, it gets shaved off your body in strips, looks like a big beard trimmer.

Been in HR for 20 years.
People are weird. I should write a book!

@Purplecatshopaholic lets do it together! The stuff we see and hear still fascinates me; after so long you’d think I’d get bored

Trying to write some down without coming across bitter (I’m really not) devoid of all sentiment:

payroll cut off will be a few days after the communicated cut off. We can pull your pay up to the day before (leavers, unauthorised absence).

when employees say they’ve got a solicitor, I know that you’ve been talking to your mates brothers’ wife, whose likely told you, you’re in the wrong. Remember, HR normally have access to a real solicitors and the HR person giving advice is experienced (normally) in what they’re saying because they’ve seen it before.

don’t get arsey with HR when your pay is wrong because YOU didn’t clock in and out correctly. If you’re nice to us, we might actually help you and pay you the money owed. If you’re not, you may have to wait until next month.

when management change something and say “following a review” that normally means it’s been talked to death and whoever was most senior has made the decision (either individually or collectively)

I normally know when people are lying. It is very rare I’m wrong. And when I have pages of investigation reports, witness statements and other things, pointing towards an employee doing something wrong, the crying sob story rarely gets to me. You see it too many times and become hardened to it but that has taken me years to get to this stage (I was very drawn in emotionally if we needed to dismiss in my early stages of my career).

if you’re a manager, tell HR all the facts and information, leave nothing out. We will find out if you’ve done something later on, so best to be up front and honest if you’ve ballsed up and a good HR person will work with you to resolve it.

10 page grievance letters rarely get read from start to finish. A grievance meeting is called to ask you what you’d like us to do to reach a resolution. Saying “it’s all in the letter” just tells us examples of what we need to investigate. Employees need to think of what the resolution is.

quoting employment law from Acts makes me laugh. I don’t know the definitions off by heart. The legislation is translated into policies. The policy can be legal and above and beyond the legislative requirements. Telling HR we’ve breached the law is a common thing I used to hear (not so much in my workplace today as it’s awesome); we wouldn’t be breaching any law, but might be doing things right on the law and not by our own policy.

if we ask length of service of someone, we’re asking to establish the risk. Less than 2 years service means there is slightly less risk of litigation if the end result is dismissal. We will also likely ask if there are any characteristics we need to be aware of (disability, age, sex, religion, race). This is also to establish risk and rule out any fowl play on why a manager wants to remove someone (is it because they’re crap at their job / hit Jonny in accounts, or is it because they’re 67, Indian man with one arm?)

Hellenback
I can't even imagine how you keep going after something like that, and unsupported, totally. God, I'm sure your salary can't be enough.

I know that nurses and other hcps been getting lots of recognition and respect on here, but blimey, thank god there are those who want to protect communities in this way.

I always wondered what makes people want to be police,but I guess it's individual.

All the massive grinning over killing animals is just fuxjibg gross. Go and om each other or something so others don't have to be subjected to your ohsofunny , not, jolly japes.

Nine is really boring.
I worked on a scientific study carried out by a well known mobile phone manufacturer.
Rice does bugger all for a liquid ingresses phone.
If liquid has not got under the chip shields it's more likely to work, if it has its knackered.
That's why some people insist that rice works.
Also if rice did work for drawing moisture out they would replace the Sillica sachets with rice as it's cheaper.

How fortunate that I never let ‘gallows’ humour come in to my line of work, and even under the greatest of pressures, would never allow anything as hideous to rear it’s head when faced with the death of somebody’s loved one

Sometimes you either laugh or cry. I once got a call at home from someone who did my job at a different hospital. We were friends who had met through work.

A heart had been 'harvested' at 'my' hospital and matched to a patient at 'her' hospital. But the patient who received the transplant was the second choice. This is in the days of transplant patients having a bleep.

The original patient had responded to the bleep but had gone into shock and once at the hospital died before receiving the transplant.

It was obviously a horrendous situation for the two patients who died, but at the same time it was like some black comedy sketch.

We laughed and we cried, how else do you get up the next day and do it again?

in hospital when a dr certified a death its know as ash cash as they get payedxfor certification

Not quite, it's the form that needs to be filled in if the person is going to be cremated.

ChanklyBore Aurynne, your post is very strange to me. Are you an independent midwife?

Erm... have you tried reading the first line of my post?

In hospital when a dr certified a death its know as ash cash as they get payedxfor certification

...

Also
Police are only paired up For night shifts. The rest of the time police are "single crewed " meaning we work alone and go to all jobs alone. Back up is preferable at violent jobs but not always available.

I went to one job last June alone and got a gun pointed at me from a bedroom window. I then got shot at.

I remained on duty. I worked overtime as fun man arrested and lots of work to do. I didn't even get asked if I was ok.

🤷🏻‍♀️

Oh and also
Core rising crime....yes it is ., but for years pressure was put on forces to play down rising or violent crimes - so much so that robbery was often recorded as a theft and an assault rather than what it really was. - a robbery.

Thankfully forces realised they were doing no one a favour in down playing the statistics and now the reality is being portrayed factually....and shows violence is in the up.
And yet there are fewer police than ever to try and tackle it.

Get
Your police pal on here for a natter....what force? North or south? I'm north. Very few staff. - shift should have 10 police and a Sgt.
Some shifts recently have had 1 officer and a Sgt so down by 9. Stil expected to cover same area and all 999 calls.

Also people often think when they dial999 they get an officer in the phone.
They don't. It's a call handler. - a civvy paid peanuts with a computerised list of standard questions akin to a call
Centre They have no police powers or knowledge.

Love this thread! Will add my own in the morning

GPs / junior doctors get 'ash cash' for signing death certificates (this is hearsay; I may have the document wrong).

The daily build-up of gelatinous grease behind deep-fat fryers would put you off fast food for life.

Those mini perfume bottles in Christmas box sets are filled by hand (in my experience, at the height of summer. Never felt so sick in my life.)

Working hearing aids are cleaned up by hand and reused.

My Dsis has been required to look after very nearly double the number of permitted children at the nursery where she works.

When a pupil is permanently excluded, an equally or more challenging one will usually take their place on a managed move, hence the reluctance to do so.

We are paying hundreds of thousands of pounds for a private company to perform operations to get our waiting list down. We could just invest that money in more operating theatres/staff or offer overtime which would provide a long-standing solution as once this extra capacity is used, we will have a long waiting list again that needs clearing

bayley that sounds fascinating! And confirms some of my suspicions... Don't suppose you write a blog or anything?

Forgot to add - kennels I worked in had dealings with various charities.
RSPCA were awful - willing to spend £££ on an animal which it would have been kinder to pts because it may end in a conviction but wouldn't give pennies for a minor ailment which would have made rehoming an almost certainty.
They were also rigid and cut the kennels off entirely because they didn't like the way it was run - because ILs were willing to put their own money into helping some of the animals.

Dogs Trust were better.

Small individual charities (ones which dealt with one central breed only) were best. Lots more give and take and because they are smaller, the bosses are able to be more flexible (one nice story - kennels was full when one owner didn't come back on time so we had one dog too many. Charity worker took one dog home for a night (a rescue not a customers pet) to help us out. They also recommended us to people who adopted the dogs because they trusted ILs. In return, lots of invoices for the kennels they used got 'lost in the post' and we took emergency dogs others wouldn't because they were supposedly 'nasty' or had illnesses

A long time ago I worked in a boarding kennels which had a cattery and livery yard attached (it is owned by DHs family).

We all had favourite dogs but were equally kind to all of them.

I know your pet is unique to you but when he's the 4th German shepherd or 5th spaniel we've checked in, we will have to check the board to remind ourselves which dog is yours.

I wouldn't bother sending a dog in with bedding - if it's put in with the dogs it has to get washed which is another job so it's often just put away.

Yes we will feed your pets whatever food you brought in but if it's awful quality bakers we will judge you.

We will exercise your pets and spend time keeping them company and giving them affection.

Most kennels close in the middle of the day and has a strict closing time. This is to give staff chance to do the exercising of the dogs, affection and cleaning and gives the animals some quiet relaxation time without others walking passed them on their way in and out.

You may find the kennels is unexpectedly full when you try and book in if your dog dirties the kennel every evening, you push to bring the dog in early or pick up late (had lots of customers who wanted to save a days fee by bringing their pets in at 6am on the way to the airport 🙄) or turn up a day late - this and trying to negotiate the cost AFTER your dogs have been in for 2 weeks happened way more than I expected.

When I worked in retail (matalan) calling Oscar to the X dept meant there was a thief and you were alerting security.

This is such a fascinating thread

I do government affairs and political consultancy.

Essentially, I help business talk to politicians, and visa versa.

Very few politicians have a clue how businesses run, which can cause them to do silly things.

Equally, most people at the top of businesses don't understand politics, so demand the impossible or get confused by it. I translate between the two sides.

On two counts that is reassuring Bayley but the last point is grimly unsuprising ... ! But what do you do ?

'Big business' really doesn't have the political power people think it does. If that were true, my job would be an awful lot easier.

Most politicians are nice people, trying to do a good job.

No one in Westminster has a scoobie what is going on in Brexit.