Is this elf and safety gone mad?

[girlfriend44]

Yesterday I helped an elderly woman who had fallen over in town. She slipped on the wet path.
Managed along with others, to get her up, talk to her etc and give her tissues for her cut etc.
We took her into a local bank to sit down in the warm while we waited for an ambulance.
We asked if the bank had first aid box we could borrow as all we had were tissues.
The bank were apologetic and said they couldnt lend the box to the public due to the fact some people might have allergies etc.
I asked for a bit of water and they bought that but said no the borrowing the first aid box.

IS this right in your opinion or is it elf and safety gone mad. When its a long wait for an ambulance its very hard if an organisation wont lend you their first aid.

It's numbers of staff usually on site that affects your First Aid needs.

It's about the number of employees who work at that specific location, not the business as a whole.

This is ridiculous! Honestly the world has gone mad! I would be complaining to the bank manager and higher up if required. This is madness surely?!

Being sued because someone had a non life threatening allergy.

@IWishIUnderstood while that may be what they are thinking, how is such a court case going to get off the ground?

What possible recompense would someone get?

Well mlud, I do have a plaster allergy but I never mentioned it and let her put a plaster on to stop my profuse bleeding. I got a rash which did not really interfer in my life but I demand compensation.

A few seconds of thought shows its a totally disproportionate interpretation of risk.

The extent of most people’s first aid training is a St John Ambulance session when they were at school and anything they might have unofficially gleaned since, including something they were once told by someone who knew someone who heard of someone who got into trouble for giving out plasters, along with a suspicion of the chancers out there who do try to engineer situations where they can try to claim compensation for something (coffee too hot, fake whiplash etc.) It’s doesn’t matter whether they’re correct or not, it’s not in their job remit, they have little idea about a company policy, and they don’t want to think about the logistics of how a court case would actually work.

I don't think it's health and safety gone mad. I think it's 'anxiety about legal liability' gone mad. And the reason for that, I guess, has a lot to do with 'no win no fee' ambulance-chasing legal firms. Plus an overly defensive corporate culture at the bank. Poor woman.

I can remember when Thatcher liberalised the ways in which legal firms were able to promote their services. That gave huge impetus to a certain type of legal action, which in turn exacerbated corporate defensiveness in relation to potential liabilities, thereby hamstringing companies' ability to be good citizens in the situation the OP describes.
Ironic, given her view that businesses were the great philanthropists.

Not the point but I'm amazed there was a bank open!

Years and years ago when my DD was a toddler she walked into a table at John Lewis and got a massive bump on her head. They asked if I wanted First Aid and I said no as I wasn't sure what practically they could do. They insisted they would call first aid and a guy came back with a first aid kit, but actually just held a wet paper towel over her forehead. The bump went right down in about 10 min and they were all v kind. (I tried the wet paper towel approach with DS when he was a toddler and bumped his head - he was having none of it, thrashing and squirming about like an electric eel ...so ended up with a golf ball size bump on the head!)