Work - The pros and the cons... - The Bear and Badger

Dark Soldier

I'm noticing a severe rise in aggression and anger in my work of late. I handle calla for GMC, can handle them no problem but fucking hell of late it just feels like spates and spates of hatred and anger simmering all across the public. A hell of a lot of "I'm not a racist but..."

State of the NHS and life in general for most clearly firing this rage but I'm chucking my CV at everything non-public facing from here on out.

Diluted Dante

We can do Chaturbate, Cinty will mod for us.

Dark Soldier

I am game.

Minnesänger

Deal.

ZMM

Why has everyone suddenly started using the word "cohort"? It's a really bizarre word with negative connotations. Why not just say team or group.

acemuzzy

Cos they mean different things?

ZMM

Not really

acemuzzy

I view cohort = set of people you joined with, team = set of people you now work with. And possibly group = wider set of people you now work with.

What are the negative connotations, out of interest? Is it from Roman army murder squads or something? I'm which case, yeah, feels a bit non-2023 to use it I'll grant you that.

ZMM

Dark Soldier wrote:

I'm noticing a severe rise in aggression and anger in my work of late. I handle calla for GMC, can handle them no problem but fucking hell of late it just feels like spates and spates of hatred and anger simmering all across the public. A hell of a lot of "I'm not a racist but..."

State of the NHS and life in general for most clearly firing this rage but I'm chucking my CV at everything non-public facing from here on out.

Yeah I used to be in the telephone/email/webchat with customers role, there's only so much you can take before needing to move on, I think.

GooberTheHat

I've no idea what negative connotations cohort has. It's a fairly standard phrase used at my work (not used often, but enough that it doesn't seem out of place) and everyone seems to understand exactly what it means.

What are the negative connotations?

Wookienopants

ZMM wrote:

Dark Soldier wrote:

I'm noticing a severe rise in aggression and anger in my work of late. I handle calla for GMC, can handle them no problem but fucking hell of late it just feels like spates and spates of hatred and anger simmering all across the public. A hell of a lot of "I'm not a racist but..."

State of the NHS and life in general for most clearly firing this rage but I'm chucking my CV at everything non-public facing from here on out.

Yeah I used to be in the telephone/email/webchat with customers role, there's only so much you can take before needing to move on, I think.

Yea even I've noticed this in my work, both current and past.
Theres a real trend towards aggression, abuse and shouting louder if people don't get what they want. I see this with demands to get decisions overturned by management and CC'in local MPs and abuse of complaints.

Its frustrating as it's very much seeming that the public seem to think that the way to get what you want is to shout, scream and throw your toys out of the pram, claiming "VICTIM!!!" whenever they don't get what they want.

It's the opposite of what we teach children

ZMM

People became real arseholes over the pandemic. Sadly, I had to work through the whole thing, not one second of furlough was afforded to me (I know the grass is always greener and all that).

But yeah, before the pandemic I would get 1 complaint every couple of weeks or so, in the end it became something like 2 or 3 a day. And when we were targeted as being "woke" by the Mail, I tell ya, I "accidentally" disconnected many a call.

Wookienopants

People are shit

Diluted Dante

I've only ever heard it used in an academic sense. No idea what would be negative.

LivDiv

Pretty sure I've used it positively and negatively.
Is it because it sort of sounds like coerce?

Unlikely

I mean grape sort of sounds like rape so fuck wine the bastard.

No idea where ZMM is coming from.

tin_robot

I have no idea what the negative connotations of cohort are either. Just means a group of people with a shared characteristic. I use it a lot at work, but never in reference to talking about teams so I'm even confused by Muzzy's clarification.

As to DS's point. God yes. Post pandemic the level of abuse is astonishing. In the whole time working at my place (20 years - gulp) abuse was rare, and calling the Police even rarer. Now it's so common place we've had to put up signs everywhere reminding people not to be violent, and we've had to call the Police more times than I care to remember. (Including physical attacks on staff and death threats). Similarly our receptionists all used to stay until retirement. Now we're lucky if they last 6 months. We see more people than we ever did before (50% higher than the national average), and waiting times are the shortest they've ever been - and still it comes.

Coopers Green

Are you mixing up cohort with horde, perhaps?

GooberTheHat

It's because they've been told they should be angry, and that NHS staff are lazy, Tin.

DrewMerson

Minnesänger

Apologies for vagueness but, you know, Big Companies, data security, NDAs and the like but...been trying to get in contact with someone for a while now and, according to a third party who was "helping", they're far too busy to chat - have to go through them and wait for feedback.

Today, out of the blue, get an email from The Target that says they've been desperate to chat and no idea why we haven't talked sooner - they finally decided to look me up directly after getting repeatedly rebuffed by the third party. Someone is dying tomorrow and I'm going to have so much fun.

Going to be so much blood.

GooberTheHat

Armitage_Shankburn

Tasty miammiammiam.

afgavinstan

Gonna try and explain this as quick I can..

So each morning on our dayshift, us porters assist the waste guys and do the bins in the majority of the building while they go around in the van picking them up and delivering us fresh ones. Was never mentioned in my interview as a porter, explained as "one of those things". Etc. Whatever. It annoys me but okay, if it was put in place before I came, then fair enough I suppose. Can guarantee no other porter in any other hospital does this duty, but anyway...

Just been told there that starting tomorrow, for the bins coming out of theatre and day surgery, I've to weigh them? As in, they've put a pallet truck with 2x4s taped onto it so it catches the bins and their big ground clearance, and then put it onto a scale they've just installed, and record the weight, for those departments. It's the staff in those departments that come and get the empty bins from the disposal hold after we leave them there, it's their staff that fill them, it's their staff that then take them back round to the disposal hold where this new scale is. So why in the fuck have I to do it? "because they refused", I'm told. So what if I refuse? "you'll more than likely be disciplined", I'm told. So why in the fuck are theatre and DS staff not being disciplined? I thought we were all NHS now?

Also, have I been given training? Is that happening? Has it been risk assessed? Hahahaha, nah, just oh yeah Gav tomorrow we do that now.

Ummmmmmmmm. No? Thanks? Don't think I will?

Wookienopants

Refuse the refuse job. It's not in your job description. It's not something you agreed to.

Wookienopants

Also, have I been given training? Is that happening? Has it been risk assessed? Hahahaha, nah, just oh yeah Gav tomorrow we do that now

Well guess who's gonna have an "accident" at work tomorrow? You'll be signed off injured for quite a while.

g.man

Sounds like one for The Union to sort out to me.

Syph79

Union is likely the way, but check that your JD doesn’t have a line like: Any other duties that are commensurate or considered reasonable in the role. If it does, like many do, then you’ve got little grounds to say no.

Hodge360

Just casually mention it in conversation with the patients you're shifting around. It doesn't sound like they're taking any steps to avoid cross contamination to already sick people.

afgavinstan

Yeah hahaha that's another years long issue I've very personal experience of.

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