Feeling Unwell?

The place where I work relies on Lotus Notes databases for everything. And I mean, EVERYTHING! This has its painful side, in so much as you can’t find anything and most of the stuff is hopelessly out of date.

On the plus side, you can get lost for hours looking for stuff if you want to hide. It’s like a lovely big, dimly lit warehouse full of dusty boxes. You can walk in the door with the intention of looking for, say, stocktake documentation but end up silently giggling at Incident reports.

I did such a thing the other day. It was like one of those chain email joke thingies about insurance claims. It’s not just the incident, most are boring, it’s way they’ve been written up that makes you laugh. You get this picture in your head of someone falling over or whatever, not in itself funny, but when it’s written like this*…

- Customer felt dizzy while standing at the checkout
- Employees feet were sore from blisters on her feet while walking
- Xxx was at the register talking to her colleague when she noticed her nose was bleeding
- Long term issue with walking on right
- Staff member had panic attack (mental illness)
- Xxx was walking on the shop floor when he felt a twinge in his groin
- Staff member sprained his ankle at home whilst walking too fast on an uneven surface
- Member was playing football outside of work hours away from place of employment when member sustained a hard tackle

There are countless incidents of both staff and customers having sore and blistered feet from both new and old shoes, which tell me that if you are shopping or standing all day, there are no ‘comfortable’ shoes.

It made me realise too that every first aider is an amateur doctor. Terms like myocardial infarction and viral infection litter the reports like a tickertape parade, but they have no way of knowing the cause of the problem.

My personal favourite though has to be one that isn’t all that funny, but does have an element of ‘what the…’ about it.

Xxx has a personal illness. Returned from lunch and felt dizzy and had partial loss of sight. (brain tumour)*.

What the hell? IT'S PERSONAL!



* names have been deleted and slight editing of content has taken place.