Category: comments on life

How To Offend Everyone At Work With A Phone Message

AND BE GLAD THAT YOU DID

The phone message was full of foul language and vile sentiments…and I sent it to my boss!

It was possibly one of the best things I have ever done.

A common enough mistake

Chances are, most of us have done something like this – written a few snide comments about someone in a group email then pressed “reply all” or sent a gossipy phone message to the person it was about rather than our bitching partner.

It is not nice, it adds to office tensions as gossip and cliques make everyone nervous about whether they are in the popular crowd. I have honestly always tried to avoid being part of such groups.

So why did I do it?

Let me explain:

I was on the last day of my holiday. I was in a restaurant and I had turned my phone off. A lovely relaxing end to my break.

Continue reading “How To Offend Everyone At Work With A Phone Message”

We Didn’t Ask To Be Heroes -Care Home Staff

Home » comments on life

We didn’t ask to be heroes!

This is a rant from someone who was on the front line during 2020 – not the NHS front line but the disposable, underrated Care Home front line.

There were many stories of “cruelty” in Care Homes during the pandemic. Cruelty?? Things were overlooked and standards dropped at times during the panic and fear. But I seriously doubt that there was deliberate cruelty.

I am naive maybe…

But if there was any “cruelty”, it was how front line Care Home staff were treated.

Everyone suffered during the coronavirus outbreak. One way or another, everyone has something to look back on and say “I hated that”.

A great deal of news air-time was reporting the plight of elderly people imprisoned in care home bedrooms. And the deep distress of their relatives who were refused entry.

Emotive words.

People demanded that the government forced care homes to throw open their doors and allow relatives to visit their depressed and lonely parents.

I was part of that. I was one of the wicked, cruel, inhuman care home staff who locked elderly in their rooms and refused to show them the light of day.

Except it wasn’t really like that!

Continue reading “We Didn’t Ask To Be Heroes -Care Home Staff”

THE TRIBAL WORLD OF FOOTBALL

Home » comments on life

What turns “everyday normal people” into screaming firebrands of pent up energy? What too has the power to split families, create rivalries, draw lines across the country and paint areas, ghetto-like, in one colour? And what gives thousands upon thousands of people intense delight and gut-wrenching frustration on a weekly basis? Lastly, what has created a universal language of comradeship and togetherness which can explode into intense rivalry and mutual hatred without the need for actual words?

Employment? Unemployment? POLITICS? Cult religions? Race relations? The gender pay gap?

Never..it can only be football.

There are two types of people in this world – football fans and others.

Football!

Modern man’s tribal bonding; the display of club colours, the chanting, the imbibing of alcohol and more alcohol, the mass hysteria, the rituals. By rebooting our ancestral roots, football resurrects the caveman still dwelling within us – and awakens his fears! Standing as one beside the fire amongst many like-minded fellows was to survive. Repelling one’s enemies with a group display of aggression – to appear to be the bigger “monster” – was to be safe. To lose the fight, to suffer humiliation, to be second best, was to die. That is football too! The terraces replicate the hunting grounds we thought we had left behind in our evolutionary journey. Maybe we have not evolved very much at all.

Continue reading “THE TRIBAL WORLD OF FOOTBALL”