Other What's ruining your life right now?

That's what I got a workmate to do. He was just sitting in his office, staring at his desk, literally unable to function. He just looked at me and said I don't know what to do or where to start. Weirdly, the task of making a list cut right through that immobility and he could start working through it.

 

I'm not saying I get it all done, but if I'm really, really down, I just put things down that are easy or really DO have to happen (for example, packing the car on Sunday to go to work Monday). If it's a large task, I'll break it down into bits - for example, I never just put "Clean Lounge", I'd put underneath "dust", wipe window", "hoover floor", "clean sofa" etc.

 

I have had this down the years being a corporate drone.
I call it 'work blindness' when you have so many competing priorities big and small, you quite literally are paralysed by it.
Lists and planners and writing it down and clearing calendars for a bit always helps.

 

Something that was asked in my interview for my last role somewhat stuck with me. Well… it was more the explanation later when I’d actually got the job, but still…

If you have several work items on the go at once, and whoever has requested each one tells you that it’s extremely urgent, which one do you prioritise? The guy who’d become my head of department asked the question in the interview, and I said something along the lines of “it probably depends on which one has a direct customer impact”. Later on, when I’d actually got the job, he said that his answer would be “none of them are a priority”: if people don’t work with you on balancing workload, it means they don’t respect your time - they don’t get to stamp their feet and make demands.

Unfortunately it does tend to require a good management culture, one that seems to be depressingly rare. In my current role it’s more a case of: “Thing X is really urgent, do this now. Thing Y has just come up and needs to be prioritised because it’ll make us £bajillions. Have you done Thing X yet? You do know that Thing Y is a priority, right? Here’s Thing Z, we need to get this done or Stuff Will Break. SomeStakeholder is chasing Thing Y, what’s the update on it? You need to do Thing Z, it’s really important. Why isn’t Thing X done yet? Where is Thing Z, it shouldn’t be taking you this long?”. All while juggling the constant context switching of trying to reply to half a dozen people chasing you on Teams at exactly the same time.

As trite an aphorism as it might be, in my experience it tends to hold true that “people don’t leave bad jobs, they leave bad managers”.

 

When everything is top priority, nothing is top priority...

I get this all the time. Time management and planning in the construction industry is, or at least can be, horrendous. Everything is suddenly last minute and it is very common to have a part of a project done, sent out to the client and hear nothing for 4, 5, 6, or more months and then get a "top urgent" email coming through with a load of changes that need to be back with them the day before they asked you as they are pouring concrete tomorrow...

Always pouring concrete tomorrow....

 

Wife had a funny turn today. She has a heart condition and as a result an ICD fitted, and after previous cardiac arrests (before we met) I’ve lived on a bit of a knifes edge, always ready to react to whatever may come my way.

She’s had low blood pressure for a while, but it hasn’t overly concerned her cardiologist despite her usual BP being the opposite.

We took the dog out for a short walk after dinner. After about 25 minutes, she said she felt dizzy and her eyesight changed. We were just near home when she fixated on something on the ground, there was clearly nothing there. I could quite clearly see she was vacant and about to collapse, so when her legs started to go I pulled her into me really tightly and lowered her to the ground.

She then had a seizure of some kind while foaming at the mouth. I got her into the recovery position while trying to manage our very confused son who has autism and an erratic 11 week old puppy. Her skin went grey, lips blue, and she was gargling and convulsing.

Then it suddenly stopped. While on the phone to 999 and reassuring my son everything would be fine, she launched onto her back flat. Her breathing was so shallow I could barely tell, she genuinely looked gone. Looked up to a very confused boy thinking I may have to perform CPR to get his mum back…

I checked her pulse and breathing—both slow, but there. Massaged the chest, elevated her legs and eventually she started breathing properly and came around, very dazed.

I’d called 999 during the seizure, 4 minutes later they turned up and no long after she was in the back of an ambulance on blue lights. I then called my parents to help with childcare and the puppy so I could get to the hospital.

To any of you who may work in the NHS—thank you. You’re under appreciated, overworked, and very much underpaid, but when I really needed you on a really ****ing horrible day, you absolutely delivered.

 

@DeadP1xels

Damn, I don't know what to say at the moment. Just, well, I'm glad everything went as well for you guys as it could in that horrible situation.

Must have been terrifying for all of you.

Hoping for a speedy recovery and that they can do something to help it not happen again, none of you need that kind of shock.

Let us know how it goes and always this is the place to vent off mental stress whenever you need to

 

Christ, what an ordeal but good work, you kept the head and did everything right

 

I’m so bloody stressed I could pass out literally, fortunately the last comments to reds mental rut helped.

 

Holy Carp!
Hope your lady makes a full & rapid recovery.

 

My sympathies to both you & and your wife @DeadP1xels, I hope she’s recovering well and getting a full evaluation.

I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. When my OH had spinal issues just over two years ago, the NHS did not hang around. In just over a day after A&E admission, she was undergoing spinal surgery to remove a herniated disc that was putting pressure on the cauda equina nerve cluster. If left untreated, cauda equina syndrome can lead to paralysis below the waist. They wanted to get her into surgery much sooner, but ahead of her in the list was a 12 year old with a brain tumour - yeah… um… that’s fair, absolutely, definitely see to him first…! Though I will concede that we are somewhat lucky in that we live very close to the Heath hospital, whose spinal unit has an extremely high clinical reputation.

For all the issues the NHS has - especially where it’s arguably suffering the most here in Wales - it really can deliver when it needs to. And the only reason it can do so is because of the tireless, under-appreciated, and vastly under-paid efforts of staff, from surgeons & consultants all the way to porters & cleaners.

 

Whatever any of you* do at the next General Election, DO NOT vote Reform, or that will be the end of the NHS, Farage wants us to have an American style system of health care.

I know most of the members here, are not stupid enough to vote Reform...

* By "any of you", I mean the UK population in general.

 

Personally, I don't need any coaxing not to vote for that piece of sh!te.

 

I was going to vent about my own misery but seeing this all I can do is echo this sentiment...

 

Just a scary prospect this. Unfortunately with all the governments being utterly useless and scum, they've pushed people to 'something else'...
"Well conservatives are bastards, labour are bastards, reform say they'll give me a job because they don't want foreigners in the country and
there will be a job for me that I won't do, but at least we stop foreigners 'cos like, they're bad right!? And he's a funny guy, he drinks pints in pubs!"
The amount of St George cross flags and people who seem to lean very much toward Reform in the North East without knowing what
it would ACTUALLY mean is, horrendous, really. And it FEELS like they're the majority.

 

It might feel like that, but you’re very likely seeing something of an “inflation” effect from the upcoming local council elections, and more significantly our Senedd elections.

I know it can be hard to see sometimes, but don’t underestimate just how much people do. not. want. Farage’s latest personality vehicle to have any kind of serious power.

 

They seem to mainly be cannibalising the Conservative vote?

 

Tories voting their own self interest? No, that'd never happen... surely.

 

Such a fantastic British victory that, they haven't been the Tory party since 1834 but we're still deadnaming them almost two centuries later, people have long memories

 

They're still referred to as the Tories in the news media and topical/political programmes