Self Scan Kind of Life

Originally published on www.huffingtonpost.co.uk

Recently I've been thinking that with the rise of the self scan and self service machines, and with the impending closure of the entire high street, you may laugh but you won't be laughing in five years time when the high street resembles a scene from a zombie apocalypse movie, that we appear to be heading for a self service life.

Firstly I blame the supermarkets for this, or more importantly all those people who wondered how amazing it would feel to scan their own food just the once, well that came back to kick you in the face didn't it, because now the chance of getting served by a real person is about as remote as finding a unicorn in the Sahara desert.

Although they do come with their perks, because lets be honest some times you wonder how the person serving you managed to get a job in customer service as they send a scowl in your direction, whilst scanning your vegetables because you disturbed them. However if I had to sit there and scan someone's ten bottles of wine knowing they were off to a party I think I'd be annoyed too.

But despite this one minor perk of the self scan, we now find ourselves regularly shouting at machines in the supermarket because there's an "unexpected item in the bagging area," which was once reserved for your own living room when your computer told you that you'd "performed an illegal operation.'

The worrying thing is though, we seem to have become our own shop assistants when in store, in Ikea there's a machine so you can locate an item in store so you don't disturb the otherwise overly busy staff. In Argos there's also a self-service machine so you can go and sit on those horrible little chairs and stare at you item on the shelf for ten minutes before they call your name.

Even though the high street may die a death, machines powered by us will probably run the shops that remain open. But this technique of doing things ourselves appears to be running into other areas of our lives.

Just look at hospitals and doctors surgeries. I have spoken before about how difficult it is to get an appointment at a doctors surgery, in fact by the time you get there you'll probably have already recovered from your illness or died a horrible yet convenient death for your GP. But just in case the wait at A&E is too long or your problem isn't that serious and you can't get into your GP surgery for another six weeks, there's always NHS direct.

Anyone who's used the NHS direct system, either online or by telephone will tell you that it is about as much use as a chocolate teapot. When you phone you can sometimes be on hold for about thirty minutes, if not a full hour, and if you check online the categories and questions are so vague that you end up being told you have bubonic plague.

After this mass struggle to find out what is wrong with you via this efficiently rubbish system, the person on the other end of the phone or the computer usually tells you to make an appointment with your GP or go the A&E anyway, rendering the whole experience pointless.

Although during the journey into the self scan life, some people bypassed the whole NHS direct thing and became self-diagnosing self-trained doctors, well if you can become a shop assistant yourself why not a doctor?

This has then lead to a nation, if not a world population turning into a bunch of screaming hypochondriacs who think they have some weird sub-tropical disease that hasn't existed since 1906 because they Googled 'what is wrong with me if I have a red rash on my stomach.' Basically no matter what your symptoms, Google is going to tell you you're dying, no matter what.

Certain aspects of our lives such as doing the weekly shop or popping to Argos or Ikea have become the first casualties to the self-service lifestyle. But I wonder how long it will be before we are doing everything ourselves? If we've already began developing into Google trained doctors, who knows what else will come next in our ever evolving self-scan/self-service kind of life.

Dying for an Appointment

Originally published on www.huffingtonpost.co.uk

For a while now I've been seeing a number of debates online surrounding medical care in the UK, whether its about budget cuts, the issue of privatising the NHS or a number of problems surrounding the treatment of patients, which largely concentrates on the negative aspects of care some people have received. However something I rarely see, which is something that I've experienced recently, is the complexities of trying to get an appointment with your GP.

Recently after experiencing some problems I contacted my doctor's surgery to try and book an appointment, this to me seemed like a very straightforward task that would involve a telephone call and arranging the appointment. I'd already considered the fact that I may have to wait a few days, but as usual nothing is completely straightforward.

During my telephone conversation I was told that the earliest appointment I could have was the 1 March, which would have been fine if it was a few days before. However I just happened to be ringing three weeks before the given date, which to me seemed very strange. When I enquired about getting an earlier appointment I was told that they were fully booked until then, a phrase I thought was reserved for hotels, restaurants, hairdressers and the sort. Then when I mentioned that I'd been having a pain in my chest the receptionist, in a very rude manner, told me I should go straight to the hospital before saying goodbye and hanging up.

After this happened I was in total shock. I know if you experience pains in your chest then you should go to the hospital, but as the pain had been happening for a few days I was quite sure it wasn't a heart attack, hence my delay in approaching the hospital. It's also worth noting that a few months back when my partner had experienced extreme chest pains and we went to the hospital, he was told at A&E he should have gone to his local GP first. Talk about mixed messages.

The whole situation is baffling as it would appear the GP surgery expected me to predict and schedule the days that I was ill, I know this isn't the case but given the way I was told they were fully booked this is how it felt. I was also rudely told on the phone that to get a quicker appointment I would have to ring the next morning at 8am, which tells me and anyone else who has experienced this that the GP surgery did in fact have appointments, which they could hand out instead of making countless potential patients angrily tap away at their phones the next morning in an appointment bidding war.

I have actually done this before and it took around 68 engaged phone calls in four minutes before I actually got through to a person, at which point I couldn't get an appointment until 4pm.

Now many may blame this type of treatment on budget cuts or privatisation, but for as long as I can remember it has been like this. I can even remember my own mother enduring the telephone bidding war when I was younger to try and gain an appointment for the illness that she had so inconsiderately miss-scheduled.

It is a sad state of affairs that many people who are unwell and may in fact have a more serious underlying condition have to wait weeks on end to see their GP, by which time it could be too late. You could go to the hospital where like I previously mentioned you will be told you should have seen a GP first, be made to feel like you're wasting valuable hospital time and resources only to find out that there's nothing to worry about. You also get to find this out after an eight-hour wait, which is always a lovely experience.

Sadly there's nothing that can be done, and it looks like this is going to continue if the frightful news stories about the NHS and doctor's surgeries are to be believed. However I did file a complaint with the surgery on the day that I was denied an appointment as there was no room at the inn, but as you may have guessed I'm still waiting for a reply, which I won't hold my breath for as I may not be able to get an appointment for the lack of oxygen in body whilst doing so.

NHS Services for Everyone?

Originally published on www.huffingtonpost.co.uk

Recently I received a survey through the post; apparently out of all the people who live in my area I was selected at random despite the fact my partner also received one, what a coincidence. However this isn't what I'm getting at, the survey was about health and wellbeing for 2013 from the NHS, I know it just sounds like so much fun to fill in doesn't it?

Anyway after flicking through the questions there was the usual; do you smoke? Yes, do you drink? Yes, how much fruit and veg do you consume a week? As you can see it was a pretty standard set of questions. Now this is all well and good and maybe just maybe the survey will help with something, I don't know what it'll help with besides helping to waste some more precious NHS money. But as I got to the end of the survey there was the typical 'about you' section, gender, age, ethnicity you get the picture. I assume this is to help them narrow down which age groups, genders and social groups are suffering the most and which ones are experiencing a happier life, but the one question that was missing was that of sexuality.

Now before you start making assumptions that I'm someone who wants to shout from the rooftops that gay people are being ignored again, I'm not, but you can't help but wonder why this option isn't there. I mean study's have found that LGBT people are more likely to suffer from mental health issues or drink and drug abuse, and by asking this question on a more localised survey by the NHS they could find a way of tackling this, instead of leaving it to certain organisations such as Stonewall and the LGF.

Not every area in the country has somewhere that gay people can turn to for help, and some may send this survey back and be found to be severally depressed or unhappy with life who may be gay, yet this will go unnoticed. I filled out an online health and wellbeing survey a while ago specifically for LGBT people, which was put together by an LGBT organisation, just so I could help out with these statistics that so many organisations such as the NHS are missing.

However it isn't just this NHS wellbeing survey that fails to ask this question. When I was at University I applied for a job at a supermarket so I could make some extra money. Me and my friend (who happens to be a lesbian) went to get the application forms and both said there's no point applying, as we wouldn't get the job. However after noticing the equal opportunities section I made a quick joke that this was our way in, however there was once again no section asking about sexuality. I didn't get the job, because I had no experience working in a supermarket and neither would I want to be given a job simply because I am gay. But it makes me wonder how a company can call themselves an equal opportunities employer and only mention disability, race and ethnicity on an application form as if they're the only reasons why people would be discriminated against when applying for a job.

Now I may have digressed into something completely different there but the principal is still the same, does the NHS not care about the well being of LGBT people? Of course they care, but how will they know the full extent of the health and wellbeing of a social group that does suffer abuse in the areas in which they live (do you feel safe in your area was a question on the survey), and are known for having higher abuse rates if they fail to include a small section in a survey?

Maybe they just forgot, maybe they ran out of space on the paper or maybe because there are LGBT groups out there who've conducted these kinds of studies in the past they felt they didn't need to. The thing is we will never know why it wasn't on there, but the other fact is; if they continue to miss this off surveys in the future then the health and wellbeing of a vast amount of LGBT people will continue to go unknown, which could be a big problem for many.

No, You Cannot Borrow a Cigarette

Originally published on www.huffingtonpost.co.uk

As someone who smokes I am aware that I annoy a copious amount of people on a daily basis, whether it's because I unintentionally get smoke in their face, trust me I've been coughed at countless times despite the fact the person who is offended it stood about 20 foot behind me, or because I'm getting in their way as I try to light a ciggie in a crowded high street, and then there are those who just generally look down on me because of the dirty disgusting habit that they hate.

Yes I am aware that it is dirty and disgusting but at the same time I am addicted, in the same way that alcoholics are addicted to drinking or crack addicts are addicted to crack, and in most cases in the same way I'm addicted to eating like the pasty scoffing moaners who look down on me as they hastily try to make their way to Greggs only to be blocked by me and my annoying craving.

However us smokers also have a number of hates when it comes to other smokers, yes we get annoyed by the fact that non-smokers continue to moan about the smell even though we are stood outside huddled amongst some questionable people trying to get some warmth whilst the British weather hammers us with rain, wind, snow or all three at any given time. But that aside the biggest hate I find that comes with being a smoker is the exasperating question that is regularly asked "can you lend me a cigarette?"

Well quite frankly the answer to that question is no. It seems that other smokers who may have left theirs at home, can't afford to buy any or just don't want to smoke their last one quite yet, feel that as a fellow smoker I have a moral obligation to give them a cigarette because I can feel their pain. Yes I can feel your pain and I myself have felt it, but I wouldn't approach someone who is minding their own business in the street and ask for one of their fags, and then hurl abuse at them when they say they can't give you one.

Firstly I would not be lending said cigarette as I will probably never see you again in my life, therefore you will not be giving me one back in the foreseeable future, so what you really want to know is can you have a cigarette. The answer by the way is still no. Also at about £7 a pop for 20 fags that works out as 35p for one, which at the moment is frankly too much money to waste on someone I do not know.

This apparent 'moral obligation' that should be shared amongst smokers where the giving of cigarettes to strangers should be done freely does not apply to anything else though. For example I am a human, which mean I need food and water to survive and on many occasions I have been starving whilst walking past people eating, yet if I was to approach someone and ask them for a chip, a bite of their sandwich or a sip of their drink I would probably be looked at in disgust and given abuse in the same way I'm given abuse when I refuse to give someone a fag, because this is deemed as socially unacceptable, unlike the handing out of cigarettes.

This then brings me to the biggest annoyance of a smoker, the social smoker. Yes we have all encountered them at some point during our smoking life, a non-smoker who has had too much to drink and thinks they will look 'cool' with a ciggie hanging out of their mouth. Now we all had to start smoking somewhere, which probably happened when a friend who smokes gave us a fag, but these people don't smoke, won't smoke and probably look down on smokers during the daytime when they are stone cold sober. They also haven't ran out of fags on their night out prompting them to ask to have one of yours because they never brought any with them. This everyone is the most annoying, either you smoke or you don't, you cannot just decided to smoke on a whim on a night out and take everyone else's.

So next time you get annoyed whilst looking at a smoker, just stop and think about how annoyed they are at other smokers, social smokers and those who look down on them, because they are probably more annoyed than you, which is most likely the reason why they need a fag in the first place.

Just Leave it for the Cleaners

Originally posted on www.huffingtonpost.co.uk

It's a phrase most people would have heard on a daily basis at work, school, college or university. We all know the process; someone drops a piece of rubbish or leaves a stain or in some cases just flat out cannot be bothered to take their empty sandwich packet to the bin, so of course we will just leave it for the cleaners to deal with.

However the thing that many people fail to forget is that the cleaners aren't there to clean up after the workers, of course the job of the cleaner is to clean, but the job is to hoover the floor, change bin bags and ensure the place isn't dusty or unfit for human habitation, not pick up subway sandwich wrappers that have been strategically placed under chairs, in an attempt to hide them because the bin was a whole 10 foot across the room.

I myself have worked a number of cleaning jobs and on the most part they've been fine with the usual day-to-day mess that includes coffee stains on desks and floors, the odd smudge on a window and an overflowing bin that needs changing. On the other hand I've also encountered desks filled with dirty plates, with the occasional one gathering mould or even the odd half filled coffee up with mould growing on top of it. I once found a banana just left in the middle of the room as if it had tried to escape the kitchen that had been left looking like a small explosion had occurred in it, sadly the banana had just been dropped and not picked back up.

The worst part of this is that the majority of these issues were found in offices and kitchens in NHS offices. It's nice to see that a place that should be cleaner than all others like doctors surgeries are occupied by some people who don't know the practical function of a bin.

The funniest part about this is I recall a time when I was at sixth form and the common room had been left in a bit of a mess, by mess I mean a few empty crisp packets and foil wrappers left lying around the room. Because of this the cleaners made a complaint to the head of year, who promptly informed us that the cleaners job wasn't to pick up after us and if it happened again the room would be locked. A week later the room was locked.

Now is it just me or does anyone else see anything odd about this? Because a group of teenagers made a mess they were locked out of the common room and refused entry until they learnt how to keep the facilities they were using clean. However in the now adult world it appears that it is perfectly acceptable to leave a huge mess for the cleaners to deal with, without the worry of being locked out of the kitchen, sinks filled with dishes is a particular favourite in the workplace.

I also remember the question we would get asked regarding the mess in the common room, which went a little like this; "would you leave your own home like this?" to which the answer was no. So does the same question apply to adults who make mess? Or do they feel it is their right to leave copious amounts of rubbish lying around as they spend enough time cleaning in their personal lives? Which cleaners obviously don't do.

These are all questions I can only speculate on, so for the time being it looks like I may just have to suck it up and accept the fact that most work places, including those in the NHS, will be left in an almost apocalyptic looking state until the cleaner makes it fit for habitation, that is until the next work day starts of course.