Re: public service, eh? Discuss.

[Brian Gaff]

Apparently the RNIB have similar things, or so a friend told me after going
all the way to London only to find the critical people were all away
training.
Training for what?
Nobody quite knew...
Brian

--
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"Tim Streater" <timst...@greenbee.net> wrote in message
news:timstreater-5E52...@news.individual.net...
> So I drive 7 miles to the Clinic to pick up a prescription, only to find
> that it's early closing day. For staff training.
>
> ¿Que? (That's Spanish for WTF?)
>
> Is it too much to expect the place to be open normal business hours as a
> minimum? I would have expected "staff training" to be accomplished by
> staff arriving early or leaving late. After all, if Tesco can do it, why
> can't the NHS?
>
> --
> Tim
>
> "That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines
> imposed,
> nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted" -- Bill of Rights 1689

[Allan]

On 04/04/2012 17:27, Tim Streater wrote:
> So I drive 7 miles to the Clinic to pick up a prescription, only to find
> that it's early closing day. For staff training.
>
> ¿Que? (That's Spanish for WTF?)
>
> Is it too much to expect the place to be open normal business hours as a
> minimum? I would have expected "staff training" to be accomplished by
> staff arriving early or leaving late. After all, if Tesco can do it, why
> can't the NHS?
>

I get slightly perturbed when the local GP surgery tells us that it
won't be possible to make any appointments on a given day next week
because their computer systems were being upgraded. When I was a lad (&
doing such things as computer upgrades), we did them outside office
hours so as not to disrupt service. I suppose it would cost the surgery
a little bit more to pay for out-of-hours upgrade, but then I remember
how much a GP gets paid, and wonder who should be inconvenienced: the
poor, the sick, the elderly (most of the users of the GP surgery) or the
GP salary...

[Tim Watts]

When I did the VMWare migration at our work (>100 VMs that had to be moved
by hand as the old system was too shot to do anything clever) I elected to
work nights. For no extra money (though it did avoid paying for the train
for 2 weeks).

I did this as it was easier that managing 100+ sets of notifications for
downtime, re-notifications when stuff slipped plus it would have stopped
lots of people working.

So I generally regard outfits that pull massive system outages in the day as
a bunch of illiterate poofters who have no concept of service or
contingency.

As for the GP above - print some bloody booking sheets for each GP/nurse and
write appointments in by hand. FFS - is everyone now a useless hard of
thinking techoslave with no common sense?
--
Tim Watts

[stuart noble]

> As for the GP above - print some bloody booking sheets for each GP/nurse and
> write appointments in by hand. FFS - is everyone now a useless hard of
> thinking techoslave with no common sense?

I notice my dentist still has a very large appointment book, which is
filled in with a pencil, and rubbed out with a rubber when people
change. Difficult to imagine anything simpler. I wonder what HMRC think
though.

[Bernard Peek]

On 05/04/12 10:15, Allan wrote:
> On 04/04/2012 17:27, Tim Streater wrote:
>> So I drive 7 miles to the Clinic to pick up a prescription, only to find
>> that it's early closing day. For staff training.
>>
>> ¿Que? (That's Spanish for WTF?)
>>
>> Is it too much to expect the place to be open normal business hours as a
>> minimum? I would have expected "staff training" to be accomplished by
>> staff arriving early or leaving late. After all, if Tesco can do it, why
>> can't the NHS?
>>
>
> I get slightly perturbed when the local GP surgery tells us that it
> won't be possible to make any appointments on a given day next week
> because their computer systems were being upgraded. When I was a lad (&
> doing such things as computer upgrades), we did them outside office
> hours so as not to disrupt service.

Chances are that the upgrade will be done outside hours. But it's best
to set aside some time after the upgrade is scheduled to complete. If it
goes OK then you use it for staff training (so it has to be during or
just before normal office hours.) If the installation doesn't go well
then you use the time to roll back to the previous version.



--
Bernard Peek
b...@shrdlu.com

[dennis@home]

"Allan" <inv...@invalid.invalid> wrote in message
news:9u5659...@mid.individual.net...

They probably aren't doing an upgrade of the computers.. most appear to be
switching management systems.
The data migration and the staff training take the time.

The "we can't book appointments" is just a copout to reduce the load on the
staff. they can still print sheets and fill them in with a pen. Repeat
scripts are more of a problem as it takes a long time to write one with a
pen compared to printing one so don't expect them to be done for a week.

[ARWadsworth]

It;s the HSE that will complain. That pencil could take some buggers eye
out. Far too dangerous to have such things in a dentists:-)

--
Adam