- This topic has 72 replies, 37 voices, and was last updated 11 years ago by jfletch.
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ooh! New coffee and patisserie shop on the high street!!! Disappointment content
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ransosFree Member
You are absolutely right. But the only real, and final, arbiter to this question of “genuine” is an employment tribunal. Should you need to go this far conservative estimate of costs to succesfully defend, ie that is if you winand are proved justified in your decision, is £5-10k.
I’m quite sure you’re right, but the chances of an employee taking you to a tribunal they’re unlikely to win I would guess is very low. Your costs are more likely to be bound up in the time it takes to justify a reason for refusal.
I’ve been on the other side of this recently. My wife was refused a change in her hours, and the reasons given were spurious at best. Even so, my sister (an HR officer) told us to avoid a tribunal at all costs.
jfletchFree MemberAh, you made it up. That’s what I thought.
Not really made up; made an educated estimate based on the available information. Care to provide some reasoning that would suggest I am wrong? Thought not.
Children go to the doctor’s by themselves, do they?
No but if they are ill then you are off work becuase your children are ill, not because you need to go to the GP. Also the majority of people with children will have at least one parent who doesn’t work 9-5, Monday to Friday so they contribute to the 95%, not the 5%.
D0NKFull MemberBut local shops can fix this if only they were willing to.
off the top of my head, local shops can’t open massive car parks, haven’t got the capacity to do a large range of items, family run is going to struggle covering early and late opening hours*, and you’ll struggle to do a big shop without shpping trolley masses of space for the trolleys and 27 checkout tills.
*how confusing is it going to be having 7-11 14-19 hours of opening (and variations of) for your customers, we aint in a hot country we don’t have a nationally recognised siesta time. Plus lunchtime should be quite an earner for most shops so what you gonna do? 3 shifts something like 7-9, 11:30-13:30, 16-19?
D0NKFull MemberNo but if they are ill then you are off work becuase your children are ill
inoculations, niggly stuff like rashes, long term things like diabetes asthma, etc etc all sorts of stuff where you or your kids are sick sick but need to visit GP.
But whoever said mentioned outside 9-5 appointments for workers was bang on. pensioners, long term sick, unemployed surely should be kept well inside 10:00-15:00 appointment time frame (unless I’ve missed something glaringly obvious)
ransosFree MemberNo but if they are ill then you are off work becuase your children are ill, not because you need to go to the GP. Also the majority of people with children will have at least one parent who doesn’t work 9-5, Monday to Friday so they contribute to the 95%, not the 5%.
1. Prescriptions, vaccinations & routine scheduled appointments could be done before work & school. I have to leave work early just so I can get a repeat prescription for my daughter!
2. Have you thought why it is that both parents don’t usually work full time?
molgripsFree MemberIn the US most shops are open til 9 or 10. However this is linked to a profoundly different labour market.
The shops are open for so long you can’t just have normal daytime hours staff. So people work whatever hours that fit in to their lifestyle. This means that you CAN work evenings after going to university or after your partner gets home or somtehing. So people do. That means that people on the whole can work more hours, which then allows employers to pay less per hour and the staff can still survive. It also means that because you can work after going to university lectures, this is an accepted funding model for your course, so it becomes the norm to do 30 odd hours a week studying and 30 odd hours working or whatever.
So the young and the poor end up working like slaves. My wife used to work two jobs – I can’t imagine it. I don’t think I would have survived if I’d grown up there to be honest!
mogrimFull MemberI was in Thailand last week and the difference is obvious, shops open from early for people to buy breakfast on the way to work, shops open into the evening for people to shop after work. Growing economy.
Spanish shops are open ’til late, too. Growing economy, just growing downawards 😕
jonbaFree MemberThere’s a nice butcher on my high street. I occasionally pop in but he closes at 5 so normally I go to sainsbury’s which is open till 9. Ditto the grocer and baker. I go to the barber that has a late night and stays open till 6 as I can just about get there before he shuts without having to give up my saturday and queue.
Newcastle has started running year round shopping until 8pm (it used to just be in the run up to christmas).
I think we should bring royal mail into this too. We got a letter months back appologising that they were going to be unable to deliver our mail in the morning and that it would now be coming in the afternoon as they have changed their routes. They still don’t seemed to have twigged that it makes no difference. I’m not in between 7:30 and 5:30 so whenever they deliver between those times is unhelpful.
glupton1976Free MemberGranted GPs could do better with being open at weekend and late nights but in reality their main issue isn’t opening hours but a method for assigning the available appointments based on need rather than first come first served.
Are you sure you want receptionists taking on triage duties? Or do you want GPs to take up receptionist duties?
See if I was a GP I’d not be too happy at having to work late or start early just so that people could see me outside of their working hours. If you have a problem that is serious enough for you to see a GP about then it is more important that your work….
There is a system in place to allow people who NEED it to access medical care 24hrs a day 7 days a week – it’s called A&E.
D0NKFull MemberIf you have a problem that is serious enough for you to see a GP about then it is more important that your work
see repeat prescriptions
Are you sure you want receptionists taking on triage duties?
no but for eg.
I’d like an appointment to see the doc please
do you work?
no
ok howabout 10:30?or
do you work?
yes
ok howabout 5:30?Like I said there could be perfectly good reasons for a none worker requiring an appointment outside of 10-3 but I’m having trouble spotting many at the moment.
binnersFull MemberOur local GP started doing early surgeries to enable people to see the doctor and still get to work. You couldn’t make an appointment, you just turned up when they opened at 6.30 onwards
I went down one morning. Couldn’t get through the door as it was chock full of…. you guessed it…. pensioners 🙄
alpinFree MemberWhat gets me is shops that close for lunch, just at the time when office workers would be going for their lunch as well. Why don’t people in shops like these take their lunch before 12 or after 2?!?
you would love it in Germany then…. altough to be fair many smaller shops are open till 7 in the evening. the banks are the best at this though. open at 9:30, closed between 12-1:30 for lunch, shut at 5.
MrWoppitFree MemberJust discovered that if you put about half an inch of hot water into a cup with an artificial sweetener and a spoonful of Nescafe bog standard instant, it tastes like hot Galloway’s cough mixture.
Yum.
ransosFree MemberIf you have a problem that is serious enough for you to see a GP about then it is more important that your work….
My last three visits to the GP:
Tetanus booster
Various vaccinations for going travelling
Collecting a prescription for my daughter.glupton1976Free Membersee repeat prescriptions
Personally for repeat prescriptions I go onto the GP surgery website, stick in what I want, how many and the dose then go and pick them up a couple of days later from the pharmacist. Other people post their slip in the repeat prescriptions letter box and do it that way.
DrillskiFree MemberRansoms, I have 6 staff, most of them have been with me for more than ten years which in my profession Is not so common at all. We have on three occasions made adjustments, shift and opening hours changes to accomadate quite reasonable requests. It took a lot of work, and required compromises from other members of staff too. On the most recent fourth occasion, this member of staff took a less reasonable approach, and felt that as the others had been accommodated then why should she not. She
steadfastly refused to see that the changes that had already been made had removed almost any manoeuvring room w head left. We did make three different offers to her, after much more compromise from other staff members again. Sadly she offered no compromise herself throughout the whiole process. The right is only to be able to ask without prejudice, and that reasonable efforts are made to assess what can be done. There is a responsibility within the regulations upon the employee to suggest ways in which their changed hours might be covered, sadly no effort was made by the young lady in this case. Eventually she did reduce her hours, and has maintained her longstanding unhelpful stance. There is no doubt that she cannot understand and appreciate the lengths that we, her employer and her co- workers , have gone to to accommodate her. Sadly she is one of the new breed of me me me employees.
The amount of time spent on this cannot be underestimated, and the knock on effects of rostering staff in ever more complicated patterns is difficult to appreciate unless you have actually had to try to manage it.
If we were a simple trade that could get in an unskilled worker at short motice to at least fill agap we would be able to manage fine. As it is we cannot. I currently feel like selling the business to a corporate chain as a colleague has done near me this month, and retire for a few months then go back as an employee myself. Being an employer in a small business these days is becoming ever more challenging. And this is coming from someone who generally has the most excellent staff with whom I have developed a very strong long term relationship over many years in a close knit team., With whom I have been privildged to work. Sadly I know for a fact that the first people to suffer would be the staff I would leave behind. Corporates in our field are no friends of their staff.Sorry for the slight hi jack of this thread
DrillskiFree MemberAnd as for how do european countries manage this…….. I point you in the direction of the recent eurozone economic forecast. I.e. they don’t.
Ironic given the threads origins, but when we are trying to improve conditions for our workforce, we also need to be realistic and competitive: we need to wake up and smell the coffee.
shotsawayFree MemberParked up on my way to work and strode with a certain amount of anticipation. Went to open the door and… closed. Opening hours 9 to 5.
Obviously a lifestyle/hobby business for the owner (Who is probably a yummy mummy herself).
A coffee shop that doesn’t open until 9am – I can’t see it succeeding long term with those hours. It is probably closed at weekends as well?
ohnohesbackFree MemberIMO times can’t be as bad as they are made out if people can still pay ridiculous amounts for coffee. Have they never heard of Thermos flasks?
joemarshallFree MemberOur small town has several successful coffee shops that only really open 9-5. Lots of parents, lots of older people, plus people who work locally means they seem to be usually quite busy. Depends a lot on whether they get passing commuter trade whether early opening is going to be worth it I guess – I mean how many people really pop into town for a coffee before work or after work?
Oh, and I work part time, work from home, shift hours around etc – I think that whilst part time working is difficult in some fields, in a lot of places I’ve worked, allowing part time, flexible hours and teleworking would have been a piece of piss. And particularly in my industry (software development), companies offering flexibility, working from home and stuff like that seem to attract way way higher quality developers without paying any more money. People really underestimate how many really talented people are out there who don’t necessarily want to be tied down to a 9-5 plus commute and don’t need oversight of their work every ten minutes.
bikebouyFree MemberIs this an STW moaning thread??
Ohhh me, me, me..
Bike shops… 0900-1730
Phah,
No wonder Halfords do so well near me.
molgripsFree MemberI mean how many people really pop into town for a coffee before work or after work?
Loads, in Cardiff. Town in the morning is full of people walking to work from the bus or train stations. The Starbuckeses are all open and doing a brisk trade too 🙂
joemarshallFree MemberTown in the morning is full of people walking to work from the bus or train stations. The Starbuckeses are all open and doing a brisk trade too
That’s what I said – passing commuter trade.
How many people specifically pop into town for a coffee, when that isn’t on their way to work? If you’re a coffee place and you’re not on a lot of people’s way to work, how worth it is it to open early and late? I’d guess not very.
jfletchFree Member1. Prescriptions, vaccinations & routine scheduled appointments could be done before work & school. I have to leave work early just so I can get a repeat prescription for my daughter!
Which is a tiny proportion of GPs work. And GPs are open before and after school already. The issue is the appointments at the right time are full of old people.
2. Have you thought why it is that both parents don’t usually work full time?
Yes, being a parent it’s something I have though about! The main reasons at least one parent doesn’t work full time are childcare costs, there is also wanting to spend time with the children, issues with collecting from school etc. The opening hours at the doctors will only be a tiny tiny variable, and since most docs are open 8.30 to 6 as a minimum it already a non issue.
Plus where I live there is a GP run walk in centre for non A&E out of hours urgent things, and a out of hours GP service I can ring/visit.
Plus if I needed a repeart perscription I could get a pharmacy to sort it out or do it on-line.
Actually when I think about the GPs is a great example of making your service available outside of the normal 9-5 scheudle of most independant retailers, even though 95% of your customers(sic) can come between 9-5.
MrOvershootFull MemberI must be lucky as our local medical centre is open 08:00-18:30 and my dentist is 08:00-20:00
They also take a dim view of pensioners trying to use the service at either end of the day.ransosFree MemberWhich is a tiny proportion of GPs work. And GPs are open before and after school already. The issue is the appointments at the right time are full of old people.
And you know this how? BTW open at 8.30 isn’t “open before school”.
Yes, being a parent it’s something I have though about! The main reasons at least one parent doesn’t work full time are childcare costs, there is also wanting to spend time with the children, issues with collecting from school etc. The opening hours at the doctors will only be a tiny tiny variable, and since most docs are open 8.30 to 6 as a minimum it already a non issue.
So you’re saying that cost and incompatibility of opening hours are barriers. Kinda my point.
ransosFree MemberDrillski,
It sounds like your opinion has been soured somewhat by an uncooperative employee. In a general way, I don’t blame her – British labour relations tend to the lowest common denominator, and I think there’s been a realisation amongst employees that you’re viewed as a unit of production. So why would you make any effort to accommodate your employer? Sadly for you, the more enlightened employers are tarred with the same brush.
jfletchFree MemberSo you’re saying that cost and incompatibility of opening hours are barriers. Kinda my point.
Exactly the oposite. Two things stop people with kids working full time.
1. If you have kids and want to work you have to pay someone to look after them. This is expensive. It stops people going back to work full time.
2. If you can afford it why work full time and pay someone to look after your kids when you would much rather do it yourself. This means people choose not to go back to work full time.
Everything else is inconsequential.
PMK2060Full MemberNot sure why anybody would call into a coffee shop on the way to work and spend £2.50 when you can have a cuppa or coffee at home.
molgripsFree MemberNot sure why anyone would spend £2k on a bike when you can get a car for that and drive places…
anotherdeadheroFree MemberI need a flu jab, as the nurse only works 11-2 3 days a week, I have two choices:
1) Take a day off work
2) Get the flu
jfletchFree MemberI need a flu jab, as the nurse only works 11-2 3 days a week, I have two choices:
1) Take a day off work
2) Get the flu
3) Get your flu jab from somewhere else such as a pharmacy.
4) Switch GPs, their service is clearly shit
5) Explain that you can’t get to the nurse between 11-2 as you have a job and have a doctor give the jab during a early morning/evening appointment.
6) Explain to your employer it is of benefit to them that you have the job and get them to let you travel to the docs and get the jab on work time (like most sensible employers would).
But since when did this become about GPs, the shops aren’t open when I want to buy stuff. Bahhh. CRCs gain!
6) Go in your lunch break.
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