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Please don't rearrange our shoes when we turn up, paramedics in Japan urge

theguardian.com

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Re: Please don't rearrange our shoes when we turn up, paramedics in Japan urge

#71

Post by throwaway270925 »

wodenokoto wrote: post #38
shdon wrote: post #7

In Dutch culture it is far more common to keep shoes on literally everywhere, so perhaps I'm biased, but I would think that in an emergency where every second counts, these people can be forgiven for not adhering to the strictest etiquette? I'm not surprised the person last mentioned in the article, who suggests exactly that, got 800 likes on their comment. I am surprised that it even needed to be said. Now I'm sudde…

I think we can roughly split paramedic visits into “patient needs to get out ASAP” and patient can’t get out alone or with help of friends and family”, so I would hope they keep their shoes on for the first type. But ambulances in with full sirens begging over their speaker-system to have pedestrians at Shibuya crossing let the vehicle through, is probably the worst thing about Japan. As for your second question, I’m…

> “No, water damage”

Bob should have used some of his Fuji 9, that fixes everything!

Re: Please don't rearrange our shoes when we turn up, paramedics in Japan urge

#72

Post by left-struck »

Georgelemental wrote: post #52
eqvinox wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone except the driver has ample time to swap boots during the drive to the location. (In cases where not, I'd also default to robust safety boots.) Depending on the boots, you might not want to wear them while "idle"¹ in any case, though that's mostly a non-concern with modern safety shoes. ¹ mandatory note: most emergency responders have tons of work while "idle", I just mean "not actively responding"

You don't always know what the location is like though. You are called to an apartment: maybe it is spotlessly clean, maybe the floor is littered with used needles

That would be very unlikely in Japan, maybe it would happen a handful of times in your career and you could indeed put on safer boots.

Anyway I’m not against paramedics wearing boots in my apartment, in an emergency very few people would care about that even in Japan.

Re: Please don't rearrange our shoes when we turn up, paramedics in Japan urge

#73

Post by analog31 »

Georgelemental wrote: post #52
eqvinox wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone except the driver has ample time to swap boots during the drive to the location. (In cases where not, I'd also default to robust safety boots.) Depending on the boots, you might not want to wear them while "idle"¹ in any case, though that's mostly a non-concern with modern safety shoes. ¹ mandatory note: most emergency responders have tons of work while "idle", I just mean "not actively responding"

You don't always know what the location is like though. You are called to an apartment: maybe it is spotlessly clean, maybe the floor is littered with used needles

A friend of mine who was a paramedic told me that getting people out of a building is actually heavy, dangerous work. "They always die on the crapper, up 3 flights of stairs."

Also, in my town, the firefighters are also paramedics. The first people who showed up in my Moment of Need came in a fire truck. The ambulance came a couple minutes later.

Re: Please don't rearrange our shoes when we turn up, paramedics in Japan urge

#75

Post by KennyBlanken »

wodenokoto wrote: post #38
shdon wrote: post #7

In Dutch culture it is far more common to keep shoes on literally everywhere, so perhaps I'm biased, but I would think that in an emergency where every second counts, these people can be forgiven for not adhering to the strictest etiquette? I'm not surprised the person last mentioned in the article, who suggests exactly that, got 800 likes on their comment. I am surprised that it even needed to be said. Now I'm sudde…

I think we can roughly split paramedic visits into “patient needs to get out ASAP” and patient can’t get out alone or with help of friends and family”, so I would hope they keep their shoes on for the first type. But ambulances in with full sirens begging over their speaker-system to have pedestrians at Shibuya crossing let the vehicle through, is probably the worst thing about Japan. As for your second question, I’m…

I've known enough people who worked in EMS to know that it's very common for there to be little alignment between 1a)what the dispatcher is told 1b)what comes from dispatcher 2)what they see when they walk in the door and 3)what the person actually needs.

Re: Please don't rearrange our shoes when we turn up, paramedics in Japan urge

#76

Post by oliculipolicula »

eqvinox wrote: post #32
jankcorn wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I lived in Japan and was asked "Why are you interested in Japan?", I used to respond "It is the only non-Western country(at the time) where I have seen an extremely high level of technical/economic development and it is interesting to see similiarities/differences". (This is of course, long long before the rise of modern China) The society is based so strongly on group cohesion and de-emphasis of the individual,…

Does the American South actually have that kind of group cohesion?

The kind of group cohesion you have in Japan tiday wasn't quite all there during the Meiji era (they'd just come out of a civil war, after all. Then there were also sporadic uprisings for decades after

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichibu_incident)

The following may help--- if you think of Othello as a kind of ideal southern gentleman, as the Japanese sort of did

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Othello-in-Tokyo%3A-Pe...

Now a Alt-Dixie readaptation of that adaptation must of course be the story of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Bedford_Forrest

(Taiwanese would be negroes loyal to the Cause, and Ainu would be the native Americans)

Re: Please don't rearrange our shoes when we turn up, paramedics in Japan urge

#77

Post by bjelkeman-again »

vkazanov wrote: post #66
Izkata wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I grew up (suburbs in the Midwest in the US) it was common and expected all around that you'd leave your shoes just inside the door and walk around in your socks, at least for family/friends/guests. Can't remember about service workers.

Is this how most of the world operates? :-)

In the Nordics (SE, FI, NO, DK) it is pretty much the same. A large part of the year your shoes are a mess and you don’t want that indoors.

Re: Please don't rearrange our shoes when we turn up, paramedics in Japan urge

#78

Post by probably_wrong »

naishoya wrote: post #64
probably_wrong wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coming from a shoes-on culture I can give a couple points. First, in the rare cases you describe (when was the last time you stepped on feces?) one would indeed leave their shoes outside. But in the day-to-day your shoes have some dust on them and that's it - you won't even notice it's there when compared to the dust that already accumulates daily. If you live in a climate where this assumption doesn't hold (snowy ar…

> when was the last time you stepped on feces? Try this , when was the last time you stepped somewhere that had previously been stepped on by someone who had walked on a spot which had been stepped on by someone who may have stepped on a spot trod on by ... go far enough back and it's all had feces on it to some small degree. An easy way to keep this concept clear and understand the reasoning behind a 'leave the outs…

I'm going to disagree with your law of "conservation of filth" on the grounds that it's pushing things too far. Whatever amount of feces comes into your system via walking downtown on a regular day and then bringing the shoes inside pales in comparison to the amount of fecal matter that enters via your toothbrush if you keep it in the bathroom. At some point a small amount of dirt is just fine, as evidenced by my immune system not even visibly reacting whenever I pick up and eat something that fell on the floor (as long as I follow the five-seconds rule). And people do go out to restaurants or, even worse, picnics, where all that separates their food from a much filthier surface is a piece of cloth.

I'm not going to say that every type of floor is to be walked on, with rugs and tatami mats being perfect counter-examples. But if a five-star restaurant doesn't ask me to take my shoes off (not evening Japan, AFAIK) then keeping them on is, from a sanitary point of view, probably okay.

Re: Please don't rearrange our shoes when we turn up, paramedics in Japan urge

#79

Post by Georgelemental »

left-struck wrote: post #72
Georgelemental wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't always know what the location is like though. You are called to an apartment: maybe it is spotlessly clean, maybe the floor is littered with used needles

That would be very unlikely in Japan, maybe it would happen a handful of times in your career and you could indeed put on safer boots. Anyway I’m not against paramedics wearing boots in my apartment, in an emergency very few people would care about that even in Japan.

How certain are you that it is so rare? EMS are disproportionately called to the poorest and most miserable.

Re: Please don't rearrange our shoes when we turn up, paramedics in Japan urge

#80

Post by arjie »

swiftcoder wrote: post #74

It is mind blowing to me that the shoes-off-inside rule is so deeply entrenched that emergency responders remove their shoes at the front door

When I was a child in India, I was taught (not by my parents, by the societal milieu I suppose) to not let the (soles of?) my feet touch a book or a bag that contains books of knowledge. In any case, the behavior is a strongly trained habit so I feel compelled to do it. I do not choose or or not choose to do it. It is close to an automatic behavior, something like wrinkling one’s nose at a bad smell or so on.

I was not brought up in a religious household and have never been a follower of any known religion. And I do not have any belief tied to this behavior. It is an oddity of my being that I accept.

Isn’t it interesting how one can be conditioned so? I sometimes wonder if alcoholics or drug addicts feel this way.

Perhaps the Japanese feel this way about their cultural quirk in the way I feel about mine.

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