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

theguardian.com

141–150 of 189 posts

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

#141
post #96
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The toothbrush analogy is weird, and untrue in most cases. And regardless, just one time stepping in crap, would make up for a lifetime of a few molecules hitting a brush at random intervals. And of course, toothpaste is a cleaner, so it's not relevant. But I find this all amusing, because wherever you take your shoes off? That's where all this supposed crap sits from all these shoes left outside. Which means you are…

Of course one should not put the feet down where the shoes are stored.

So do you levitate from the place you remove your shoes?

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

#142

tangential, but I don't understand why keeping your shoes on in your house is a thing. It's so unsanitary. The bottom of your shoes are in contact with things like the floor of public bathrooms, animal feces (when walking on grass), dirt, mud, etc. And it's so much more comfortable to be in your house barefoot, with socks or with slippers. So much cleaner. I'm disgusted when people try to walk in my house with their…

> tangential, but I don't understand why keeping your shoes on in your house is a thing.

I suspect it depends a lot on the climate, predominant style of housing etc. If you live in a nice climate and everyone has houses with backyards, you expect to be going in and out a lot all day. Very annoying to be constantly putting shoes on/off.

Personally, I just really don't care if the floor of my house is dirty. A thin smear of dog shit? If I can't smell it, I don't care. I'm not licking that floor. I'm not eating food off it. It's floor, it's basically in the same category as the ground outside: dirty.

I think of feet as dirty, so feet that go on the floor make the floor dirty.

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

#143
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also seems quite dangerous to take them off- depending on the home. Some hoarders, drug addicted situations have needles, glass shards and razor blades in the debris on the floor. How do they handle hoarders in japan?

Obviously, it depends on the context once the front door opens to you

But - the context changes from room to room? Clean shared flat- messy druggy room with collapsed overdose person in it? This.. this whole situation makes no sense.. Have helper boots with a "condom-wrapper" if you are afraid of cleanliness - but keep the boots on at all times.

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

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No

um, pretty much, yes. Even when it looks like a laced up tennis shoe, closer examination of an 'outdoor' shoe will show that it has been stomped into and slipped out of many times. If it is a sports use, i.e. basketball or other gymnasium, or indoors in a professional setting like at a busy office there will be a changing area and people etiher change into provided slippers (town hall and community centers, schools,…

Wrong

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

#145

Here in America, EMS personnel generally wear tall, reinforced boots; they are considered protective/safety equipment. We would never take them off just to enter a home

As firefighters we enter homes in our full turnout gear with fire boots, even for simple calls like automatic fire alarms. The reason being 1/100 automatic alarms are real fires, so we don't want to be caught with our pants down.

Throughout my fire and EMS training I was taught to anticipate possible violence from the residents. I personally know folks who have entered buildings and been shot at or found booby traps. One guy I know responded to an arson house fire where the resident had cut out holes in the floor under every window and door and covered the holes with rugs, Home Alone style.

The US has a serious drug and mental health crisis. First responders often have to deal with people who probably would be in state care if we didn't spend all our tax money on bombs and tax cuts for the wealthy. Or at least they would have caretakers who visit and help them take medications and escalate when they start setting up booby traps to defend against the voices.

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

#146
post #141
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course one should not put the feet down where the shoes are stored.

So do you levitate from the place you remove your shoes?

How much time have you spent in Japan? The bare foot never touches the genkan floor. It's alarming to do so.

Since you can't imagine it, you could consider looking up some videos of their use before mocking what you consider a fantastical impossibility. In fact it's so easy that children and the elderly succeed at it.

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

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBF getting shoes on and off is literally 2s. There's photos in the article, those aren't dress shoes with laces to be done and undone, they're fit for the purpose. Also in cases where it's really dire they'll just step in with shoes on, it's just extremely rare and it might actually be another team altogether, operating under a different protocol.

> TBF getting shoes on and off is literally 2s. What about when you're three people while carrying a person? According to the article, it can delay them by ~30 seconds and risk dislodging the oxygen mask, the linked video also demonstrates the difference: https://www.instagram.com/p/DbqGfGfox3f/ Might seem like a small difference, but add in a stressful situation with a person almost dying, maybe being in pain, and t…

I'd look at it from the lens of the situation near the door changing in unexpected ways.

Like turning the thumblock, moving the bench, shoving other people's shoes in the way etc. There is a myriad of things the patient's family can do that result in 30s delays. Sure removing one specific potential cause could have value, but it might not be worth it considering the downsides (someone will have to deal with the mess, sometimes the lone elderly who's already in pain but not 30s from death either)

I think too many people are focusing on the "emergency" part, when most of the interventions aren't about shoving off every second. Other commentators picked up on the ambulances rolling into intersections at a snail's pace while blasting their sirens full volume, because they care a lot more about secundary harm than reaching the hospital 10s earlier.

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

#148
post #141
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course one should not put the feet down where the shoes are stored.

So do you levitate from the place you remove your shoes?

No, you actually step out of your shoes an up to a wooden platform which shoes never trod. And yes, the top and even many middle level dining establishments in Japan actually do require guests to leave their street shoes in an entry way, called a Genkan.

Nobody steps with their socks onto shoe trodden surface. It's not a complicated but of geometry, you loosen your foot in the shoes to make them ready for stepping out from, then step up onto a raised and dirt free platform, then if you have good manners, turn around, lower yourself, and use one hand to collect and turn your shoes so that they are not in the direct line of traffic and are facing away from the house, so that one may step into them from the wooden platform without needing to step backwards as you exit. This is amazingly simple, done by literally millions of people every single day, multiple times, and has been this way for centuries in all kinds of weather and many styles of shoes.

There is no dirt tracked in on your socks, there may be some 'stepping on the top of your own shoes' if you are in a rush and clumsy or a child. But grown ups rarely have much difficulty with this unless they are visiting from somewhere else and cannot be observant. Nearly every doorway in the country also has a handy long handled shoehorn to ease the donning of your shoes without requiring a seat. Community centers and elderly homes and some households with elderly residents will also have a small stool that is at an oblique angle between the 'dirty' shoe level and the clean wooden platform, allowing one to sit and take off shoes, then swivel without putting feet onto filth and stand again in the clean.

I'm frankly astonished at the seemingly purposeful denseness of comprehension for a simple act of cleanliness. The 'filth will make us stronger' approach reminds me of the historical writings of the 10th-century Arab diplomat Ahmad ibn Fadlan, who chronicled the Volga Vikings (Rus') and was the inspiration for the 'Viking morning bowl' scene from the movie The 13th Warrior. Just 'Ewww'

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

#149
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 im…

The toothbrush analogy is weird, and untrue in most cases. And regardless, just one time stepping in crap, would make up for a lifetime of a few molecules hitting a brush at random intervals. And of course, toothpaste is a cleaner, so it's not relevant. But I find this all amusing, because wherever you take your shoes off? That's where all this supposed crap sits from all these shoes left outside. Which means you are…

> But your feet or clean looking shoes? Equally dirty.

Absolutely not equally dirty unless you have FILTHY feet. If so, take a bath.

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

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

um, pretty much, yes. Even when it looks like a laced up tennis shoe, closer examination of an 'outdoor' shoe will show that it has been stomped into and slipped out of many times. If it is a sports use, i.e. basketball or other gymnasium, or indoors in a professional setting like at a busy office there will be a changing area and people etiher change into provided slippers (town hall and community centers, schools,…

Wrong

In Tokyo, or in the countryside?
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