A sobering afternoon listening to some genuine horror stories of front line TUC staff facing the most appalling abuse and still getting up and going back to work with obvious PTSD symptoms.
Examples of stories I heard from TUC member’s;
The Tesco night worker, shattered by the constant nightly abuse received on the tills, well, what were the tills, this individual was manning the self serve checkout, in her words “when we had the tills, we had some protection from people, but now people can walk right upto us and assault us” she told of being punched, kicked, spat on and having trolleys rammed into her as she challenged peoples age when they were buying alcohol.
The Prison Educator, who broke down mid speech, spoke of being left to run classes in parts of the prison that were hard to reach with little CCTV surveillance, having tables, chairs and other objects thrown at her, being pinned to the wall and being told she was going to be raped, living in constant fear of going to work and being attacked.
The Magistrates Security Guard, advised us of a case where a man had smuggled in a razor blade to court, as he was sentenced he produced it and sliced his throat, the trauma of this and this was bad enough, but the subsequent investigation into the “failings” of his staff had then pushed many into long term sickness.
PTSD is more prevalent now in front line staff than ever, if you know of a colleague who is suffering send them this link www.ptsdsupport.co.uk or info@ptsdsupport.co.uk.