Signed on Sick, victimisation and descrimination

SandC

Fair play blue monkey, I am a touch typist and struggle with the new fangled things that seem to work best with people's own way of keyboarding - I don't own an iphone or anything like that but do have a netbook which infuriates me as the keyboard is too small to type properly with both hands.

The thing is, the owners of the bookies must be quite aware that the OP can't work if she only has use of one hand, but they still seem to have a problem now that they have found out that she is carrying out work for her own business whilst being off.

Having said all that, they have only just told her they are investigating so nothing has actually happened as yet and it might be that the meeting will sort things out in this respect. I think the other points are all irrelevant to this issue as they are grievances the OP has which should be dealt with separately.

EllaKeat

I am all for anybody trying to improve their working situation by looking to start their own company, but as an employer I would be pretty disgusted by the fact that you are on the sick (are you getting ssp paid)? but still 'working'.
Agreed that if you have RSI, then you probably could not type all day, but if you are well enough to chat, phone, email and visit potential clients, then I am afraid that as an employer I too would have a lot of questions for you to answer. Did your employers ever give you the opportunity to do other tasks? Even in a bookies there must be filing,admin work, other suitable duties?

To me, if you are too sick to work, then you should be laid out at home, not using the time to to start your own business.

As to your other grievences, they really should have been dealt with at the time. If you do have a meeting with your employers, I would advise not rehashing these old complaints, they just serve to make you look as though you are trying to turn the tables on them which will not go down well.

Whatever happens, although I think you are wrong, good luck with your new business:D

slightlyconfused1

Hi

There is no issue in being both employed and self employed although it can be complicated when dealing with NI and tax (bitter experience talking). Some employers demand that you let them know about secondary employment etc.

Has your GP said you are unfit for any work or has he added what types of work you would be able to do on your fit note?

If he has stated that you can do some types of work and your employer has said no then that is a completely different situation to being signed off as unfit for any work but working anyway. Your employer has the right to investigate the (true) allegations against you. He could argue that it will delay your recovery.

Are you receiving SSP? I don't know much about it but if you are receiving SSP and are working in your own business there may be a issue? You will be paying two lots of NI (employed and self employed) and I would presume that this mis-match may cause a problem somewhere. I would seek advice on that one.

Good luck with the new business.

blue_monkey_2

There is no admin/filing when you work in a bookies, the only filing is giving the betting slips to the manager when bets have closed. Using the till to take bets is THE main bit of the job.

When you are not taking bets you are usually doing other stuff like.... larking around, reading the papers, having a coffee, cleaning and eating. In our case in the first bookies I worked in, we used to get drunk on wine supplied by the manager when we did the night races. I kid you not, LOL, but I was too scared to drink until the final race had closed in case I mucked up someones slip.

However, you HAVE to be able to use the till whatever part of the job you are in - there are 3 jobs, manaher, assistant manager and cashiers. The clue is in the name, admin is all centralised at head office and is usually where the winning slips are sent, dealt with by the manager, then you count money at the end of the day. You can't do that with one hand either. There are no admin duties at all that she could be doing instead. She would literally just be sitting there watching others work - and as she has already pointed out, that would go down well.

To use the till you really need both hands. You have to put the slip into the top of the till with one hand, hold it there while putting the amount through with the other. You have to be able to do this FAST - especially at busy periods as there are people who sit in there all day throwing their bets at you at the last second. The slip has an exact time on it t the second and there is only a certain amount of time after a race has started that a bet can be placed, after a certain time it is not valid and that is not acceptable if someone is placing a bet of £500 - that you was too late to get your bet in because the cashier was too slow.

Image you placed a bet on a horse for £1000 and it came in at 25-1 but they said you could not have the winnings because the cashier did not manage to get it through in time, but you gace the slip in time for the bet to be placed. it sounds trivial, to big time gamblers and owners of race horses/dogs it isn't. We used to have a man who owed horses put £100 - 20k down on horses at a time.

The OP will more than likely be self assessing so the NI and Tax will be dealt with as in any second business. If the bookies is anything like I was at there will be little or no sick pay for part time employees.

And if you really still do not believe me, please spend half an hour in the bookies, watching the cashiers and how they work and you will see exactly what I mean and figure how someone with one hand would be able to do this job. They will not be able to so what is the point of going into work.

blue_monkey_2

bendix wrote: »

As an aside, this is the second relatively new poster to come to MSE in the last couple of weeks, claiming to be black and also claiming to be the subject of ridiculous racial discrimination. In both cases, the claims are so farfetched as to incur the wrath of the forum.

Am I just a cynic or could it be that these are actually posted by a racist white BNP'r, cleverly being racist in a non-racist sneaky way?

I dunno.

I did not think they say they were black, I thought they said they were English living in Wales.

I do know there is rascism in Wales, my mum's SIL lives there and when they first moved there they had to move again further south as 'The English' were simply not accepted in that part of the country. Their lives were made a misery and no-one spoke or did anything for them as they were not Welsh.

dmg24

I know nothing about high street bookmakers, so I rang a friend who works in a Ladbrokes (I think - red t shirts?). She says it would not be convenient to use the machine with one hand, but easy enough to adapt. I asked if it would be any more difficult than writing a grammatically correct email - she laughed and answered 'No!'.

It seems that, if you are willing to put in a bit of effort, the job would be far from impossible!