It's time to demand more respect

Sometimes a profound truth can be found hiding in a piece of trivia. I thought this recently reading surely one of the silliest stories of the media's annual silly season.

It concerned a 999 call made by a member of the public in the Midlands requesting an ambulance. What life-threatening injury had she suffered? Well none. The 32-year-old woman merely wanted a lift home. She had spent the day shopping ‘and now my feet are hurting me so much that I can't walk—they're burning,’ she explained to an admirably—if inexplicably—patient operator. ‘I've got two miles to walk home and I'm not going to make it in this condition.’ The story went viral after NHS staff began to Tweet about it with the hashtag #notataxiservice.

The released tape of the conversation is oddly compelling as the sore-footed shopper responds with increasing indignance to being told that an ambulance would only be able to convey her to a hospital. While it lacks the surreal edge of a similar story from last summer (also incidentally from the Midlands) when a caller summoned an ambulance for a pigeon ‘because he looks unwell’, it perhaps better illustrates an enduring problem—a lack of respect for the work of paramedics among a section of the public.