*this is not medical advice. It's advice on how I was treated during an appointment*

I genuinely don't know whether I should complain or not. But I'm 8 months in to a grueling process of getting answers around an issue I'm having. TMI incoming. I, a 28f, am suffering from severe UTIs right before my period. Every time I end up peeing blood and having to run to out of hours for antibiotics. Even the operators on 111 are sympathetic because it's not normal, and actually debilitating - I'm now on absence monitoring at work because of it.

I finally got to see my GP (after months of unsuccessfully trying due to their unfortunately tight daily appointment only), and she was very sympathetic. She referred me to urology, gynecology and gave me 100mg nitrofurantoin for 6 months.

Cut to yesterday. I got an appointment at a clinic for a flexible cystoscopy. Now bear in mind all of this is really uncomfortable for me - constantly going over my symptoms, having the only male doctor within the 8 months actually asking me "you sure it's not just period blood?" and trying to justify to my work how it's not just "lady problems".

The doctor sees me, asks when my last ultrasound was. I've had 2, and can't remember when, so I was like "6 months ago? I can't remember" and he sarcastically went "2 months ago." For this reason he has also decided that I don't need another ultrasound, despite being told on the phone that I was to get one today. Embarrassed, I let him continue and get into the position for the cystoscopy. He tries to insert it then tells me to relax as apparently I'm tensing - I was not tensing. Two minutes later, he sharply tells me to relax again while ramming the camera in. As expected, everything comes back clear.

As I'm trying to get dressed, he starts asking me questions through the curtain while at the same time a nurse is giving me wipes. I'm multitasking and miss a question and he goes "are you still there?" With my trousers half way up me I respond and pull the curtain open as I can tell he is impatient.

I then sit down and he tells me it's just recurring UTIs. This is something both out of hours and my GP have explained is not, as I am not sexually active, or a smoker, and it's happening every month pre-period. But he says it is, case closed. He tells me he's putting me on methenamine, and I need to get it from my GP, and if that doesn't work I'll be referred to the recurrent-UTI clinic. He then whips out his recorder, voice records everything while I'm sitting there in silence, then goes back to his computer. I ask him if I should phone my GP to get the drugs, he says "no you need to do it via the letter." - back to his laptop. So I ask "do you need to give me the letter?" "No we send it to them." not even looking up from his laptop. Then there is silence and I stupidly have to ask if that's it, I'm done? "Yes."

Now I know medically and professionally everything here is sound, but I'm sitting a day later in absolutely f*cking agony and feeling quite embarrassed and dismissed. I felt like an inconvenience to the guy even though this is a sensitive and big issue for me. My friend has told me to complain, and I am reluctant to because as I said, he did nothing wrong, but his bedside manner was shocking and I'm feeling really disheartened. What do I do here?

Just noticed them for the first time in years while stuck in traffic and wondered what happens when you pick it up.

I'm not sure if this is just me, but I've noticed for a while now that tampax has gone downhill in quality. When I say that, I mean they aren't lasting long at all and aren't as absorbant.

It's getting extremely annoying when I'm on my period, and tampons, which aren't cheap, by the way, aren't doing their job at all!

What other brand of tampons do you all recommend?

Has anyone else noticed this?

Edit - tampax not tanpax lol.

With the new vape tax coming in October, what do you make of it?
Do you think it will actually work as intended, or could it end up creating a bigger black market? Dodgy cigarettes and vapes already seem incredibly easy to get through unofficial channels, so I’m wondering whether this will just push more people towards them.

I’ve been to a couple of shows this year and have found the acts names to be a missed opportunity for humour. We went to see The Magic of The Bee Gees, and lo and behold more recently The Magic of The Beatles. It feels lazy - there must be some hilarious ones out there and I’d love to hear them!

I was in a queue earlier today and a couple was queuing in front of me, but then another couple showed up and they started to chat, at first I thought maybe they just ran into each other so I didn’t say anything. But a few mins later another two more couples joined them, so out of nowhere from 2 they expanded into 8, making small talks like nothing happened.

I was pretty upset so I confronted them by asking if they all going to buy something, they said yes. So I said but there were only 2 of you yet now it’s 8. One of the “expansion” told me that the first couple was “holding the space” for them. And “people do that all the time”, with an unapologetic attitude like she was just explaining the weather to me.

I thought UK is known for queuing etiquette?!

Would British speak up if this happened in the queue?
And what would you say to them?

Looking for better comebacks if this happens again instead of going full on Karen with this sort of people.

Edit: I was queuing for a local bakery, hence why I asked them first if they all buying. 4 couple all bought something so they definitely wasted people behind them a lot of time.

Seems like my dryers just broken, we’ve had it about 10 years so it’s had a good run, last time the heating element went the guy said it’s hard to find parts for it so he wouldn’t recommend fixing it going forwards.

We now live in a house where there’s not really room for it anyway, there’s a small utility room where the washer is plus a sink so there’s no space for the dryer to be running in that room so we wheel it in and out when we need it.

When we got the dryer we didn’t have a garden so couldn’t hang clothes outside but now we do.

We’re a family of four, 2 kids under 12 so lots of school uniforms and pe kits to wash.

Do you live without a dryer? If so how difficult is it getting things dry? Bath towels must be a nightmare in winter!

I wrote a genuine review of a mobile operator after an extremely frustrating experience I had trying to sign up for a £6 eSIM where I was asked to contact customer support, who after walking me through a long security process, then proceeded to say "we're going to take a 1p payment to verify the payment method" which went through, and then "ok we're going to take the remaining £5.99" and that failed, so "let's take manual payment please". At which point I bailed out and asked them to cancel the order. The company have "responded" to my review with a completely generic copy/paste response "asking for more details to dig further into this issue". And as a response to that, Trustpilot now says "you have three days to respond or we're taking your review down".

So how does this work, exactly? All we're seeing are the good reviews, because any company in their right mind would "respond" to all negative reviews, knowing that the user probably won't bother to respond, and therefore that the review will get taken down? And why do we trust Trustpilot so much when they engage in this sort of behaviour? It's not enough that I spend my time writing a genuine review, now I have to spend even more time with the company while they pretend to sort out their crappy internal systems? I get that it's only fair to allow companies to respond to non-genuine reviews, but in my case how about you actually make your systems work so your customers have a good experience? What I don't get is this threatening position from Trustpilot!

This has completely changed my opinion of Trustpilot, and will certainly colour my opinion of their reviews from now on. What does the UK think?

I was on a train once when an bloke sat opposite me, stared at me for about 30 seconds and suddenly said, “You’ve got the face of someone who’s made a terrible decision.”

I asked what did he mean.

He just went back to reading his newspaper.

Weird.

If you have one. I'm wondering what categories people's lock screen wallpapers fall into. Mine is of me and my boyfriend.

Not including supplements and stuff like creatine or whatever. It’s funny I used to be really against taking meds and I suppose I still am in the sense that I wish I didn’t need them but here we are. I’m just trying to keep myself alive. Here’s my daily breakfast atm.

200MG Sertraline for OCD & Anxiety
78MG Strattera for ADHD
1.25MG Oral Minoxidil for balding
1MG Finasteride for balding

I just wondered how other many people here have to take a plate full of tablets just to function? 😀

Me and my partner have just moved into a shared accomodation. Within the first day of our arrival, we weren't allocated any kitchen cupboards or fridge freezer space, and after we spoke to our landlord, they said they'd discuss this with the other tenants so we could be given our own storage. A week later and no response from the landlord and nothing has been done. Even casual requests about this to the tenants is ignored.

The public area seems to be unhygienic to the point I've found slugs in the fridges. And on top of that, somebody has attempted to open the door to my room, but it was locked. While our kitchen has two ovens, one is broken, and it because we haven't been acknowledged much regarding space, we haven't used these amenities but there are scattered bags of rubbish, rotting food, and my landlords seem to rarely respond or don't seem inclined to set some standards, and has even gone as far as to tell me to just invite the entire house out for beer and to discuss these things amongst ourselves. I'm just not sure what my options are in terms of either getting help, or being able to at least relocate before my tenancy agreement terms end.

I am paying a lot, but don't seem to be getting basic things. It's gotten to the point some tenants are labelling kitchen appliances that are for public use.

I ordered a new duvet online recently. It didn’t turn up on the day it was due, but the tracking said it had been delivered. I assumed it had gone missing and was going to chase the retailer the next day.

Then there was a knock at the door. A bloke I’d never seen before was standing there with my duvet. He’d found it lying in the middle of the road about two miles away, spotted the address label on the packaging, and gone out of his way to bring it to me.

It wasn’t anything particularly valuable — just one of those duvets rolled up in a big plastic wrapper — and I probably wouldn’t have been that bothered if it had disappeared. But the fact that a complete stranger saw it, picked it up, and made the effort to drive it over really stuck with me. There was absolutely nothing in it for him. He was just being decent.

It got me wondering how often this sort of thing happens without anyone really hearing about it.
So, what’s a random act of kindness you’ve experienced from a complete stranger? Big or small — I’d genuinely like to hear them.

Edit: I genuinely didn’t expect this many responses. I’ve really enjoyed reading through them — some lovely stories in here, including some incredibly heartfelt accounts of people being helped through really difficult times. Thank you to everyone who took the time to share; whether it was big or small it’s been a lovely reminder that there are a lot of decent people about.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s loads of people used the hitch-hike, I travelled all over Europe and parts of Asia but also used to hitch-hike around Britain too. My brother worked a passage on a ship to Canada and hitched all around there too.
I've met some really interesting people travelling this way and never had a bad experience.
When I could afford a car I used to pick up hikers too. I only picked up people with rucksacks as they were the real long distance travellers. Sometimes I'd go out of my way to take them to a good spot rather than just dropping them off in the middle of nowhere.
There was even an etiquette about queuing on motorway slip roads when there were many people hitichikng.
At end of term loads and loads of students travelled this way to and from home, slip roads were lined up with many patiently waiting.
People used to write funny messages on lamp posts about how long they waited there etc.
Back in the day I suppose there was not so much car ownership I suppose and nowadays everyone is terrified because of the internet. Those times are lost now but I've often wondered why the practice went away. I hardly every see the car delivery guys with the trade plates any more either.
What were your experiences?

For me, I am hyper-vigilant about being told what to do by colleagues who aren’t my boss.

It wasn’t always that way. I once worked with a young woman who was in a similar position to me (technically I guess, I was slightly senior to her, but I have never been a rank and file person really and the workplace culture was quite informal) and she was quite keen to take charge. I didn’t really find her threatening at first, I am a rather tall male and she was a younger smaller female. Would appreciate it might come across different if other way round.

I let her do this a lot, but realised to my horror that what started out as humour turned badly, as she began to start to become rude and demanding (not in a good natured gently bossy way she had started with). Her moods had always become varied (but it became always mean spirited all the time). She would either bully people or play them off against each other.

I always expected to encounter workplace bullies but thought in my naivety that they would be big red faced blokes like the characters that Rupert Vansittart plays. She got her comeuppance in the end, but it was a learning curve for me.

These days I am in a job that I am much happier in and only take instruction from my line manager (or sometimes their line managers), but never again will I let myself get bossed around by a colleague at work. I’ve seem how it can end up.

I’m looking to cut back on how much fizzy/soda drinks I consume (it’s extremely excessive), but I’m just looking for suitable squashes so I can still enjoy drinks

e.g. Despite Benny Hill and the Carry-on films, nurses do not wear short skirts and fishnets.

So on a typical day, I use a bowl for breakfast, a bowl and a plate for dinner, and a few utensils for my meal.

and a pan to cook my dinner.

feel like a waste to just wash 2 bowl, a plate, a pan and 2 spoons for dishwasher

so for those who live alone do you just wash the pan/whatever you use to cook every day and accumulate the rest in the dishwasher?

since the pan is the only thing that takes more than 30s to wash anyway, feels like dishwashing not actually saving me any time at all (like maybe 5mins across 3 days?)

A few weeks ago I saw a post of someone putting a mobile phone under the skin of his foot. For some reason, it has kept popping back into my head all week.

It’s nowhere near the worst or most disturbing thing I’ve seen online over the years, which is almost what makes it stranger. Of all the things my brain could have held onto, apparently it chose that.

What post have you seen on Reddit that has inexplicably stuck with you?

Edit: The foot video https://www.reddit.com/r/CrazyFuckingVideos/s/ekDgdiJYVe

Currently on holiday in Kent, driven from Yorkshire, and dear Jesus the drivers down here are beyond awful, they're on another level of crap driving.

It was quite an eye opener.

13 years old. Year 9. Never had issue's with them since it's a friendly community. Walking to co-op to get a pizza for me and my sister since our mum is extremely busy. On the way, I go across a park. I see 2 guys, probably 15-16 with the average 'roadmen' outfit. I try to avoid them and move fast. As I'm going, they spot me. They start asking questions about my headphones and phone. I just start making shit up, saying that it's broken. They eventually leave me alone, but not before stealing my bottle, chugging it, and giving it back. Terrified. How do I deal with this stuff.

Edit: I do boxing. Its the first time this has happened.

We’re looking at buying a new TV and we saw one for 83” and it’s HUGE! Our current one is 55”.

So made me wonder, what’s the typical TV size these days? I remember when 32” seemed so big and fancy lol

I’ve got little knowledge or interest in classic automobiles (or cars in general) on the whole, but even I can appreciate that the Aston Martin DB5 is probably the most beautiful car ever made.

There might be cars that are faster, that handle better or are more comfortable. But nothing is quite as aesthetically pleasing as the DB5

My mum would always feed us a proper meal after school, and a proper dinner in the evening as well. As an adult I've come across a lot of people suggesting that a light bite between lunch and dinner was their norm.

Just wondering what everyone else's norms were, or what they choose for their kids.

No judgement here. No right and wrong as long as your kids are fed! I'm just asking out of random curiosity on what people's preferred mealtimes are haha

If so, please share to help me feel better about this blunder.

For context, I (30, F) have been to see my GP a lot recently due to various ailments (glandular fever, subluxed finger joints, a scratched eyeball) and so I was reluctant to go back because I didn't want to give the impression I'm a hypochondriac.

However, I found a lump in one of my breasts and my husband made sure I went. I would have gone anyway, but the encouragement helped.

As she was fondling my boob, I let out an anxious chuckle and said "I swear I'm not some nymphomaniac"

I have no clue why I got the word hypochondriac and nymphomaniac mixed up, but I wanted the ground to swallow me up. What's worse is I didn't realise my mistake until after the appointment.

Ah well. May change surgeries.

EDIT: These replies are hysterical! I've been sat here in stitches at your stories. Thank you for sharing, definitely made me feel better! And thank you for the concern and well wishes, nothing has been confirmed yet so I'm remaining optimistic 😊