Fuck me. My head wasn’t in the right place. I’d forgotten. I’d been taught in the first aid classes you had to be direct and specific when dealing with people in a crisis.
Ah, yes, that’s good advice specifically because of what I just said about stepping forward, and because of bystander syndrome (which itself is often a result about the other thing). “Someone help me!” isn’t going to be half as effective as “You there, help me!”.
Asking for help was begging for disappointment, because people would hesitate to step forward, or assume that someone else would handle the job. Instead of asking for help, we were supposed to single someone out of the crowd of bystanders and give them a clear, identifiable task.
Exactly.
Something along the lines of, ‘You in the red shirt, call nine-one-one!’
And yeah, that’s a bit better than the vague “help me” I used as my example, too. This way the person knows exactly what you want them to do and can start doing it immediately.
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