And another thing!

When I'm being pursued downstairs at high speed by eager NHS employees, the employees in question are often nurses who are dashing to get to their shift with 30 seconds to spare. I, on the other hand, get to my desk 45 minutes early and so can pootle (daudle/dawdle) merrily along.

Nurses, they're so hard done to. I've noticed that all the nurses in Base 1 are now wearing brand new fleece jackets, emblazoned with the organisation's logo. I'm not sure, but I'm betting they get these free as part of their uniform (I could be wrong). Wouldn't it be nice if the rest of the workforce got their clothes paid for as well? We essentially wear a "uniform" - clothes that are for work and no other purpose - yet we don't get any allowance for this and we're probably on comparable salaries to the nursing staff.

But anyway, the nurses do work hard - most of them: some of them are lazy twats who are always on sick or maternity leave and who just add to the stress of their colleagues. You get people like that across the professions, but the impact can be worse on nurses.

I love the workplace; it provides a means of social interaction, gossip, stimulation, productivity. Of course, the main stimulation comes from too much caffeine and the productivity is purely related to how much of your Christmas shopping you can do while using the free internet access. The past two days have been VERY boring because, had I wanted to do some work, I wouldn't have been able to because the main server died and nobody could access any of their data. Two whole days lost. So much for storing all your data on the server.

But the time was filled with the usual office banter related to:

• My new relationship
• Colleagues who we dislike
• People leaving
• People on maternity leave
• People (women, never men) being off because their children are sick or are having a special assembly
  
• Shopping
• Fashion/handbags/shoes
  
• The next social event (and who to exclude from it)
  
• The order for the water fountain being delayed

The last point is one that gets right on my tits. There's a bottled water dispenser in the kitchen and people don't half go on when it runs out and the next delivery is delayed. I point out that there's plenty of perfectly good water in the tap. I also point out that it's a privilege and not a right and that coffee, tea, milk and MY POP isn't provided free, so why should bottled water be?

Fucking whinging bastards.

And in this post I have, on Convict's request, pointed out some of the reasons why the National Health Service is in a right old mess. Namely:

1. Wasting money on unnecessary workwear - fleece jackets for nurses? I can understand this sort of provision for people who need to work outdoors, but why provide coats for people who work indoors?
2. Workforce costs. Most of the expenditure in the NHS goes on the workforce. A lot of this is wasted on sick leave and recruitment costs after people leave because they've had enough. People are generally demotivated because they've been continually shafted by the system. Other are fed up of carrying their colleagues who are always fucking off to have babies, or taking time off to look after sick kids.
3. Lack of productivity due to lack of motivation - most of the people who work in the NHS have recently gone through a pay review ("Agenda for Change") and a high proportion of those people have been well and truly shafted, right up to the fur. Why should they be productive when their salaries have been frozen? Why should people be productive when they find themselves shuffling meaningless bits of paperwork and jumping through hoops for politicians instead of doing the job that they want to do? How can you expect people to be productive when the infrastructure is vulnerable hardware failure? One bit of hardware dies and two servers are out of action for two days, but there's no backup, so people can't do their work. TSK!

So, next time you go to your hospital and get the treatment that you need (if you get it), just remember that the people involved in that are probably really, incredibly and completely fucked off.

And this has done nothing to alleviate my guilt for doing fuck all at work these past two days.