Oh Fairy Godmother, Where Art Thou?

[thessalian]

If the office is the world in miniature (a group of people thrown together with no regard for how well they fit together, trying to keep the place going as best they can), then the world is a strange, stupid place.

Three of the doctors have just left, vanished without trace. Three more are on annual leave. And one of the consultants is at the Royal College this week. Which basically means that things are very, very slow. See, there's always backlog, but it shifts; some days it's in our cupboard, other days it's in reporting, still other days it's in check and sort. One way or another, we're always behind. Today it's in reporting because there aren't enough doctors to report things and the ones who are on shift this morning are the laziest buggers ever to grace the department.

So you'd think -- easy day. Right? Wrong. Because the division of labour is never equal in this hole. And when there's little bits of work sitting around, there's two ways of thinking about them:

"Hmm; we can breeze through these no problem! It'll take three minutes and then it'll be all clear; what a relief!"

"Oh, those can sit awhile; we'll work real slow and not worry about it until it gets kind of full-looking in the cupboard..."

The latter one's the philosophy of the rest of my team. The former one's mine. So despite there being little work to do around here, only one person's workload hasn't changed -- mine. I've just heard one of the secs turn their nose up at the one tape that's in the cupboard at the moment because they don't like typing for that particular doctor, so guess who's going to wind up doing that one too?

You know, at least Cinderella got a nice new outfit and a huge party out of the deal. Well, at least the handsome prince part turned out right...

Thess

Comments

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

I can't think of a scarier Freudian slip I could possibly have made.

I worked at Chelsea & Westminster for a few days, I think, in the Social Work department, if such a thing makes any sense at all. C & W the really impressive hospital that looks as though people actually spent some money on it, isn't it? The job and coworkers sound par for the course though.

[thessalian.livejournal.com]

Well, they'd have to have spent money on it, given its location, I suppose. It's a beautiful hospital and caters to the odd famous person but it's got a horrible reputation in the NHS. They call it "the hotel". As for the co-workers, I can safely say that it's been better. Fine, one place I went my predecessor had actually had a nervous breakdown (which was why they needed a temp) but at least they kept their heads down and did the fucking work.

By the way, can I just say love your icon?