Toastergate!

It’s 7.30 and for the sixth morning in a row I can’t have toast for breakfast.  Now ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a big deal, I’d have something else.  But when you’re in hospital long term, small things like this tend to take on more importance than is strictly warranted and I want some bloody toast!

Why no toast you ask?  Well, it’s a complicated story involving theft, ongoing ward wars, naughty ninja nurses, NHS bureaucracy, health & safety, many frustrated pensioners and me.

The story started last week when a very naughty ninja nurse from ‘a. n. other’ ward snuck in during the night shift and stole – yes stole!! – the Kennett ward ‘good’ toaster from the ward kitchen.  Now, nobody can prove that this happened (because he/she used their ninja powers, they didn’t get caught in the act), however, there are clues.  The toaster in question had a dodgy setting which made it smoke a lot and therefore, set the fire alarm off regularly.  This week, ‘a.n.other’ ward has set the fire alarm off three times during breakfast!  Although not proof, definitely a major clue in the Toastergate investigation we feel… Secondly, a member of staff from ‘a.n.other’ ward has anecdotally admitted the theft, but won’t do so officially for fear of dastardly repercussions from her colleagues.

This left us with one toaster.   Sufficient you’d think to provide toast for 34 patients - but you’d be wrong.  The reason it was the second choice toaster and not the ‘good’ one, was that it needed a bit of jiggling to work properly.  Basically, you had to stick a knife in it to make the toast pop up!  Now we all know that’s dangerous, but we’ve all done it and most of us have the brains to switch the toaster off before we stick the knife inside it, as do the staff here, so all would have been fine – we’d have had our toast, everyone would have been happy.  But oh no, not in the public sector with Mr and Mrs Jobsworth Health & Safety on the prowl.  What with all the fire alarms going off and the no-toast whining from the pensioners, the next arrivals onto Kennett in connection with Toastergate were the dreaded H&S, who after much consideration decreed that second preference toaster was dangerous and should not be used.*

No big deal you would think.  They’ll just get another toaster – two even?!  Oh no, no, no.  Never that simple.  Not in the NHS.  A formal request has to be put in, which needs to be signed off by at least 243 people.  That then has to be submitted to the Chief of All Bollocks who sits up on the top floor.  He/She then authorises the purchase of said toasters and passes the requisition to Chief of Purchasing Bollocks and so it goes on.  Basically, we’re not going to have toast for about 4 weeks.

But we on the Kennett ward aren’t done with the initial theft of Toaster no. 1 yet.  Not by a long way.  The game is afoot Watson, oh yes, the game is afoot….

 

*I have taken some small liberties with the facts for comedy purposes in this post.  However, it's mostly all true.