Busy doing nothing

No doubt if you work in any industry that likes you to be industrious, you can no longer enjoy the simple pleasure of social notworking.

social notworking - verb. The act of titting about on Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, etc when you should be doing some "proper work".

But while the super-conscientious are filling their bags with books and files in order to work from home, for the prevaricating work-shy waster, there is still plenty of potential to home from work.

home from work - verb. To spend the time you are paid to be doing stuff for the greater good, to do the stuff you should be doing in your own time. Example usage - "There just aren’t enough hours in the day - I think I'll be homing from work again"

Just try saying it to someone - they’ll look slightly bemused and nod in agreement, whereas you have just told them “Basically, I’m going to do nothing productive today”

The first, and most basic way of wasting time at work is the deja-poo

deja-poo - verb. To go off for a shit even though you’ve only just got back from the toilet.

The deja-poo can be used to avoid pieces of shit, putting off a tedious job with a make believe jobbie, or laying fake bricks as the bricks and mortar ground work for pulling off a whole sick day.

Email can be a right bloody chore. To appear to be actually doing more than you are, try re-mailing.

remail - verb. To read, forward to yourself, read again, and re-forward ad infinitum.

It’s fucking tedious, but you can mash the keys in a busy looking fashion, then stare and the bollocks that you’ve just received and try and make sense of it. Still not clear, why not forward it to yourself again and see if you can make head or tail of it?

When you’re done with your email, time for a bit of research, or re-searching.

research - verb. To trawl through Google trying to find the website you found so amusing at home, but forgot to email a link to your work pc.

As in “I’m doing some research for Matt”, translates as “I saw a video last night of a chimp sucking itself off, but I can’t remember where, and daren’t type ‘self blow job’ into Google in case IT log it, so I’m looking at every video of a monkey on the internet”.

I like to keep my desk as untidy as possible. Nothing says busy like paper strewn everywhere. And biscuits. Probably some coffee cups too. The reason for this is two fold, firstly, camouflage for the ‘busy’ man, and secondly, you can waste hours looking for stuff, pretending to look for stuff, or hiding stuff so you can look for it later, filed under T.

file under tea - verb, to keep all your important papers in a pile on your desk under empty mugs. Usage - “You have no idea where that report is do you Mark?”. “Um - I think I must have filed it under tea by mistake” - thus giving the appearance that you do have some degree of organisation, and not just an untidy twat.

If you really get stuck for something to do, there are a myriad of websites that give helpful advice on how waste time.

Me, I don’t need them, I’m far too busy doing fuck all.

I'm no Angel

I was once an angel.

Not the winged ethereal type, but as close as you can get on earth - a nurse. Various polls over the years have placed the 'caring profession' in the upper echelons of the most respected and valued members of society.

Or they were once.

Now they're found humiliating pensioners, sitting around ignoring pleas for assistance, only getting off their terminally lazy arses to spread whatever superbug is the Daily Mails scaremongering soapbox of the week with their very poor personal hygiene. Considering the number of dirty nurses there are wandering around the NHS it's amazing that they don't die more frequently themselves. Perhaps the psychological immunity from the vilification of the right wing press creates some kind of physical immunity to the various diseases they spread around with their nonchalance to hygiene standards...

Of course that's not true. It's a sad fact that people who come into hospital are generally sick already, and not as resistant to the various bugs that are thrown (not literally) at them. Hospitals up and down the country have endured what is often called the 'Winter Vomiting' bug, or norovirus.

Norovirus is a nasty little bugger, having been there done that myself previously, and yes I picked it up in hospital. The reason for this was not that the hospital was dirty, but because patients got sick in the community, then came into my lovely clean ward with their diarrhoea and vomiting. Rather than steering well clear of these people as you would do if they were sick in their own homes, I would clean up their incontinence and puke, and low and behold, I got it too.

And guess what? I wore rubber gloves, I washed my hands, and all the other such precautions used to reduce spread of infection, but still got stricken.

'Cos here's the deal. Nurses don't want to spread infections, particularly not if that runs the risk of them getting sick too. But they put themselves in the firing line day in day out of picking up whatever is going around, or picking up the blame when a hospital closes wards due to an outbreak.

I sometimes wonder what the public's perception is when they see headlines that read '10 wards closed at local hospital'. Do they think there are hospital beds lying empty because the wards have been shut? Do they realise that it is far more likely that the ward has 1 or 2 empty beds -or maybe even none - and the hospital has said 'You know what? There are some sick patients on this ward that came in with a community acquired infection, so if we have anyone in A+E waiting for a bed, they probably shouldn't go there, because we'd hate the risk of them getting sick. Sure, they might get sick at home anyway, or on a ward where there is no norovirus at the moment, but it's simple common sense to not wilfully expose them to it. We'll close the ward'.

It doesn't mean wards lying empty, it means not exposing someone to a risk of infection unnecessarily.


But I digress.


I was a nurse, but no longer.Some colleagues could argue that I haven't been a nurse for a number of years, having been a Ward Manager for several, but I still had some patient contact. A couple of years ago I got involved in some IT/project work that took me away from the ward, and out of the uniform, but it still said nurse on my payslip.

You get actors, writers, musicians and artist who profess to that title, but if pushed are neither published or performing.

Me: 'So you're an actor?'
Actor: 'Yes'
Me:'What might I have seen you in?'
Actor:'Nothing'
Me:'Then surely it's just a hobby?'
Waiter:'Fuck off'

I was becoming one of these people. A nurse that didn't nurse.

To stay on the nursing register in the UK one must complete 450 hours of practice over three years. This would mean that if I wanted to continue to call myself a nurse I would have to average 150 hours, or 20 shifts per year.

I have a lot of friends that will quite happily work on their days off for extra beer money, but I've got to a time in my life where I enjoy the routine of having every weekend off. And more's the point, mrsslippy has to work very few weekends either, so why on earth would I want to spend nearly half my weekends off working wherever would have me just so I could still call myself a nurse? It's not a one way door. I can let my registration slip, and should I ever get the desire to put the uniform back on, there are 'Return to Practice' courses that could bring me back up to speed. I've already been so long away from the shop floor I just wouldn't feel able to do it to the best of my abilities.

So I'm not a nurse anymore, in either name,function or registration. And for the first winter in living memory I haven't picked up some god awful diarrhoea bug at work.

My only problem now is, when people ask me, that the hell is it that I actually do?



If anyone says IT I'll kill them.