A Monkey Cannot Do My Job
I work in a hospital, in admissions to operating theatres and surgery too. As part of an NHS “cost saving initiative” following the Covid 19 pandemic, I was given a monkey for the week to see if he could do my job. Needless to say I was not very happy about this, but it proved an interesting week. A week which I had to report back on, so what follows is what I didn't send my boss. The NHS is “paper free” but retains the other ways to waste your time, you just don’t have to print them out which is great because none of the printers work.
Arrival
A bad start for me. The monkey was in on time, I was not. This did not look good. Especially as the little show off had made tea for everyone in my absence, thus endearing himself to my boss in the 45 minutes it took me to arrive after him. In my defence, the monkeys (who arrive by coach from the zoo) have a team of keepers waking them up in the morning. All I have is a smart phone with a battery possessing as much desire to stay conscious as my 90 year old nan.
Also the monkeys didn’t go out last night.
Like my Nan, my smart phone nods off at inopportune times. Unlike my Nan, my phone knows my internet history. It is better this way.
My monkey’s name was Kevin. Apparently even in the monkey kingdom this is a terrible name. To his credit, Kevin seemed like good fun- I particularly enjoyed the mural he did in the consultants’ office in his own faeces. I wish I could get away with that, the consultants at my hospital are the most aggressive, awful egos I’ve come across over ten years in the NHS. I’d look forward to their strike days if having to fuck around patients waiting for cancer treatment wasn’t a job that fell to my team.
Monkeys do not possess a keen eye for detail. Although Kevin’s mural (poo-ral?) displayed some rudimentary artistic awareness, overall it lacked clarity and focus. Plus it smelled. Much like his art, Kevin’s data entry stank the joint out.
You know that old saying about a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters? Well this was one monkey, with one keyboard and hands covered in shit. He happily bashed outrageous figures into our predicted activity spreadsheet at absolute random, not even checking against any information we had on what numbers to expect.
I, however, diligently checked and counted and made sure all my facts and numbers were straight. This has to go down as a win for the human. Yay me. Yay me until we had to present our figures. Senior management’s eyes rolled back as they pictured the rim job they’d get off the trustees based on Kevin's crap. The NHS is built on falsities, because the Government demand something to keep the flawed healthcare economy going.
As you might imagine, monkeys in surgery was a nightmare. The infection rates soared, diagnostics were complete guess work, but at least customer satisfaction with their ability to emote was improved. They didn’t let them do anaesthetics, there’s an app for that now. The Emergency Department was apparently no less chaotic. Win humans, just.
Interpersonal Relationships
I like to think I am a reasonably easy person to get along with, hell, I even put up with a monkey for a week who might steal my job. A monkey who, and I cannot stress this enough, was covered in his own excrement. Turns out Kevin’s a good conversation starter though. “How’s your monkey doing? Worried yet?” was pretty much the most common topic of the week. That and “I need a new job anyway, I hate this place.”
Other people had monkeys too, after the theatres disaster even the Tories rethought fast, but so there was a tense air around the place; not least among the patients. Kevin, on top of his poor hygiene, was an HR (MR?) nightmare. He got incredibly excited upon seeing a lady monkey who was trialling in another department, and I can only describe his behaviour as “unbecoming of a gentlemonkey”. But then he’s not the only handsy in my team, and that guy is human. Still, impossible to sack literally anyone in the NHS.
The sick record average has improved in one week and, look, I’m as guilty as anyone on this. Monkeys can’t take days off with stress though; all they need is a gentle cattle prod and suddenly they’re perked up and ready to go. My phone can’t do that, especially if it’s out of battery.
Tip for smartphone users, if you want to improve battery life, stop looking at the fucking thing all the time. The reason old phones lasted longer is because all they did was snake. When picture messages became a thing the first thing humanity used them for was unsolicited dick pics. Monkeys can’t do that because of their sloppy hands and because they already have their cocks out anyway.
He’s not really a talker, Kevin. Just tends to point and screech a lot. He was great in some ways, though, pretty easy to manage. A service manager friend found their chimpy-chum, Sharon, was less of a slug than her long standing staff. Workers seeing their days to retirement out with all the understandable ambition of someone who has seen eons of younger people try to bring change and it not happen.
Apparently Sharon’s lunchtime banana and cup of tea also meant the half an hour lunch the NHS scrimps you was enough for her to be back on time, unlike everyone else. Plus she didn’t fall out with all of the office like the others because she’s a fucking monkey. Win for monkeys.
As much as I liked Kevin, by the end of the week anyway, monkeys need to stay at home, to protect lives, but them eating out definitely helped out- they’re noisy. For us humans, the hands, face, space mantra was certainly more prevalent than ever.
Stay home, save lives is what we were told. Keep life moving. How the fuck do we do this with rampant procreation? Don’t fuck in the front hole? Nobody wants to hear that after a hard day at work. What we need to do to keep life moving is treat each other well, hope the people who are actually in a position to save our diminishing chance of existence do so, and a good old fashioned cattle prod to get us out of bed.
Or maybe that’s just me.
Ultimately it isn’t monkeys, the NHS is doomed. It’ll become (it kind of already is) a brand. People mostly trust it, advertisers for the companies slowly buying it out since New Labour pointed its open arse at free trade like a cat on heat, will know that.
The other outcome is that the NHS is ruined by a campaign to install mistrust in it and a push towards private healthcare. Probably as part of being part of standardised employment packages. Why go to the NHS when you have private healthcare, which is worse by the way for anything important. Monkeys in suits, better tea. Go for it pal. Call me when you're dead.
Kevin did an imitation of my job, but Kevin didn't cost any money so when they gave him the vote and moved me to the zoo all I could do was spray my own faeces over the consultants’ office before I left. Eat that you arrogant cunts. I’ll be a monkey, it’s free and no less upsetting.
Win: nobody, we're all doomed. Do you want to bang on a tin and pay for healthcare, or have proper healthcare? As much as he tried, Kevin couldn't do my job, but neither can I.
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