“I’d say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.”
Okay that may not be true for me, but some days it feels like it, especially this week. When we get to the end of an implementation, the staff stop having questions for us. Once in a while you’ll hear someone yell “Blue Shirt,” but the question will take between 2 seconds and 3 minutes to answer and then you’re back to wandering the halls hoping for a disaster to hit one of the computers. Some departments have more questions than others and I wander to those (even though I’m not assigned to them) hoping to steal a few from the designated blue shirts. But guilt forces me back to my self-reliant wing of the hospital to hold up the wall.
Because of this there are too many of us roaming around so we have what is called “admin time.” This is when you take turns leaving the floor and going to work in the “blue cave” (our room in the basement which we temporarily use as a home base and keep all of our laptops). Working in the blue cave is brutal. It means sitting in a dark room where a few people are working their asses off and a few others are pretending. Meanwhile, other blue shirts wander in and out disrupting the silence with silly comments, unnecessary salutations, and general useless time wasting tasks. Sometimes you are that blue shirt. Other times, you are actually working on some project or another.
Today I had admin time. After surfing on my laptop with a snack in hand I found my eyes fighting to stay open. I grabbed my keys, headed to the garage, climbed into the back of my car, and took a 20 minute combat nap. I feel ten times better for it and, after grabbing a bit of salad and chips, I headed back up to the floor to relieve my other brain-dead compadres. Now I’m refreshed and ready to answer any question. Admin time has a whole new meaning for me now.
I just have to figure out what to do to make my presence needed on the floor. “What’s that doc? All your smartphrases disappeared? How strange. Well, don’t you worry. I can work on that for you.”
So, just quit your job, then! I quit mine today. It’s fun!
Besides, you’ll need to be quitting soon anyway. Don’t you remember? I already told you that I’m going to be winning Powerball soon. After that happens, I’m buying a South Pacific atoll and starting my own country. I was planning on making you Minister of Hedonism! Have you forgotten already???
combat nap? ive never heard it.. I love it! 🙂
What was the snack in hand? Does anyone buy things from vending machines any more?
Is that quote from Office Space? I just watched that movie last week!
I am ALL FOR naps.
I could definitely deal with nap time every day. Kids don’t know how much they’ll miss it once it’s gone!
I’m telling (right after I get back from my nap and I can find out where your supervisor is sleeping)!
Please…no more purple! Everybody needs to give Katie some new ideas for her blog (color and layout). KB – help her…yours changes all the time and looks great.
Hey, when were you planning on informing your loyal readers about your new domain name? I still had katietoft.com bookmarked and linked to my site, and every time I visited, it showed that there was only one comment on this post. I only discovered the new address by accident when I linked through from KB’s site. For shame, Toft, for shame!
And she’s still sleeping…
That’s a month.. do we get to send out a search party now? 🙂
Bring back Katie Blogging Time!
Hey, this is quite a personal site! You’ve been busy, girl!
So who is this *other* Max fella who’s all over yer site? I’m feeling neglected…
Looks like I might be out Seattle way for Bumbershoot this year. You gonne be in town? We should have dinner!
LMK. KIT. ETC.
M