Guardian All Ears 12th December

Note to self...for reference purposes, in shared studio very unwise to Google 'nurses uniform' with 'Safe Search' option switched off!

(Article by Michael Holden)
I took my place in a hospital queue and a scene of two halves began to
unfold. To my left a woman yelled Apprentice-level business drivel
into her telephone, while to my right three nurses assembled a plastic
Christmas tree.
Woman (indignant) “You haven’t spoken to them about it, you’ve just
talked to me about it, and I’m not the cog that needs to make that
process turn around!”
Nurse 1 (straightening out collapsible branches) “How old is this thing?”
Nurse 2 “At least as old as me, and I’ve been here five years.”

Woman “The message is Ian’s just back from holiday, and if there are
35,000 emails in his inbox then we’re all in trouble… what I said to
you was there are four more files, which are big, messy, nasty ones,
by the way. So you can’t just ignore them.”

Nurse 3 “Where does this bit go?”

Nurse 1 “Stick it in the middle”

Woman (almost screaming) “Well you make a start and then
I will finish it off…I understand that…exactly…anyway. We
can’t do that until we know the value of all the pieces…it’s not a
good idea, Andrew’s not into delegation… I don’t know. I’ve been here
for four hours… I imagine he will go berserk. I shouldn’t have to be
pointing this out!”
Nurse 1 (standing back) “What do we think of that then?”

Woman “Well, as I say, I thought you would have done something
already, but we’ll try and sort it out when I get back. Yes, I got
that. I’m getting the fact that you’re unhappy.”

Nurse 2 (laughing) “Look at the state of it!”

Woman “Ok then, thanks.”
She hung up and noticed the pitiful tree. It would take more than that
to make things better.