In the 80’s I worked in the
National Health Service. I was a Clerical Officer. My sister Bernadette got me
an interview as she was already (and remains) a hospital cashier. I worked in a
converted Victorian house in South Manchester. The majority of the permanent
staff was female: they had 2 toilets and the chaps (of which there were 4 in
all) had one smaller toilet. The male toilet was also required by male visitors
attending meetings and the doctors who popped in to pilfer stationery and
borrow sphygmomanometers (which I kept in a special drawer and enjoyed
mentioning in all their polysyllabic glory).
The male toilet was also used if
there was a run on the 2 female conveniences and a female colleague was ‘caught
short’. Because of this eventuality a female member of staff had installed a
small poster. The poster had been customised and bore an image of a cute baby elephant which was
standing on its hind legs to wee into a toilet. The baby elephant looked back
at the viewer with a cheeky look. The poster’s text read thus:
‘If you sprinkle when you tinkle
Be a sweetie and wipe the
seatie.’
One only noticed the poster on
exit. I did always wonder if a visiting ‘tinkler’ would actually tarry to the ‘wipe
the seatie’.
The organisation was managed by a
nice chap called Ray. If South Manchester Health Authority could be thought of
as a foreign empire, then someone had seen fit to banish Ray to an outpost where
he could do little harm. Ray’s preoccupations in the absence of any meaningful
decision-making became more and more domestic – which felt apt in what had
been, and still felt like, a house. I accidentally fused the building by inserting
a fork into the toaster in the basement kitchen. Ray appeared in the dimly lit
kitchen holding his cigarette lighter in front of him. He had the look of an
old family retainer who was disappointed by the actions of a guest who had
failed to understand the workings of the house.
I realised that Ray really didn’t
have enough to do when he conducted an investigation into the ownership of an
unflushable stool in the male toilet. Each male member of staff was summoned to
his office. In my case, this involved Ray calling the switchboard in the old
parlour to ask the receptionist to send up the ‘one who can’t work the toaster’
who works in the old dining room. She shouted through from the old parlour with
her hand over the receiver.
I noticed a paperclip on the
carpet as I entered Ray’s office. I bent to retrieve it.
‘Leave that there,’ he said. ‘That’s
been there for a week now. That ‘cleaner’ Alma has been too busy talking to
spot that. Anyway, that’s not why you’re here.’
I awaited something momentous. The
possibilities were:
- a dressing-down for the toaster incident.
- a rebuke for not keeping a straight face when Ray lost a filling for a week and whistled when he spoke
- admonishment for isolating the most innuendo-strewn patient record card I could find and keeping it in a special drawer for my own amusement on slow days (a Mr Newdick who really lived on Knob Hall Gardens, God rest him)
'Now, young man,’ my boss began
with great import.
‘This is serious. Was that you? That thing in the
gents’?’
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