Keeping with longstanding tradition, med-surg dayshift nurses consumed all the break room cake except for half of a slice.
“Thank you to all the doctors and the nurses on both day and night shift who took such good care of my husband. He received phenomenal care around the clock!” read the note taped to the top of the cake box.
“No. Leave that there. That’s for night shift” instructed charge nurse Debbie when new grad Hank peek inside the cake box toward the end of day shift, valiantly passing on her shift etiquette wisdom with the next generation.
“Shouldn’t we have left them half the cake?” he asked, flaunting his naivety.
“Night shift doesn’t need cake as much as we do,” she replied. “Their patients are sleeping all night. They have time to bake a whole cake or heck even leave to buy a cake with their ridiculous differential. We can barely afford food.”
“Let me be clear,” Debbie explained to Gomerblog. “We didn’t even eat the other half of that cake. It was launched right into the trash can. The amount we left for them is symbolic of their skill and contribution.”
Night shift nurse Jose, who just arrived for his shift, could not be reached for comment because his mouth was full of the sliver of cake to bolus the fuel required to handle the inevitable crises that will occur with less resources in the middle of the night.
At press time, as the sun rose to illuminate a shift that just endured sundowning rampages and STAT medications without pharmacy, night shift nurse Lisa, a flicker of madness in her eye, was seen carefully scraping the frosting off the last donut in the box just in time for day shift to arrive.
