Storing Up Problems I never fail to be amazed by bureaucracy's constant attempts to take over the world.

Recently, the ward got a big, bright, clean storeroom, replacing several smaller storage areas. Very nice, and very confusing, as everything had moved and autopilot no longer found what you needed.

But we were getting used to it, when our Stores Top Up Man went on holiday.

The stand-in guy couldn't find where to put some things, and, er, didn't bother. So we ran out of stuff. Unsurprisingly, Stand-In Guy didn't want to be blamed, and voiced his anger and frustration that items weren't stored in the order dictated by his catalog. His boss, of course, agreed.

We suggested (equally unsurprisingly), that we didn't think the catalog order was necessarily right for us, the users. One nice example is IV device dressings; the catalog, like the Drug Tariff, wanted to place these dressings with all the other dressings; we, inexplicably (duh!), wanted to place them adjacent to the IV devices.

Following the shouting matches, we've now moved on, like mature professionals, to a three hour meeting, with at least four people. So twelve hours of expensive professional time ... this one will run and run ...  ¶ 10:30