'Does anyone smell that?'

3.14.08
7:40 pm
The above question (spoken in broken, heavily accented English by an African nurse) is what has lead me to create the paragraph below.
I swear to you that this is true.
So.
You all know that I don't work in the best Health Care Facility in the World or even in New York City.
But seriously, there is a difference between "not the best" and "populated but goddamn inbred fucking idiots".
So.
I arrive today to find a message in my Inbox with the rules for smoking inside the Hospital attached.
I think nothing of it since it, like most of the messages in my Inbox, does not concern me.
I thought that maybe a resident had been caught smoking where they shouldn't have been or perhaps an employee was suspended for the same reason.
A little later, I was informed why each and every person with a mail box in the system received the same message.
A resident who was supposed to have "One to One" coverage (which means for each of the three 8-hour shifts that make up a workday, there is a professional- and I'm going to go with the dictionary definition which is one who receives monetary compensation for performing a service- nurse with that person) had accidentally set himself on fire.
Yes.
Instead of watching him and, hopefully, intervening, she merely commented, "Does anyone smell that?"
Turns out that yes, several people smelled that...and screamed...a lot.
The resident was moved to a better Hospital (actually a piss-stained cardboard box down the street, but a better Hospital nonetheless) but the nurse remains unpunished.
Why?
Because nurses will cover each others asses no matter how bad they fuck up.
Why?
Because each and every one of them is intelligent enough to know that they are stupid enough to fuck up massively enough to need their OWN ass covered and they are merely banking the good karma.
Like, imagine a spider web made by spiders who are cunning and have a strong sense of self preservation but are dumb as hammers with developmental disabilities.
These hammers are taking care of the infirm here at my place of business.
Anyway, the Admins decided that the best way to stop this from happening again was to send out an e-mail reminding people of the smoking policy and add an extra Security guard to the shifts to wander around from floor to floor and literally check to make sure that no one is on fire.
Honestly...I don't have anything else to say.
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Happy Pi Day