I cannot believe the vitriol I am hearing, that people honestly think nhs clinical staff, especially those working in urgent or acute services, do not deserve a cup of tea and a mars bar. On a 12 or even 18 hour shift in A&E, when often there is barely time for a glass of water let alone a sit down and a cuppa, when they are doing everything they can with limited staffing, space, time, to save the lives of people you love, do you really begrudge your charity donation going towards food and drink?
As someone previously said, these staff members have paid for parking or transport to work, they pay inflated prices in the canteen or a vending machine (if they are lucking enough to have 5 minutes to do so) for anything food and drink they haven’t brought from home. They provide their own tea bags, milk, etc for the staff rooms. The kettle and microwave is often broken, the chairs are ripped, the cleaner has left so no ones emptied the bin for a week, something is broken but estates were called 3 weeks ago and still haven’t been.
They are working over their rota’d hours and so probably not being paid, perhaps because the next staff member is sick, late, quit, caught up with an emergency in the car park.
They owe thousands in student loans they took out to do this training.
They are not having a fucking cream tea like they are on holiday in Devon. They deserve a mars bar, or even a massage if they are damn lucky enough to find time to have one.
I know this was not the original point of the post but I could not walk away without sharing my absolute disgust at some of the comments I have read here about nhs staff getting any of the very small and very rare benefits that have been referenced.