Parking monitors

Today I decided that I would make a small scale attempt at emulating Arachne. I was intrigued by and admired her persistence with a weekly photo of a park at the same time each Tuesday from the same position. I liked seeing the changes throughout the year, and feeling that I knew this place.

I arrive at the inpatient unit early enough on a Monday morning to review the electronic records of patients who have been admitted since Friday afternoon, before the post weekend "hand over" meeting at 0830. This morning when I went into the staff tea room to make my morning plunger full of coffee (I get two mugs of coffee from this plunger, which I believe is called a coffee press in other places), I was attracted by the reflections in Pupuke Moana (Lake Pupuke) and took a photo through the window.

In the foreground are three staff members whose job it is to manage the traffic into and in the parking areas and parking building. There are others. This morning, however, these three were checking as to whether staff have parked in the right places. They have just left an area set aside for the resident doctors who are working a long day (i.e. from 0800 to 2300). Any one not authorised to park there, or in any of the other specially designated areas, was to be towed instantly.

They weren't popular in the unit as many of our staff do "bend the rules"; they had to leave quickly to shift their cars, before the monitors got to outside our unit.