"It's our Job"

 

The 2003 film Boudica- Warrior Queen is one I can't watch too often because it will give me one of my legendary "Boudica moments"; and I can't keep having those. It's worth seeing though, even if you only do so once. It's a very good dramatization of one of the most significant events in history, one that changed the entire course of Britain's future, or even maybe that of the whole world. The reasons why I think this are complicated, but they're all in the background link below. One of the best aspects of the film is Michael Feast's performance as the Roman general Gaius Suetonius Paulinus. Not very much is known about Suetonius outside of the facts reported by the historian Tacitus, that he led the military response to Boudica's rebellion; but in the movie he is given a very interesting personality. He does his duty for Rome like any other good legionary, but privately he is filled with guilt, self-doubt and sympathy for his enemy. There's a scene in the evening just before the Battle of Watling Street where Suetonius is talking to his aide-de-camp and the following conversation takes place:
SUETONIUS: What a primitive way of settling disputes. All that slaughter. Better to toss a coin then we could all go home.
AIDE: And you and I would be looking for employment, sir.
SUETONIUS: Good. I'd like to learn to build a straight wall. (Chuckles) Look at them. They're fighting this war to save their people, to keep the right to their own land, to preserve their religion and the right to practice it; and we're fighting it because... we're here and it's our job and... Professional pride really. It's not enough is it?... I'll turn in now." (Both men stand)
AIDE: Goodnight, sir. And a glorious victory for the emperor tomorrow!
SUETONIUS: (Over his shoulder, cynically) Hmm. Quite.
Source: https://youtu.be/YNF7WGQYmd0?si=0qm6muxGruzrIOHA&t=4854.

What's interesting about this dialogue that it reminds me very much of the general difference between management and the healthcare providers, both hospital portering and civilian. People who get into medicine, nursing and other PAM's often do so out of passion. Their work becomes a part of themselves in every way, as I myself say here: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/01/its-not-job.html. People attracted to administration are very different. They tend to be very unscrupulous, not positively evil; just amoral, detached, indifferent. This is why it was so easy for me to predict which porters were most likely to be promoted. For them life is very simple. They do things, get things they like and avoid things they don't like. The kind of Hamlet-like introspection, dilemma and hesitation that I constantly experience is not only unknown to them; it is incomprehensible. There's a new phenomenon in popular psychology known as the "NPC", a computing term that stands for "non-player character". In a computer game an NPC is any character not controlled by a player and is instead generated and activated by the game's own program. The NPC therefore has no mind or personality. This has become a metaphor for a certain personality type, often illustrated by the Wojak meme with a simple line drawn face. NPC's are not to be confused with psychopaths. NPC's do have a conscience and can feel empathy, but they cannot act on it. This is because they have no internal thought dialogue and so are incapable of changing their minds about anything or generating an original action without an external mental stimulus. In the film, Suetonius jokes about building walls, but he is clearly in the wrong job. He forces himself to suppress his own conscience in order to function in the Roman army. I call these people "pseudo-psychopaths". He is clearly no NPC, but his aide-de-camp is. Managers can switch on and off their robotic nature depending on whether or not they are on duty, which is interesting. In the social club some of them behave like anybody else and are even good company. This makes it obvious that being robotic and mindless is not essential to running a hospital, even though many people will claim that it is. There's simply something about the modern healthcare system that seems to demand it of people. My own confrontation with this mindset was very revealing. It was in a strange way a bit like the Boudican revolt with myself on the side of the Britons, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/01/ten-years-on.html. This difference between myself and most other people I know could be the very reason I experience Boudica moments.
See here for more information: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2025/02/boudica-portal.html.

Patients Please!

 

Breaking news! During last night's Gas Spanner, see: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2025/09/the-gas-spanner-programme-133.html, somebody in the chatbox made me aware of something extraordinary. There is now a computer game based on hospital portering. I didn't believe him until I looked myself. The game is called Patients Please! and is a hospital portering simulator. It is for one to four players and the object of the game is to "satisfy each of the ridiculous hospital requirements, please the patients and make as much money as possible". It is being developed by a Scottish company called Damage State and appears to be out for crowdfunding. There is no need to ask whether or not I would donate! Source: https://ukgamesfund.com/funded-project/patients-please. The page doesn't give much information except a basic play description and the statement that it is a work in progress. The fund may have closed or has not yet opened; it's far from clear. I will naturally offer them my services as a consultant like I already have done for Hollywood, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2013/08/portering-hits-hollywood.html. That's all the information I can locate right now. I'll post an update as soon as I have more. Obviously I will be a very keen player and promoter of this game when it becomes available.

"Whatever!"

 

I've talked before about how my experiences in hospital portering have left me with a strange aversion to certain harmless words and phrases, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/01/how-dare-you.html and: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/01/well-take-it-from-here.html. Another of those is: "Whatever!" This was said to me by the evil-eyed Canadian person I mention in the background links. I can't recall the situation, but it was during the first few years of my service when I was in Delivery Suite. I was making this midwife aware of a serious situation in which an important tissue specimen had been thrown in the rubbish by mistake. It wasn't even thrown by her; it was an error made by her midwifery colleague. She waved her hand dismissively and growled: "Whatever, Ben!", as if annoyed that a porter had spotted a mistake made by a midwife, a superior one. A few weeks later it happened again; but this time it was much worse. An entire placenta had been discarded when they're supposed to put into a special container which I would take to a storage freezer. This time Stacey said in the same manner: "That's fine, Ben!"; and I feel the same repulsion at those words too. It says a lot about the NHS to know that this midwife ended up as a top Department of Health official. For all I know she is still there to this day; she is only a few years older than me and probably has yet to retire. A while ago I thought a time would eventually come when I would be able to put the trauma of my HPing life behind me. It is now obvious that this is not going to happen. I am never going to get over it. I will never be able to let go of the humiliation I suffered during those twenty-three years. I have been studying the publications of other people with experiences similar to my own, albeit in the civilian world, and I think the only option when you cannot overcome a painful memory is to perform a trick of spiritual alchemy, which is a phrase one of these people used. It's like being shot with a depleted uranium bullet which you cannot remove. It will sit there forever inside your body, poisoning your system. However, there is something you can do. Rather than trying over and over in vain to extract the bullet; find something that will transform that bullet into gold. Performing that miracle for myself and all readers is one of the prime objectives of the HPWA.

Power Handshakes

 

In my quest to educate My Extremely Proud and Dignified Brother and Sister Hospital Porters, along with anybody else who is interested, about Dignity Statements, I must once again remind you that the problems for which DigStates were invented are not always about what people say, but also what they do; and therefore so are the responses. There is a certain person I often bump into at events relevant to the other sub-franchises of HPANWO who seems to have a very high opinion of himself mixed with a very low opinion of me. Whenever I meet him he tries to give me a power handshake. This is a gesture that projects dominance over the person whose hand you're shaking. I remember many years ago, in my pre-portering teenage life, reading a book about body language that addressed this subject so even before I developed DigStates I was somewhat prepared for them. It's his way of saying: "I'm the Mr Bigshot here and you're my bitch." Luckily I got to know him many years after I utilized my disarming procedure and so he never got away with it against me, nor did anybody else. If you've had this experience then in your case it may be some arrogant consultant or, more likely for a HP, your head porter or somebody else in admin. This article here describes the situation very well and it actually repeats a lot of information that was in the book, see: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-get-out-of-a-dominating-handshake-2012-9. I have used this technique against the aforementioned consultants and managers, but I developed my own adaptations that are bit more extreme. In the case of my self-aggrandized woo-woo contact I do the same left-foot-forward ploy and coming at him with my palm pointed downwards, but I literally advance my hand from much higher, almost shoulder height, and bring it down on top of his; and I raise myself up, even standing slightly on my toes. This is a form of Dignity Statement that is as important as all the others. Serving with somebody every day, you'll probably got only one chance to use it with each person, when you first meet them, so it is vital to get the methodology right in advance and be prepared at all times. As you learn and grow in your HPing career you will no doubt adapt new tricks in your own way based on your personal experience. Please do post a comment and let me know what they are.

HP is Hyrox Champ

 

Hyrox is a sport I had never heard of before. It is a multi-disciplinary game that involves a series of physical challenges; running, pushing, pulling, rowing, jumping, lifting and carrying weights. It requires no serious skills and is primarily a test of strength and stamina. Anybody can play it and there is a broad array of participation categories around age and sex. It is quite a new sport, only invented in 2018, but it has become very popular. I'm delighted to tell you that a hospital porter has become one of the most successful Hyrox competitors of all. He has just broken the world record and won two medals. His prize is a golden kettlebell, an emblematic implement for the sport. David Ridout serves at the University Hospital Crosshouse near Kilmarnock, Scotland and travelled all the way to Chicago, USA for the Hyrox world championship. He finished top of his age category, which must be one of the oldest because he's seventy-five. He said: "I trained very hard for over a year so I could go out and do my best in Chicago. Hopefully by sharing my achievement this may inspire others to look at their options and challenge themselves to improve their health and wellbeing. If I can do it, anybody can." He was congratulated by his hospital management. Source: https://news.stv.tv/west-central/scots-hospital-porter-breaks-hyrox-world-record-at-75-years-old. The next tournament is in Glasgow, slightly closer to home, which I expect David will be taking part in. I salute my EP&DBP for his remarkable achievement. He has made this a great day for HP's everywhere. I wish my brother all the best for future Hyrox championships.

Unbreakable Rubber Balls

 

One of my favourite Dignity Statement Stories is a regular spot on The Gas Spanner, and it is one I save for a bit of Christmas goodwill because in this case the target later apologized to me, for example see: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2024/12/the-gas-spanner-programme-104.html. Another similar tale happened to me many years earlier when I was quite new to hospital portering. I on reception duty in JRI Maternity, later called the Women's Centre, when somebody approached the admissions desk next door to reception. The patient was clearly what is known as a "Karen", a very entitled female customer who is never satisfied with the service she receives. It quickly became apparent that she was very unhappy with the situation and began lambasting the two staff members serving her, a middle-aged woman and a young male trainee about my own age, his late teens. At one point when the trainee was speaking she jerked her finger at him and yelled, and I distinctly recall her exact words: "I'm talking to this lady here! I'm not dealing with you; you're too stupid!" He opened his mouth to reply, but the young man's supervisor cut him off: "Jonathan, let me deal with this." The young trainee got up and slumped off to the office. I thought at the time that I'd like to have seen the supervisor reprimand the patient for how the patient spoke to her colleague, but she didn't. Many times through the years I've been in a similar predicament and received no support from line management. Whether you do or not depends on your tacit subconscious status within the team and mine was always very low. A teenage admin junior is right at the bottom of the pile. A few minutes later the young man came out of the admissions office wearing his coat and walked off towards the entrance. He didn't say a word, but he was weeping. His supervisor called after him: "Jonathan, where are you going?" He didn't respond so she chased after him out of the hospital building. After a while she came back and said: "Sorry..." and continued the interview with the patient alone.

What was amazing about this whole debacle was that while the supervisor was running after the new recruit, obviously trying to persuade him to return, I was watching the Karen. There are several ways somebody like her will react to that eventuality. Most people will shrug their shoulders and double down on how they are being affronted, "the customer is always right" and that everything was the young man's own fault. He really is "stupid!" and deserved to be called so. A few of them, luckily a minority, will even smirk with sadistic satisfaction that they reduced somebody else to tears. This woman was different. What I saw in her expression was a look of shock, disbelief and self-reproach. This woman clearly had had no idea exactly how much of a bitch she was and when she suddenly realized, she hated herself for it. This is sadly an unusual response; most people lack the introspective consciousness to think in those terms. I think feminism has a lot to answer for here. It teaches woman that men... or to be specific: white men, occupy a place of unique evil among human demographies. Everything bad that happens in the world is our fault; therefore there is no code of conduct in their dealings with us. They can be as mean, deceitful and abusive at they like to us because we deserve it, each and every one of us, regardless of our own personal actions. What this incident taught me is that women who exhibit feminist cruelty are not all feminists; some of them are ordinary women who have come to believe another feminist lie; that if a woman is troubled by qualms and says things like: "Okay, we know they're all bastards, but we shouldn't be nasty to them all the time should we?" then there is a fallback position. This states that white men are all resilient enough to take whatever abuse an "oppressed!" "Woman!" can hurl at them. We are like unbreakable rubber balls on a squash court. No matter how many times you whack us against the wall we just bounce back unscathed. When they realize that this is not true, they suddenly find themselves staring at a pile of broken glass lying on the floor of the squash court realizing that what they ignorantly threw against the wall was actually a crystal goblet, and they've just destroyed it. The interview at the admissions desk continued and the ex-Karen lowered her voice from then on, but I still overheard her saying: "Is he going to be alright?... I really should apologize." I don't know what happened to that young trainee; I never saw him again. I assumed he decided ward clerking was not for him and started a different career. If so then I hope he fared better than he did at OxRad. I expect that the ex-Karen learned a lesson that day and didn't act so horribly ever again. The late comedian Robin Williams, somebody who wrestled with his own morale throughout his life, once put it very well: "Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind, always."
See here for more information: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2021/08/political-correctness-portal.html.

Chad is Fine

 

See here for essential background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2025/08/a-machine-shouldnt-speak-for-men.html.
I have an update on the above article I wrote the other day and it's very good news. It was found by a reader who told me about it in the comments. The love and solidarity shown to Chad Willoughby by the people of Taylorsville has triumphed over the heartless and mindless corporate bureaucracy that stripped him of his livelihood. The fundraiser raised US$6000 and that helped keep a roof over and food on for him and his family while he was unemployed, but I'm pleased to say another supermarket snapped him up very quickly. The grocery chain Harmons is a smaller institution than the global giant Walmart. It was founded in 1932 and has just twenty branches only in the state of Utah. They have given Chad a similar job as a cashier in their store in the nearby town of Sandy. Just like in the Taylorsville Walmart, he has quickly developed many admirers among the local residents who shop there. One of them, Candee Allred, organized a party for him in the shop's cafeteria. His customers cannot sing his praises loudly enough. They say he cheers them up whenever they're feeling down. No doubt this has increased the shop's popularity and therefore profit. His supervisor puts it very well: "His former employer's loss is definitely our gain." Source: https://www.sandyjournal.com/2022/01/03/380210/harmons-cashier-flourishes-in-his-job-and-gains-hundreds-of-neighborhood-fans. There are a lot of terrible things going on in the world right now and sometimes the evil seems overwhelming. It seems invincible, marching onwards with nothing and nobody willing and/or able to stop it. But we can stop it. The saga of Chad Willoughby proves that the light can defeat the darkness. (I will copy this article to HPANWO Voice because of the version of the background one I wrote there.)