These last few years have been tough but as patients and the tabloids keep telling us, you can’t blame everything on something as minor as a global pandemic.
With regard to the issue I’m currently experiencing, I tend to agree with them. This issue has been around FOR YEARS.
I’ve given up on this particular problem because there’s nothing that can be done. NOTHING.
Some clever clogs out there might tell me different (yes, you with the ‘Outstanding’ CQC inspection), but unless I see some proof, I cannot and will not believe this matter is solvable.
Sometimes one has to accept there isn’t an answer to every problem.
I did think some years ago that I was making progress but, alas, a few weeks passed and the issue arose again.
So here I am, facing the problem head on. Again wondering where it’s all gone wrong and how, after all these years as an experienced practice manager, I’m still unable to find the solution to this problem.
I sit in the kitchen, staring at my bowl of celery soup (it’s a new year; everyone’s on a diet, aren’t they?) and wondering – HOW ON EARTH AM I GOING TO EAT THIS SOUP because THERE ARE NO SPOONS. ANYWHERE. NO SPOONS.
Where do they go? The spoons? Where?
What do they do with them? Steal them? Eat them? Throw them away? Play music with them? Turn them into Christmas tree ornaments?
One day they are there, the next day they are gone.
I’ve worked in three practices and all three practices run out of spoons over a period of a few months.
People bring in their own spoons to work now.
Let me repeat that.
PEOPLE BRING IN THEIR OWN SPOONS TO WORK!
I sit here attempting to eat my soup with the only utensil I can find that remotely looks like a spoon – a spatula.
Honestly, I think Practice Index need to add this to their risk assessment. Eating soup without the proper equipment (said spoon) could have grave implications such as spillage, scalding and looking like a complete fool.
Is Spoongate a thing at your practice?
PM Polly
February 3, 2023 at 7:50 am
Haha! I literally posted this the other day on our main practice Teams channel – albeit about forks.
Cutlery
We seem to have a cutlery issue. We have about 5 forks and about 15000 knives. If you have accidentally taken any forks home in your pack up box can you bring them back please. Don’t really want to keep buying them!
Ta.
February 3, 2023 at 8:05 am
So true!!
February 3, 2023 at 8:37 am
And I thought it was just a problem at our practice 🙂 I had soup the other day and the only utensil left was a fork 🙂
February 3, 2023 at 8:38 am
We have this with teaspoons and forks. No idea where they go, they just disappear. Maybe every person should be given 1 spoon and 1 fork with their name engraved so they take responsibility for their own cutlery. I do often feel like I’m at school, I just don’t know if it’s primary or secondary 🙂
February 3, 2023 at 8:56 am
I keep spare spoons hidden away and then like the magicians PMs are I can replenish the stock. I can’t empathize with your soup spoon issue, but when it comes to teaspoons I can. We’ve purchased 40 in the last 12/12 and I send out a messages advising we are having a teaspoon amnesty – that sometimes yields results.
February 3, 2023 at 9:11 am
That’s hilarious @Polly. I’ve also experienced this phenomena. However, in sunny Herefordshire, this also seems to apply to forks! If anyone has any tips, I’d be pleased to hear them!
February 3, 2023 at 9:15 am
Yes …… YES! Why is that? I thought it was just me. We do have spoons so not resorted to other kitchen utensils yet, but they are so small they must have been left for the fairies to use after gremlins have stolen all the big ones. 100 scoops of the two or three coffee grounds that can fit in the dolls house cutlery please!
February 3, 2023 at 9:33 am
Spoongate and forkgate in these parts.
February 3, 2023 at 9:58 am
Not just spoons at our practices. All cutlery disappears (apart from that long serrated knife with two prongs on the end) If its not finger food, you cant eat it!!
February 3, 2023 at 10:16 am
Our forks are the regular runaways here. Maybe they are living it up somewhere with your spoons?!
February 3, 2023 at 10:31 am
This is brilliant. And sooooo true. Except it’s more forkgate with us. Drives me insane. Where do they go? Where? Gone undercover with pens. Pens! That’s another one.
February 3, 2023 at 10:33 am
It’s Forkgate in our practice – so very definitely a “thing”!
I regularly trawl GP drawers, cupboards and visit bags, you’d be amazed at what you find!
February 3, 2023 at 10:57 am
Absolutely – exactly the same. We’ve even bought very distinctive cutlery with coloured handles – so if you bring it home you can see that it doesn’t match your home cutlery and needs to go back to work. But that hasn’t helped. Nothing helps. We all bring our own cutlery now.
February 3, 2023 at 11:21 am
Lol! ! One of our lovely nurses brought in a set of unwanted cutlery so we are ok again for now…but not sure for how long!! I am someone who has their own spoon tucked away in my desk drawer.
February 3, 2023 at 11:31 am
This made me laugh!
Spoongate, plategate, forkgate etc…. happens here.
So common that one of our GP partners who was retiring bought the practice a 24 piece spoon set as a leaving gift! 🙂
February 3, 2023 at 11:54 am
Giggle – same issue all the way round. I now buy spoons on a regular cycle every 2 months with my grocery shop… crazy times!
February 3, 2023 at 12:02 pm
Spoons we have plenty of – in fact we might even have yours as there seems to be more spoons every time I open the drawer. They are literally multiplying overnight. We have big spoons, soup spoons, tea spoons and a tiny spoon too small even for a child?
But where are the forks????
Currently there are no forks at work, NONE but then I have also noticed a shortage of forks at home now too.
What is going on???
Where are my forksssssssssss
February 3, 2023 at 1:11 pm
LOL- spoongate is happening in most practices
February 4, 2023 at 12:37 pm
Oh yes! Where I worked the Spoons would vanish one by one, then after a while about 90% would reappear as if by magic in the dishwasher one day. Maybe they’d been on a trip to Button Moon………
February 6, 2023 at 12:34 pm
I tried to solve this by purchasing stirring sticks for coffee (the sort used by Costa and Starbucks) but we must have have gone through a large tropical forest before I called time on that idea – as still the spoons vanished. Next I tried plastic spoons,you can get so many of these for your buck, but these just got chucked instead of washed so a week later, back to no spoons, you are right, its unsolvable.
February 7, 2023 at 11:14 am
This made me laugh, yes we have the same problem!