IF YOU’RE HAPPY AND YOU KNOW IT: Talk is cheap, and so is applause. So in lieu of a decent pay rise, nurses will in future be able to access their claps at ATMs everywhere.
This latest stroke of genius is the work of Matt Hancock’s office. The principle is simple. You insert your card as usual. Then select the quantity of applause you desire. The machine will applaud you as long as you have enough clap credit.
The machines will be developed by a chap who drinks at Hancock’s local, the Cock Up. An endless supply of cash has been promised to him, which is why the government can’t award any more money to the NHS.
Nurses are of course overjoyed. “To be honest, this matters more than money to me,” boasted suspicious Twitter account @FayeKingitt. “I’m happy to work for nothing, and so are all my friends, so long as the applause keeps coming! See you on the wards!”
There was a pile-on, but before @FayeKingitt could reply, she somehow deleted her account. But suspiciously similar messages appeared from suspiciously similar accounts. So that’s all good and genuine, then.
Some supermarkets are helping out. Special “Nurses only” shopping hours are offered after normal closing time, so that nurses may buy up all the cheap out-of-date food that would have gone in the skip anyway. Store managers will take it in turns to applaud the exhausted shoppers, claiming overtime for it of course.
As a special bonus, shops have agreed to raise the price of nurses’ food by no more than 2.1%.
The machines will be installed by the Serco track & trace team. This is down to their world beating success at extracting huge sums of public money on a vague promise to ‘do something useful with it’.
The applause dispensers will cease operation when compassion fatigue sets in.