Tips for Surviving Nightshift #3: Food is Key - Get your Grub On!

One of the things I learned early in my time of working nights is that no urban area food dessert holds a candle to a hospital on a weekend at 2am. Everything is shut down. All the places that deliver have stopped delivering. All your friends who love you enough to deliver a desperation sandwich under normal circumstances are too asleep or too partied out to bring you takeout from someplace that happens to be open. It is in the moments you discover how many ways you can eat graham crackers, peanut butter, apple sauce, saltines, ice cream, milk and low sodium chicken broth. I guarantee there are more than you can image. I have become a master of the hospital vending machines...which ones work, which ones usually have the best snacks and which ones to avoid. Tip...never, ever, under ANY circumstance touch the egg salad sandwich in the machine. You and your co-workers will suffer. Just don't do it. Drink more broth and crackers.


When and if you think about food early enough to order food for delivery, make sure you have cash, preferably exact or nearly exact change. Otherwise you will end up footing the bill for the floor because if you order you have to ask everyone. That is etiquette. Or your nice warm burrito waiting for you while you clean up a Code Brown may not be there untouuched when you return.

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