After weeks of fighting the good fight for better working conditions, the New York City nurses’ strike has ended due to the death of every single one of their patients. Despite this, the mood in most hospitals is jovial—streamers, champagne corks, and party hats cover eerily empty hospital beds;many nurses lie in the recently vacated beds hooked up to their ex-patients liquid-IVs, recovering from the raucous celebration of their freedom.
“I feel so much like a doctor now,” one nurse said. “Becuase, like, I’m getting paid more, but all I do now is sit around.”
At Columbia, opinion on the strike’s conclusion seems pretty universal. “I’m just glad I can finally fucking sleep in past 7 AM again,” one John Jay resident confided to Spectador. “I mean, I supported their cause, but I support getting my 8 hours even more. Duh. They’re the ones that tell me it’s good for my health.”
But outside the university, opinions have proved to be more mixed. Those with investments in the bright red poncho industry, for example, are devastated to have lost every single one of their customers in one fell swoop.
The blame for the mass casualties, it seems, falls squarely on the hospitals themselves. Though they were advised to pay travelling nurses to care for their patients during the strike, most hospitals, believing this meant giving their nurses paid travel-leave, responded with “Go back to Canada you leaf-licking communist.” Luckily, the nurses are returning to work in time to care for the inevitable droves of Columbia students that will be trudging to their doors post-Bacchanal.
