The health service is increasingly pooling professional staff and putting them on rotas without any guarantee of work from one month to the next.
A note on a rota at one of its London branches said it was the responsibility of ill staff to find colleagues to cover shifts.
The ladies-in-waiting, appointed personally by the queen, accompany her on public engagements on a rota basis (they're the ones carrying the flowers and cards handed over by members of the crowd during walkabouts).
Having paired up, a male and female devise a rota: one sits on the eggs for up to five days, while the other walks back to the sea to feed.
Each mouse was placed separately on one lane of the rotating drum of an automated Rota Rod device (USB Rota Rod 'SOF-ENV-57X', MedAssociates, St Albans, VT, USA).
The clearest change has been the arrival of Mishal Husain last year, putting an end to criticism that only one of its rota of presenters, Sarah Montague, was a woman.
"The worst course on the US Open rota – by far," one of Europe's best-known golfers confided a few years ago in the privacy of a locker room chat.
The Postage Stamp is the shortest hole on the Open rota but also one of the most terrifying, especially when the wind is blowing, as McIlroy can attest to.
On one occasion he described how he almost found himself the eighth husband of a Tibetan woman: "I was nearly put on her nightly rota.
The team works on a rota basis, so I could be the duty officer responsible for our helpline, undertaking home visits, carrying out assessments during one of our introduction weeks or providing centre-based training.
