63 Crayons

We are all touched with the ‘special stick’ here at work.

And (for whatever reason) Thursdays seem to bring the crazy out of us the most. Probably because it’s Friday Eve. 

Whatever the reasonings are, one thing is certain: it takes a “special” kind of person to make it in our workplace. Normal just doesn’t make the cut here. Probably because any person in their right mind would take one look at this place and the people working in it and run for the hills. 

Today has been no exception, in fact it has been exceptionally abnormal, so much so that a lovely co-worker of mine pointed out (in a matter-of-fact tone):

“If we were in band together, our band name would be 63 Crayons“

That’s right folks- we are “that” kind- One crayon short for the 64 crayon box.

Not sure what’s worse-that it might actually be true or that I kind of like it; it’s clever and has a good ring to it…

Body Depot

Sometimes I wonder if I work at a glorified Home Depot.

No seriously, we get people calling our office and coming to our clinic to ask for the most
random things.

1- toilet wand. I guess they think we are in the plumbing business as well???
2-butt pillow. Eh I guess it couldn’t hurt to ask, we do provide the occasional butt prosthesis after all. No lie.
AND #3: My fav- penis pump. Seriously people ?!?! This is not the male erectile-dysfunction clinic, nor are we an as-seen-on-tv store. I guess they figure we make sound limbs where they are lacking (aka: gone) so maybe we are in the erecting-appendages business as well???

We should rename our clinic- Body Depot- The shop for ALL your bodily-needs.

Chilly days, shorts and inappropriate comments.

I have a knack for saying inappropriate things, of which I find to be funny. I am also the dorky gal who laughs loudly at corny jokes.

Case and point:

Just the other day, one of our bilateral prosthetic patients came in for an appointment. It was a particularly chilly day. He came in with shorts on and when he checked in at the front desk I greeted him by saying “Well hello Mr. Jones, it is always a pleasure seeing you, but why in the world did you wear shorts? Don’t you know it’s cold outside? You are going to freeze your legs off!!!!!”

Before you ask, YES I did actually say that to the bilateral amputee patient. I am not sure what’s worse- that I actually said that out loud or that I was the one laughing the most and the loudest. 

I am starting to think I need to wear a muzzle. 

Mindless

I always knew I had “open-mouth-insert-foot” syndrome, but sometimes even I surprise myself by the things I say. I don’t know what to do with myself, I have pretty much resigned in myself the known fact that my unadulterated tongue (and slightly weird sense of humor) can land me in pretty embarrassing situations. But what can ya do, right???

I went and said something that I thought would be funny, but ended up just making me sound like a completely hell-worthy terrible person-nothing new there-and here’s the kicker: I said this ill-timed “joke” of mine in front of a patient!!! Yeah, I’m not one who is known for my impeccable timing…

It was mid-morning and the fire alarm drill went off. Everyone in my clinic completely ignored it, nothing unusual there, and kept on working away. (Since we have a door directly to the outside, we do not usually participate in the numerous fire drills that randomly go off). We do not sense a threat until we smell smoke or see fire (which is not what they teach you in school), then of course we would grab our valuables and our patients (yes, in that order- don’t judge) and scram out of the building. But during this particular fire drill (as with all the rest) there was no smoke nor fire, so it was ignore the sounding alarms and keep our noses to the grind and work. 

Our courier service that was trying to get out of our “hole-in-the-wall-alleyway-excuse-for-a-parking-lot” came in to complain that he couldn’t back out because there was a wall of people standing in the way of him backing out. Nothing new there-at this point we could all add “parking police” to our job description for the amount of time we spend attending to complaints and situations in our parking lot. Running on my mindless bantering autopilot, I immediately replied: 

“Eh, just run ’em over. You can get us some new prosthetic patients. It’s a win all around.” 

Would you think of me any less (than you already do), knowing that I was pretty proud of myself for coming up with that off-the-cuff?

I got the touch-I’m witty AND funny! HA

Oh, wait. Why am I the only one laughing? Why is everyone staring at me in disbelief???

Oh god. I just said that in front of a prosthetic patient….

I just want to crawl under the desk and pretend I was never here…

 

I swear my big, loud mouth, mixed with my inability to think before I speak, is going to be the basis of my undoing one of these days. 

 

Meet the New Girl “Debbie-Downer”

This new girl thing is for the birds.

As in fly away to somewhere other than here, you are cuckoo and need to find a cuckoo’s nest to settle your ruffled feathers .

I am not sure who does the hiring  for this lovely place of establishment but they sure do know how to pick “winners”. To be sure we all have our little quirks about us that help make this place a dysfunctional workplace family. But you have to earn your right to be crazy around here, and this cuckoo came in from day one letting it all hang out (the good, bad, ugly, personal, psychotic, deranged, all the crazy).

Here is her first week in a nutshell (pun intended):

Day 1: We meet for the first time. After barely getting out the niceties from a first-time introduction new-girl starts delving into her personal history of tragedy. She gave us the impression that this tragedy happened within the last year, but later on we learned it happened to her over 10 years ago!

As if telling us her sad sob story wasn’t enough information for our first meeting, new girl starts telling us all about her personal life and relationships and her issues with her current fiance’.

At this point, a red flag is going off in my head. No normal and well-adapted person spills all their personal information to someone whom they just met. Not to mention a normal person portrays an excellent persona during their first day of a new job- they definitely do no squall about all the negative things going on in their personal life. This is work- be professional- leave your personal life at home.

Day2:  New girl strolls in all late and flustered. (I sense a trend occurring here). Today seems to start out as a repeat of yesterday. Same babbling, same stories about all her issues. She spends the majority of the day focusing on her issues and saying how she is “not okay” and she is a “mess”. She apologizes incessantly, saying that she is not normally like this (I think to myself “yeah right” but put on a nice face for her nonetheless).

When she is not talking about her current issues, she is constantly butting in everyone’s small-talk. (Which is very rude, extremely annoying and shows a lack of social skills). New girl seems to have a knack for “one-upping” with her bad experiences. So from here on out she will no longer be known as the new girl but as “Debbie-Downer” (WAH-WAH!)

My favorite Debbie-Downer moment is when Switch told us how her floor caved in last night and her fridge went through the floor. That’s a pretty crappy night if you ask me. Debbie-Downer was of course listening in on the conversation and inserts herself in saying “You think that’s bad? I’ve got ya beat. I just purchased a new refrigerator and the first 3 they delivered didn’t work! So all my food went bad, and I am waiting on them to deliver a fourth one!” (It was at the moment that I realized this woman is a complete idiot).

Day 3 & 4: Debbie-D comes in with a nasty hang-over. Alcohol stench on her breath, doused in heavy perfume to masquerade the cigarette smoke, eyes bloodshot and glazed over from lack of sleep and medicine consumption-the whole nine-yards. This is not a good look, especially for someone who works the front desk.

Both of these days, she can barely stay focused on one particular task, her above average sense of absent-mindedness seems to be heightened (probably from the alcohol, medication and lack of sleep). Myself and Debbie-Comic keep trying in vain to train her for this new acquired job of hers, but nothing seems to be sticking in that non-absorbent brain of hers.

Day 5: Debbie comes to work with a little more happiness to her demeanor than normal. Problem this time is she keeps apologizing incessantly about the way she has been acting and trying to say that is not normally how she is, she keeps throwing promises out that she will be better from here on out, we shall see…

Day 6: Debbie is still apologizing for her behavior, trying to convince us that her life is not always this bad, that if she can get over this bad patch she will be able to focus more on her work and that she will be a faster learner. So far, she has had to be re-trained on everything she is being taught because she cannot grasp how to complete her tasks properly.

Let’s see, it took her a whole days work to get through 3 charts!!! Hmm, we shall see about her being a fast learner…

Day 7: Debbie-D had a doctor’s appointment this morning so she did not arrive to work until 11:30am. Home girl was a hot mess! And here we come again, full-circle right back to the flustered mess she has been for the majority of the time she has worked here (all of 6 whole days). Again, she couldn’t focus on her work, she was busy trying to work out her personal issues and making personal phone calls.

Then she does the most illogical thing- she leaves work early. Normally when an employee is late to work they work late to make up for that, not leave early! Her reasoning was it had been a long and trying day and she needed to go home and regroup to be ready for tomorrow.

If I was a betting woman, I would bet on her not lasting 3 weeks… WAIT scratch that- it is day 8 and she just got fired…

Now back to square one, time to find another hire for the front desk position. Hopefully this one will last (and not suck). Oh, why did Georgia have to leave us, she was a perfect fit, I miss her more and more (especially when another crazy person interviews to fill her position).

What is it about this place that attracts all the crazies?

A priest and a rabbi

There was a junkie, a drug dealer and a homeless person. Kind of sounds like the priest and the rabbi joke, but there is no joke to be found here, this was our waiting room this morning. I have always said that our hospital is like the Walmart of all hospitals-it attracts all the weird people and difficult cases. It adds an element of surprise to my work (if nothing else) because I never know what or who is going to walk through our doors. Come to think of it, I should be scared for my life, with all the craziness going on and all the weirdos wandering around the planet (of which I am positive there is a highly concentrated population of around me). We have a running joke around the office that one day we are going to get a patient who finally snaps (most likely a VA patient) and is going to hold us all hostage at gunpoint until he gets his shoes. The more I think about it, the less funny it becomes because the probability of that actually occurring climbs higher with each full moon. The one thing I am certain of is I do not want to die in this hell-hole-dungeon they call our office. Please God, keep us safe to see the craziness that tomorrow is sure to bring and keep our perspectives in check so we can appreciate the humor in the day.

Grace is NOT my middle name

Well I fell out of my chair today…again. This makes it twice (witnessed anyway, shhh) that I have managed to have a stationary chair come out from under me. I’m starting to think it might be a good idea to start wearing that ugly protective helmet my coworkers made me last time this happened (refer to previous post: Helmet Head). To make the already humbling experience worse, I yet again fell out of my chair in front of another one of our young male practitioners. If we had office superlatives I would win hands down for the office’s most clumsy. The only redeeming quality to this whole embarrassing rerun is this time I was in much better shape and I was able to catch myself on the desk and hold my body weight up with my arms, it was kind of a big deal. For a moment there I forgot about my clumsy chair fiasco and it was just me balancing all my weight with my arms. I kind of let the moment linger too long until my coworker snapped me back to reality stating his obvious suggestion of “I think you need to wear that helmet we made for you.” Duh! Douche. You are clearly just jealous because I am stronger than you.

Calling in Sick

This pretty much sums up my feelings after every Wednesday:

And then once I have used up all my sick days, I am going to use this:

Sounds like a good plan to me.

Home Trainin’

“Some people ain’t go no home trainin’ “

Home Trainin’ : What your mama gave you when she taught you table manners and social etiquette and showed you how to behave yourself in public. Learned behavior that comes in very useful once you hit adulthood.

THEREFORE:

NO Home Trainin’ is lacking home taught manners and social etiquette;

My Influencing Masochist Coworker

I have got a wild hair up my butt (and not literally, figuratively speaking). I have allowed my coworker (whom we will call “Georgia”) to influence me into making a decision I thought I would never agree to: getting a Brazilian wax. I didn’t even do this when I got married and swore to myself I would never put myself through that kind of pain. And yet, here I sit hours away from what’s sure to be at the least an unpleasant experience if not extremely painful. I am beginning to wonder if all the crazy people I work with have rubbed off on me and turned me into a crazy. On a moment of sheer impulse I let Georgia talk me into having a “girls night”, of which her definition is going to dinner and getting Brazilian waxes (how and why she includes this torture in her definition of a girls night I may never understand). Now that I have had a night to think this decision over, I am getting more and more nervous, but I don’t want to chicken out (I can’t be a titty baby). I mean how bad can it be, I have had my nose pierced (and got my nose ring stuck around a huge booger), waxed my eyebrows and upper lip (numerous times) and been to the gyno (which is uncomfortable to say the least)- why not tack going to a salon to bare my girl parts to some stranger (in a lying-down Indian position while she rips the hair from my sensitive parts in huge strips)? I have asked a couple of my girlfriends their opinions and have received some pretty humorous responses:

I can always count on my girls to make me laugh if nothing else. I will carry their texts with me in hopes to laugh when I really want to scream out in pain. On the other hand, this is not the first time Georgia has done this, so how bad can it be? Surely she wouldn’t willingly put herself through that again if it was really all THAT bad…right?…unless she is a masochist….I guess I will find out soon enough.