Nurse Follies: The Asshole

I'm a self-proclaimed asshole. I don't like bitch because it suggests that there is some sort of hormone that is influencing my behavior, and my life isn't governed by estrogen. No, I'm just a plain and simple, garden variety, asshole.

However, while I may be an asshole, I am an asshole with purpose. There's always a reason, something that needs done, or a point to be made. With great power, comes great responsibility. And I won't waste my talents on just anyone. If you are rude? I'm going to be an asshole. If you are an ignorant derp? Asshole. If you are mean to people for your own personal enjoyment? When I am done with you, you are going to think I am the genesis of assholery.

I mention this, because we have a frequent flyer patient who is also an asshole...but an asshole with no other purpose than to control people. Because of the nature of his illness, he can only come to my floor. Other floors will never experience his charming personality. There are no good qualities about him, and when we see his name on our patient list, a little part of us dies inside. Some people have openly wondered just when he's going to die. He's demanding, degrading, demeaning, insulting, abusive, makes staff members cry, openly hostile, controlling, and just an overall colossal douche.

In dealing with him through the ages, we guess that he has some sort of Borderline Personality Disorder, because no one person could be that evil just for fun. We've also mapped out his tactics and manipulations (all lies), which he switches seamlessly when staff doesn't cave to his terrorism.

Flattery: Oh! I remember you!! You're are my most absolute favorite nurse EVER!!! I even was telling my wife about you the other day. Now give me what I want.

Guilt: I'm a dying man!! I only have months to live! Honor a dying man's last request and give me what I want.

Baiting: You are the crappiest nurse on the planet! If you want to prove me wrong, you will give me what I want.

Fear: My brother's cousin's wife's roommate is on the board of directors for ACME Hospital. If you don't give me what I want, I will have you fired.

Playing Sides: The other doctor/nurse said I could, and it was okay. So, you can give me what I want, too.

Pastor Douche: The bible says that you need to treat all people with respect and Jesus Christ blah, blah, etc. If you were a good Christian, you would give me what I want because Jesus would.

Weaker or newly minted nurses, have been reduced to tears by this man. Everyone who has dealt with him longer have come up with new and creative ways of telling him to go fuck a goat. Figuratively speaking. I try to avoid him altogether because we'd get into yelling matches, which would draw an audience outside the door. Usually nurses, sometimes with popcorn. One time, when he used his entire arsenal and hit nothing but air, he told me that he was happy that I was going home in the morning.

"Trust me, sir." I said before marching out of his room, "No one could possibly be more happy about that than I am."

He's this way to everyone...doctors, nurses, management. There is nothing that can be done to shut him up, short of some anterior pillow therapy. Instead, we get pats on the back, sympathetic murmurs, and maybe a pizza party upon his discharge.

So, he just visits us often, makes our lives miserable for a week or so, then goes home. Lather, rinse, repeat.

During his last visit, when he realized that he was going to get no where with me, he flatly told me, "You're a bitch."

"Actually, sir, if you don't mind," I replied. "I prefer asshole."

Soapin' It Up Old School

Into the life of a homeowner, a little rain must fall. Mine came in the form of a crapped-out dishwasher. Initially, I had noticed a couple specs of whatever left on my dishes after a cycle. Then, I had noticed my dishes weren't getting oh-so-sparkly clean, and I would have to run a load of dishes through two cycles. Two cycles became three. This morning, I came home from work to a small swamp in the bottom of the dishwasher. It was then that I could no longer ignore the bitter truth.

I needed a new dishwasher.

I don't know what the hell I was thinking, that I could go to Home Depot and just bring home another one. No, you buy it at the store, and then they deliver it to your house later. In my case, Wednesday.

What the hell to do with the dirty dishes I already had??

I remember when I was a kid, I loved to do dishes. By hand. Mom would put a chair up to the sink for me to stand on, and I would happily wash away. She never let me wash the glass stuff...I was a klutz even then. After dishes were done, I was rewarded with a chunk of peppermint. I'm confident I was a hard wage negotiator even then.

For much of my formative years, dishes were done by hand. In those days, dishwashers were a huge luxury item. It wasn't until I moved into my first apartment, that I got to experience life with a dishwasher.

I have to say, I was smitten. I also have to say, that my first dishwasher was exactly the same kind as the one that came with my house. I should have known then that there was a turd residing in my kitchen.

So, I stopped by Wally World, picked up a drying rack, some sponges, and spent the remainder of the afternoon washing dishes by hand. My hands now look eighty years old.

I've had to postpone Pork Chop Tuesday, and I will probably be abstaining from any serious cooking until my new washing beastie is safety bolted into it's new home.

Thank God for paper plates.

On the opposite coin, I'm pretty stoked about the new dishwasher. I don't think I've been this excited in a while (since the arrival of the Keurig anyway). Some girls get excited with jewelry. Some with clothes. I damn near wet myself over kitchen appliances.

I'm so pathetic. But I shall be pathetic with clean dishes.

Screwed Over By Crackers and Cookies

If you read the business pages, you may recall something about a local pasta company being bought out by a large snack food company. My mother, works for the former, and has done so for almost a decade.

Chief Bosshole named Jack, who has a long history of selling companies he happens to be running at the time, pioneered the sale to said snack food company, who was ran by his bff. Their wives are good friends, too. Which made people wonder if this was something that he had intended when he first took over the helm of the pasta company.

When the news broke earlier this summer, Chief Bosshole Jack assured the worker bees that their jobs were safe for at least a year after the sale was finalized.

Recently, Mother was told that she would no longer have a job after the end of the year. Her, and about 20 others (and that list keeps growing), including higher ups who put blood, sweat, and tears into the company were "let go". Some of these people, award-winning businessmen, and one award-winning chef.

Mother was, and is, devastated.

Since getting the news, Crappy Cookies and Crackers Company has moved those axed higher ups to some cube farm in the same building, the replacements of their choosing already making themselves at home in the new posh offices. To pour salt on fresh wounds, Mother and others in her particular area, will have to train their own replacements. They also have to sign an agreement stating that they have to tow the line, and not say bad things about CCCC, lest they risk losing their severance package...one week's pay for every year of service, payable one week at a time.

And Chief Bosshole Jack? Oh, he's not staying with the company either. But he's walking away with $19 million. I don't suppose he'd care to share that with the people he just fucked in the ass without so much as a kiss? Probably not. He'll just move onto the next company, like a parasite, and fuck them over as well. Because he is also a chickenshit, he's been on vacation since news of the cuts have been made so he doesn't have to face the people he screwed over, most of them being let go right around the Christmas holiday season.

I like my employer, but I'm not a cheerleader of my job. Oh, you know the types...they are loyal servants of the master who signs their paycheck with the false impression that their company considers them as part of the family. When truth is, you are part of the family only when it's convenient for you to be. People who get let go from their jobs are left shocked. They can't fathom how their own family would boot them out. You are a valued team member, until you're not. At the end of the day, they are running a business, and they have to look out for number one.

I once read that the generations below me don't exhibit loyalty in the the companies they work for, which may explain why they job hop. I have to say, when I applied to work at ACME Hospital, the nurse recruiter's eyes damn near popped out of her head when she had seen that I spent at least five years with previous employers. Nowadays, two years is considered tenure. Older generations scoff at this ambivalent attitude, but maybe they are onto something. If you don't put your heart into your work, then you never run the risk of getting it broken.

As for Mother, I hope she is able to find another job before her time is up at Crappy Cookies and Crackers Co. Then, she can give them the finger and they can train their own damn replacements. If I was a millionaire. I'd tell her to quit tomorrow and then I would pay for a full page ad in the Kansas City Star, telling CCCC to go fuck themselves with a splintery log full of termites.

Meanwhile, I'm boycotting all products made by Crappy Cookies and Crackers Co, in addition to their new pasta acquisition. Stupid, I know. My paltry dollars wouldn't even cause a blip on their radar, but at least I know my money isn't going to a company that blatantly lies and fucks over the little guy.

GB Accosted by Palin-Americans

It's was an odd weekend.

First, a lady flips her shit because I have to look at her husband's peener, and possible touch it. Did I mention that both the patient and the wife are in their 70's? Did I also mention that this was part of my physical assessment that I do to all my patients, especially if they have a foley catheter? It did no use explaining why I needed to do it, the old lady is batshit crazy. She's insanely jealous and thinks us young, cute (and a couple pregnant) nurses are after her man. Her old, wrinkly, coughing, wheezing, confused man. At least I wasn't the poor nurse who had to place the catheter in the first place. I'm told the wife went off the deep end and called that nurse every name in the book. The daughter-in-law assures us that she has been called the same names as well.

Secondly, I was on my way home from work this morning when I realized I needed gas in the tank. So, I stop by QuikTrip. Just get gas and go home to my nice, comfy bed...maybe a delicious cup of decaf coffee before I do. I pull in, get a vacant pump, and do the routine gas-pump thing when and older gentleman on the other side of the pump engages me in conversation. Whatever. I'm in my scrubs, and most people deem nurses as safe to talk to.

He begins by talking about the weather, because what else is he going to talk to me about, besides his hemorrhoids, or some weird spot on his shoulder and would I take a look at it?

Being polite, I also respond in kind about the weather, because I really don't want to know about his hemorrhoids. Then it comes, completely out of left field, sounding like a question I would have got had I been on a speech and debate team in high school.

"What do you think about Pakistan blah, blah, blah. Afghanistan blah, blah, blah. And them wanting to put a mosque two blocks away from The World Trade Center?"

This, of course, is a loaded question. I am, after all, in Teabag Country. I think I would have preferred the hemorrhoids.

I shrug. State something to the effect that I don't care where they want to put their mosque. Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say. Old Fart got all butthurt about it.

"It's a bunch of shit!" he exclaimed. I just stared at him, the corners of my mouth yearning to stretch upward in a big grin that can only precede me laughing hysterically at you for being retarded.

"I've been around the world and blah, blah, blah. And used to work blah, blah, blah. And I knew some of them and if you think they love you, you're out of your mind. Because they don't!" Then, he procded to stomp off to go get a donut and some coffee. Or some Ex-Lax because, obviously, he was full of shit.

Had I been on my A-game, I would have played along and agreed with him, and then taken him down the path that would have led him to scream out his fervor for Sarah Palin right there in the parking lot.

Truth be told, I really don't care about the location of a mosque, but I know the corn-holing, Palin-American, Teabag demographic is all butthurt over it. These fucktards, some of them high-ranking politicians, can't be bothered to learn the difference between a splinter group, and a mainstream religion.

Warren Jeffs married children off to pedophiles in the name of God, but that doesn't mean that the entire LDS church celebrates the deflowering of 13 year old girls by 60-something year old men after church on Sunday.

I'm convinced that the majority of the population are retarded, or as I like to refer to as, Palin-American. Those who use intellect and common sense to make their own decisions, not based on fear-mongering, are in the minority. Smart people, it would seem, are an endangered species.

This country was founded on religious freedom. Some people today would tout that, but only if that religion was Christian-based. Putting a mosque near Ground Zero is no more offensive than putting a Synagogue or a Buddhist temple or a Church of the Divine Orgasm in the same place.

I could get behind a Church of the Divine Orgasm. Orgy immediately following the potluck dinner on Wednesdays.

A New Love Affair

I'm in love! And this just isn't some passing fancy. I never knew it could happen to me, this way. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision that has made me deliriously happy. A relationship that will last until the end of time.

Of course, I am talking about my new mini Keurig coffee maker.

I've always wanted one, and I've balked at the price. However, it wasn't until I was going to make some coffee for visiting friends and discovered the inside of my seldom-used coffee maker was gross, that I seriously started thinking of getting one.

I like coffee, but I end up wasting a whole pot when I make it,  because I maybe end up drinking one cup. With a Keurig, I can make and drink one cup at a time, as I want it, in varying flavors and varieties. It can make hot cocoa and tea. Even iced tea. ~sigh~

I love this coffee maker. I want to have babies with it. This coffee maker ranks as my second-most favorite appliance in my house. We won't discuss the first.

It's the beginning of a passionate, and long-term relationship.