Take me to a Clinic
Half an hour left at work today, but we have been asked to come in Saturday, so I feel entitled to cut out early (mentally anyway). I have rehearsal tonight, and on Sunday – no rest for the weary! I wish I had some interesting job stories, but my job just isn’t that interesting. I guess I do get some funny requests sometimes – like the other day, when an employee walked in and demanded that I make him an appointment at a clinic. I call this employee my man-child – he has the social and survival skills of a 5 year old, yet he’s 7 times that age. It makes me somewhat ill to think about the fact that he has a teenaged kid for whom he is responsible . . . Anyway, so he waltzes in with a coke and a bag of chips, as per usual, holding the chips right up to his face so he can shovel them in his mouth in fistfuls. All the while he’s talking to me he’s spewing soggy chip crumbs around the room, and a couple of times the carbonation in the soda makes him fart. I feel like I’m in the middle ages here. So he’s talking with his mouth full, spitting crumbs, and not making any sense. I finally figure out that this is all about getting him a clinic appointment, and so I get out my notebook and start asking him the questions to file a worker’s comp claim. Oh no, no no, he isn’t injured, he just wants an appointment to get some druuuugs.
“Umm, what?” I ask.
“I need drugs, man, because this place is driving me crazy,” he says in all seriousness.
Driving him crazy. You and me both, buddy, you ought to come with a valium dispenser attached – here, free happy pills just for having to deal with me. He seriously expected me to make him an appointment at a clinic for this (“a free clinic,” he says, “because you all know you don’t pay me enough to pay for no doctor.” What a great way to ask for a raise.) Even after explaining to him (politely, he does seem to be socially challenged after all, and I’ve learned not to expect him to be rational) that I was not his assistant, nor was I the 411 lady, and it was not appropriate for him to expect me to solve his personal life problems, I couldn’t get him to leave. I finally got him the number of no less than 10 local walk-in clinics and sent him on his way. I wish them luck.
After he left, I went back to my desk and my own calming drugs (coffee, chocolate, and classical music) and back to work – after wiping up the inch of crumbs my man-child had left behind. Just another day, another dollar, another soggy chip crumb laden paper towel. He’ll be back tomorrow. I hope I have the patience to be kind to him then.
2 Comments
Anita
Hello,This blog has made me laugh and cry at the same time!!!I am a \’company nurse\’, and I can SOOO relate.I call my \’patents\’ my \’work children\’, but I like the term \’man-child so much better!Can use it?Have a great day, and remember that you are not the only one there dealing with this "S#it".Anita
Gillian
sure, use my term. anything I can do . . .:)