I need a new job so bad I can taste it in my sleep. I have developed this strange twitch every time my phone rings and I see flashes of me picking up the receiver and slamming it down repetitively until it can no longer issue a sound and the whole thing is strewn about this little cubicle in tiny, tiny pieces while the screeching sound from ‘Kill Bill’ plays in the background. I grind my teeth when I talk to people to prevent yelling and mocking them while they whine on and on incessantly about their minuscule problems, meanwhile my eyeballs bleed onto my desk.
Don’t get me wrong, I work for a great company. It’s a very large medical office and I’m lucky to be here. I am just SO burned out on my current position that I could gouge out my brain with a spoon. I work in what is basically a doctor’s office for Dallas’….how should I say…privileged society. I’m talking about the people who believe that my sole purpose on this earth is to serve them, and only them, for all eternity. But guess what? It’s not!
These people are so used to having people wait on them hand and foot that when I don’t give them exactly what they want, exactly when they want it, they throw shit-fits like you have never seen! I can’t tell you how many times my life has been threatened. I once had an urchin of a 90 year old lady tell me that she “doesn’t have to take this shit, you little hussy!” Oh snap!! I just got called out 1935 style!
After 3 years of working here and answering the phone day in and day out and being talked to like I am a piece of goat shit, well it wears on a person. I am usually a very happy-go-lucky person and it pisses me off when people ruin that shit for me. I don’t understand how people can say such hateful things to someone they don’t even know. It baffles me.
Anyone who has worked any length of time in the service industry knows exactly what I mean I’m sure. People are just a bunch of assholes when you get down to it. You throw in people who are sick and people who want an appointment or medications and they can get downright cruel. If they aren’t being total jerk-offs then they are just pathetically annoying. They want to talk to you for 30 minutes about how shitty their life is. Who does that? Why would you think that I want to hear about your hemorrhoids and your dead cat??
One of my pet peeves is when you greet someone, like a customer/patient/stranger, and you say “Hi. How are you?” And the person answers “Oh, just horrible. Really, really shitty.” That wasn’t a real question!! I was being polite! It’s my job!! Now you do the polite thing and say “Fine thanks.” Like every other NORMAL FUCKING PERSON!!! NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR FUCKING DAY!!!! Whew.
The only thing that makes it worth coming here is the people I work with, mostly a couple of nurses I am lucky enough to call friends. They have the same sense of humor and liquor preferences as I do and they are just fun. Anyone who can make jokes of GI bleeds and stinky old people are good in my book. Plus happy hour is really fun when you can come to work and get a bag of IV fluids to cure your hangover. They have a contest going as to who can pull the largest load of junk out of a patient’s ear. Currently Shanna is winning with a quarter sized ball of wax and lint.
And of course there is Dr. Jones.
Dr. Jones is the highlight of any given day here in the office. He is an older man, probably in mid 70s, but he walks around the clinic with the smile and mischievous, shifty eyes of a 10 year old. He loves telling jokes, but has no idea how to forward e-mails so when he gets a good one he will print off 25 copies and pass them out around the office. He still writes in a paper calendar which he keeps folded in his back pocket to keep up with meetings and other very doctorly things. We call it his PDA. He has no idea what we mean by that.
One year we had our office Christmas party at The Faculty Club, which is a big fancy-smancy club where all the docs go for drinks after work or while on call or whatever. Anyway, this is a big black-tie event and this year in particular was super fancy-smancy because another doc was retiring so a lot of his family and close friends were in attendance as well as all the clinic staff and physicians. So the time comes around for people to make speeches about the retiring doc. Now usually this is a time for fond memories and warm wishes but the very last speaker was Dr. Jones. He swaggers up to the podium in his jeans, boots, cowboy hat and glass of whiskey and immediately grabs the microphone causing horrendous feedback to reverberate through the room. After about 30 glorious seconds of feedback screeching, Dr. Jones looks up at the crowd and says “Well, I don’t know whose idea it was to have me speak tonight. Givin’ me a microphone is like givin’ a whore a vibrator.”
This was met with snickers from the other docs and looks of repulsion from their wives. I on the other hand spit the entire glass of chardonnay I was chugging out onto the silk table cloth. Luckily I was sitting with my ladies and none of them noticed or cared because they were all busy trying to get down the free drinks just as fast as I was.
Dr. Jones then proceeds to berate and insult the retiring doc, to my utter joy and amusement. I literally had to leave the room half way through the speech because I was the only one laughing. I could not. Stop. Laughing. Needless to say, I never miss the spring parties at Dr. Jones’ house either.
Last year at the spring party Dr. Jones wore a t-shirt with a picture of himself sitting in an old-timey plane on it. Let me clarify that for you so you really get it. This man, in his mid 70s, loves airplanes so fucking much that he went to go sit in one and made his wife take a picture of him in it. Then, not satisfied with walking around the office and showing the staff the picture, (which he did numerous times)he then decided to have a T-Shirt made of the picture. A T-Shirt. Of a picture. Of him in an airplane. The “me-in-a-airplane” shirt is his favorite shirt and on the rare occasion I see Dr. Jones outside of work, you can bet your ass he’s wearing it.
Dr. Jones is really one of my favorite people in the world. If I were ever sick, he would be the one I wanted. He is a child in a man’s body and he strives daily to keep it that way. That is what I like most about Dr. Jones. That and his bird clock.
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