Hearsay, Heresy, or Horseshit?

Since I've started this new job I've slowly learned that the characters here aren't quite as cartoon-like in their oddities as the ones I used to work with. They're your everyday variety of crazy, eccentric, grumpy, friendly, entertaining, baffling people. I don't have any concerns that one of them is secretly a serial killer nor do I think any of them are living brain donors. Even my direct co-workers, who I have little to no interaction with on the most part, are as close to normal as anyone I've worked with in a long time.

The job hasn't provided nearly the sort of material I had hoped. Despite some blooming friendships and even some rumored at-work romance on the horizon, these people just aren't interesting in the same sense as my former co-workers were. This job's humor comes more in the way of things overheard, either by guests or medical staff, but they're few and far between, and even pose some ethical and legal dilemmas in disclosing them.

Considering all of this, I believe the best move, one that I'm sure most have already assumed, is to end this instead of trying to force stories and characters that don't exist. This was never meant to be a work of fiction, and I have no intention of turning it into one. So, thank you for taking the time to read these little stories, and I hope you find some other outlet for your obviously immense boredom. I personally have started watching TV shows on DVD. I highly recommend Rome and Carnivale as good starters.

Nutshells: Now With 75% More Nut...

My apologies for the lack of updates. It has been through a combination lack of time management, trouble adjusting to my schedule, and a bit of a lack of material that I haven't written anything in the last couple weeks. There has been a lot going on outside of work, such as work on a new creative project, going out and enjoying life, and meeting tons of new people...but it's not really pertinent to this blog. So here, for your viewing, reading, or possibly text-to-speech listening pleasure is the last couple weeks in a nutshell. Hopefully more nut than shell.

The Entrepreneur Saga has run on much longer than I thought was possible. Were I management, and maybe it's a good thing I'm not, he would have been gone after he said he was leaving the first time. Since then he has recanted his resignation, pissed off just about everyone on the team by being an arrogant jackass, and seems to be starting a new truck driving business. He hasn't really done anything to me personally, but his attitude and actions towards others have really soured my opinion of him even more. The bad thing is, whenever I cross paths with him, I seem to be the only person he actually makes any effort to be friendly with; trying to have conversations and even trying to help me out on occasion. Which he doesn't do for anyone else. He's still trying to get on 3rd shift, and on one night that I worked with him he turned to me and asked "So, how much is it gonna cost to get your shift?" He was genuinely wanting a dollar figure on what he would have to pay me for me to switch with him. I had to tell him that it wouldn't happen regardless of the money because there's no way in hell I'm willingly going back to second shift.

It seems that all of the nurses on the night shift have suddenly, possibly even in collusion with one another, gotten past the "You're a stranger!" mentality you might see from a small child and have accepted me with open arms, at time literally, into their fold. One day I was getting icy glares from silent nurses, sitting in chairs with folded arms, looking at me like I was a child predator asking them about their young kids. The next day, really...the very next day, they started opening up, asking me questions about my self, joking, and letting me in on their little inside commentary and rumor mongering. Some of them are still a little more reserved than others, some of them I'm not sure if they're really out going, really lonely, or really want my man juices all up ons.

Each floor seems to have their own collective theme or personality. One floor constantly bitches, playfully with me, about the pitfalls and lies they were told about the new system. They reminisce about the "old days" of nursing; which for some of them was last year and others it was that early 60's. The next floor will be the floor that jokes around constantly, coming up with new nicknames for me daily or weekly. Yet another floor will be all business and if I try to be conversational beyond the parameters of desktop support-nurse relationship they get a bored look and suddenly have other things to do. This is not necessarily a sign that I'm an obnoxious bore...they do the same thing with their co-workers on the same floor. The social butterflys, jokesters, and hermits have all seemingly migrated and collected on common floors.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was at one time dubbed Pimp Hat - though that now changes with some regularity. Regardless, the reputation of Pimp Hat lives on regardless of what my current moniker is. As an example, let me describe a scenario from a few nights ago during a test system failure. Because we were having a planned downtime there were a lot of people that I didn't know on hand, sitting around waiting for bad things to happen. Some of these people seemed to be the same ones I didn't know from when the system first went up. One woman remembered me, despite me not even vaguely remembering having seen her in my life. She also said she had heard about me from the other nurses. What she had heard she couldn't or wouldn't say, but she did go on and on about my lovely hats. Several times during the night I would pass by and my hat would disappear. She was suddenly "trying it on." Before you say anything, no...I'm not oblivious to the ancient and mysterious art of flirting. She was most definitely flirting with me. I was nice, but tried not to do anything that would lead her on. Being nice was a mistake on my part, I now admit. Because that, on its own, lead her on. At one point we are in an elevator, because we have been thrown into a situation where we, coincidentally, have to work together on an issue. In the unusually long elevator ride she asks me about my schooling. I mention having been an Art major at one point and she says "so I guess this is the part of the conversation where I ask to see your sketches, we end up alone in your apartment, and have an uncomfortable meeting with HR the next morning." I suddenly developed an intense hatred for elevators and their trapping nature. I guess she wanted to see what kind of mojo the Hat Pimp was packing.

Finally, a note about workplace dating. It is, in most situations, a really...really bad idea. There is always one partner who has problems differentiating work life from personal life. Dating either a subordinate or a supervisor only compounds that problem as one person always feel uncomfortable, or has problems even acknowledging the heirarchy and keeping the work problems within the walls of business. That being said there are several nurses here that I would quickly, and willingly throw that personal law out the window for. To quote a friend of mine, I would drag my dick through 10 miles of broken glass just to finger fuck their shadow. Or drink their bathwater...depends on which visual gives you the most mileage.

A Fond Farewell...Well Not Really

Just when I thought that I had found a character who would provide good stories and source material he turns out to be a huge disappointment. The Entrepreneur, the guy who seems to have a new business venture every time someone talks about him...like now he's supposedly starting a truck driving company, has already succumbed to the pressures and hidden traps of the Cube Dungeon. Siting schedule conflicts as his point of contention, The Entrepreneur has already given his two-weeks notice...which I think is funny because he hasn't even been here a full two weeks yet. Why the powers that be didn't just fire his ass on the spot, I don't know...maybe they're not as vindictive as me. Unless someone gives in to his bribery and lets him take their 3rd shift it seems his entertainment value will be small and short lived. His prospects of taking someones 3rd shift is slim, since there's only me at this location, and one other at the location across town. I sure as hell am not going to willingly put myself back into the hell that I've come to think of 2nd shift as.

I seemed to have neglected to read over my own promises of my last post, namely my new nickname. It seems The Trixter has not come with me the hospital. It's understandable since the crew that gave me that nickname didn't come with me either. I'm fine with it. To explain the new nickname takes another step into that dreaded, dank cave of personal information. Once again you're going to learn a little more about your narrator. Sadly it seems with every bit of info I drop about myself, I begin to wonder more and more about my sanity. My new nickname is Pimp Hat. It started out as Top Hat, so dubbed by Mr. Rogers, but the nurses started calling me Pimp Hat and it has stuck. The reason being pretty obvious...I wear what I would consider rather striking, dashing, and handsome hats. Everyone else seems to think they're pimp accessories. My hatogrophy consists of a couple of stingy brim fedora's, several ivy's, and a couple Kangol's. To me they're tasteful, respectable hats but to everyone else they're an eccentricity that they can't let slip without abuse.

When I'm not trying to dodge stray comments about my hats, I'm usually playing it pretty low key. I make my rounds through the floors looking for troubles, work on them quietly, and go about my business. As a result people either forget I'm there, or they feel relatively comfortable and start gossiping. Being that these nurses are predominantly women, there will be gossip. The funny stuff comes when they start griping about patients. There's no way to be prepared to hear a nurse say "I'm sick and tired of seeing that man's penis." It's just not something you expect to hear. She continues to complain about how he gets up and starts stripping every time she walks in. Now it seems this is a relatively common occurrence when it comes to old folks, but this guy is in his early 40's and just seems to want to share the love. I stayed away from his room.

Finally we'll end with a little bit of an update on the Cube Jungle of yore...that's right, communiques from former co-workers. It seems that the person that was hired, at my recommendation, couldn't cut it and left. Guess I'm not as good a judge of character as I thought. Now they've hired a guy named Natron. This is not a nickname. His god-given, birth certificate name is Natron. I actually new a Natron once, many years ago. He was a 14 year old video gamer and that was his screen name. Maybe I should see about having my name legally changed to Pimp Hat.

Back to hanging on the rack in the Cube Dungeon. By the way, it's a dungeon because it's a poorly lit basement office with an air conditioner permanently stuck at 65 degrees Fahrenheit. It's still 80 degrees outside, but inside I'm wearing a jacket.

That Slowest Of Passings

I've been on the new job in by current hours with my current responsibilities for about a month now and you'd think I'd be more adjusted than I am. Which obviously means I'm not that adjusted. I still have days where I'll get off and be struggling to keep those weighted lids of my eyes open as the sun and traffic both creep to their respective destinations only to get home and find myself staring wide-eyed into the false demi-night of my blacked out bedroom. A new co-worker, The Entrepreneur, swears it's the snack bars I have as a snack at night. I think it's that fact that I'm going to sleep when the damn sun, birds, neighbors, and leaf blowing Mexicans are getting started. Even my morning wood gets confused. It half salutes, looks around, and then decides to wait...hoping something better comes along I suppose.

But you didn't come here to read about my erections, though if you did definitely leave a comment. This is The Cubers, not The Pubers or any other quaint pun I could think of at the moment. You probably want to hear more about The Entrepreneur. Or how about Scarecrow, Bashful, The Groupie, and what about my new nickname? OK, we'll get back to my phallus later.

Now that things have settled down since the launch of the big project, I've had to go fishing for things to do. All those new shiny laptops on those new shiny piece of shit medical carts they paid $5k for aren't posing much of a problem, so they aren't demanding much of my time. So I've resorted to making rounds, floor by floor, just hoping to find some injured little laptop to make me feel like a hero. The benefit is that I've gotten to know the hospital a fair bit better, and have started identifying personalities amongst the constantly changing tide of nurses and doctors. Like Scarecrow in the ER. She's rather tall, scrawny, with wiry straw-like hair, and just about the only person in the whole Emergency Room who will give me the time of day. Seems my kind ain't welcome 'round them parts. Mostly cause they're not really sure who I am and what exactly I do...but I can't help them much because I don't know much better than they.

The Groupie is in the ER too. I'm a bit undecided about her. She's either a sad, desperate whore who would cross the deserts of Egypt to slurp the goodies from the EMT's tent poles, or she's really a prude in disguise as a horrible flirt. She hardly does any work without being goaded by Scarecrow and looks like she's faucet drip shy of swallowing a gun barrel, but when those EMT's come though those rickety supermarket doors and drop off a fresh load of alcoholic waste or geriatric heart ruin she starts to glow like a virgin bride on her wedding night. She's not necessarily the only one who eats up the bloated heroics of these medical-grade taxi drivers (trust me, I'm not being bitter, these guys aren't the cream of the emergency crop). She just happens to be the only one dripping wet in her seat when they walk in.

Up on one of the higher floors, things are usually a lot more laid back than in the ER. Which makes sense because there patients aren't coming through the door dying. They're either getting better, or just dying a whole lot slower. One of my favorite little mice up there is Bashful. I know absolutely nothing about her. She rarely says a word to me. She's not the hottest girl up there, but something just melts inside when I see her and she smiles, waves, turns red, and then disappears. Oddly, I find her on several floors, so I have no idea which one is hers and who is following who. Before you start jumping to any conclusions, she does this little routine with other people too. So far, the best moment was when we were both in the elevator together, she actually spoke up (the pressures of being alone together) and asked if I just wandered around looking for trouble and I joked and said I was just looking for her. She dropped her head down and to the side, trying to hide that she was blushing, and jumped out haphazardly waving at me at the next floor the elevator stopped on. Only problem was that she got out on my floor, not the floor she was going to and there was this awkward shuffle as I got out after her, she realized where she was (and that I was indeed following her), and hopped back in the elevator. For all I know she thinks I'm a serial killer...but it's still cute.

Then there's The Entrepreneur. He's the newest of the new guys here in the Cube Dungeon (oh yeah, we're stashed away in the basement of a building not even attached to the hospital). He got the same casting call that we did, went through the same hoops, and same orientation as everyone else, but he seems to feel like he was tricked. Every single one of us, The Entrepreneur included, got the phone call where they offered us a specific position and pay grade, and were asked Yes or No. Yet his first day on his agreed upon shift he's complaining about the shift, the hours, the fact that he had to work July 4th (completely dismissing everyone's pointing out the obvious fact that people don't stop dying just cause it's a holiday). The list so far has not stopped. On the other hand, he keeps talking about how he doesn't need this job. He's only here for the insurance. He doesn't need the money, because he's got so many other business ventures going on right now that this is more of an inconvenience than anything else. To emphasize his point, it's been rumored that he's offered to pay someone to switch shifts and that he'd be willing to take a 25% pay cut if management forced someone to switch with him. Supposedly he's an "Entertainment Producer" (what the fuck that means I don't know), an independent car salesmen (which sounds like one of those engineered titles to cover something really crappy or illegal), and who knows what else his supposed venture include. I have a feeling his story is going to evolve into a spectacular mess of chipping and rusting lies and exaggerations, and don't you doubt for a moment that I won't be there to bask in that glorious collapse.

Man, 3rd shift makes me an asshole...

Meet The New Cubers - Part I

The train has been rolling rather smooth the last day, so let me take this quiet time to introduce some of my new cast of characters. Being as I only know most of these people in passing, these nicknames are subject to change.

First is my department supervisor, Kitty. I call her that because she reminds me an awful lot of the mom from That 70's Show. And in a strange sort of way, she's got that same G.I.L.F. quality to her. Hey, don't judge...

Next is my direct boss that, to continue the celebrity lookalike, I've been calling Dangle because he looks like Lt. Dangle from Reno 911! In addition to the look, he also has a tendency to explain things in a very matter of fact way that, if you actually think about it, makes absolutely no sense most of the time. He's just winging it and doesn't care.

Baywatch is my group lead. Her name is remarkably similar to that of one of the stars of Baywatch, and I've got a growing suspicion that she's about as smart as her bimbo namesake. I have yet to see any quality that explains why she's in this group or the lead of the group. Maybe she's got talents I'm not privy to.

There's an extremely old guy that works the night shift with me that I've been calling Peck. His real name is some ancient name that sounds like it belongs in a fairy tale. No one calls him by his real name, as he prefers to be called Pick, which is part of his last name. Having seen the movie Willow many times and watching Val Kilmer's Madmartigan character call Willow a peck over and over, the association was natural...and no one seems to notice either.

Next is Uber Geek. I really don't have a better name for him because nothing else really fits. I could alternate between Geek,Dork and Nerd, but it's all the same in his case. I've never met someone who is a bigger dork, nor anyone who is more proud and carefree about it. He is an incredibly smart guy...he's just an Uber NerdGeekDork. If you've ever seen the movie Grandma's Boy (which is hilarious), the owner of the company, J.P. , is a dead ringer in looks and personality for Uber Goober.

The guy that works 2nd shift, and subsequently the guy I probably know the best, I've been calling Mr. Rogers. He's a small, diminutive man, who says everything in a very calm, even tone. Unlike the childhood legend, our Mr. Rogers has a rather nasal voice that makes everything sound like he's whining slightly. So far I've had a hard time telling what he is and isn't really whining about, cause it all sounds the same.

One of the longtimers, and oldtimers, here at the hospital is Bob Hope. He's incredibly cynical, sometimes spiteful, often inappropriate, and probably my favorite person here. He's a smart guy and doesn't take shit from anyone. He also looks like Bob Hope when Bob Hope was 50 or 60.

That'll have to do for now, I actually have to go and do my job now.

The Train Keeps On Wrecking

It’s been a long, hectic week. The big project that was supposed to go live a week ago didn’t completely go live until last night. It took an entire week to do something it should have taken seconds to do, but with any big switchover it’s inevitable that things will go wrong. Like thousands of medications having to be scanned by hand because the old database is suddenly, “unforeseeably” incompatible. Someone, somewhere lied to someone else, somewhere else and really screwed everything up.

To anticipate the final go-live last night the powers that be put us all on 12-hour shifts, putting about 6 people on the night shift where I am usually the only one working. We were all bored shitless. We didn’t even find out the system had gone live until nearly an hour after it happened, and then it was just an afterthought. I took the initiative to go floor-by-floor to talk to the nurses and see if there were problems they weren’t reporting. Turns out there were tons of problems that they were reporting, but the software vendor supporting the new system was pretty much just telling them to deal with it. Fill out a complaint form and deal with it. Good policy. The bad thing is that on my tour I realized there is no separation between the third-party software support, which isn’t me, and the on-site dedicated PC support that has nothing to do with the software, which IS me. So there were lots of people that were really mad at me. I lost count of how many people passed me saying something along the lines of “I don’t EVEN want to see you people right now,” or “You can just turn around and get back in the elevator.”

I tried on several floors to explain the difference between me and the other support group and felt like I was making some headway and then some old nurse from the 7^th floor pointed me out to the Charge Nurse on the 5^th floor saying I was the reason it took them 4 hours to deliver the 9pm drug pass. I could see the fire light in her eyes, and then spread like a brush fire in a drought from one nurse to the other. That’s when I turned around and got back in the elevator I had just come out of.

To further that feeling of train wreck, we were told that we’d be on 12-hour shifts all week, not just last night. It wasn’t a big deal to me. It didn’t really affect when I woke up or what time I got off, it just meant that more of my day that I’d be surfing for porn or drinking lattés was now being spent sitting at my desk trying to get all my IM’s working on my Blackberry (which I kind of hate having). However, when I got in to work today, and had sat around for about 40 minutes someone suddenly asked me why I was there. They had been talking to me the whole time and it just dawned on them that I was there and wasn’t supposed to be. Seems I missed out on that e-mail that said “hey, you don’t have to be there for 12 hours anymore.” So I got up and left. It’s not like I’m going to sit around for a few hours for no reason, when I don’t have to. Oh, what’s that noise? I think I hear the train coming again…let’s see if we can wreck it again tonight.

Cluster, Meet Fuck

I know it has been a while, but things are very hectic right now. Last week was a combination of cramming all of us with as much information as they could possible throw at us, but not telling us anything we really needed to know to start working. The hospital has a huge electronic medical records project going live at 2am tonight, which is the reason everyone is so frantic, and the reason there were 10 new technicians brought in and it just seems like more going on than they could really handle.

I start third shift tonight, which is going to suck because I had to show up at 8am for a few hours of application training and then couldn’t get to sleep once I finally got home. I have a feeling that it’s going to be a VERY long night. The real problem is that I still don’t really know what I’m doing. I won’t be alone, at least not this week, but I get the feeling that I will have my training wheels taken out from under me starting next week. I know eventually I’ll get comfortable with their process and maybe even find my way around the hospital, but right now it seems unbelievably daunting.

The perks of the job have already become apparent though. For the first time in three years I was able to go out during the week. All I did was go bowling, but for three years that hasn’t been an option. Because of my previous 2^nd shift schedule both my mornings and my nights were ruined and in order for me to do anything I had to take the entire day off. It wasn’t very efficient to take a day off every time I wanted to have dinner or even get a cup of coffee with someone. I actual run a risk of having a social life.

I’m going to try and get some sleep before it’s time for work…