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.