Miss Tattle strikes again

What's that old saying about how a leopard can't change his spots?

Neither can Miss Tattle. You may recall that Miss Tattle and I had a bit of a run-in some months back. Miss Tattle is a mean-spirited soul; she delights in finding rule infractions that are okay if she or her friends do them, but it's definitely not okay if someone else bends or breaks a rule that directly affects Miss Tattle and company.

Don't you just love it when you finally wise up and figure out that mean-spirited people want to make you feel bad? Their poor lives are so damned pathetic, that only by dragging you down in tattletale gutter will they be content.

Today I had 35 patients on the orthopedic floor. It's usually an easy floor, for folks with knee and hip replacements are generally fairly healthy. So, I wasn't too worried about having the highest patient load. Unfortunately, there were three patients who took over an hour to deal with, so I was behind schedule.

When help arrived, we finished up and headed back to the lab. I had a particularly difficult cancellation request. I decided it would be far easier for me to enter the information in the computer, rather than stand over someone and explain it. So, I plopped myself down in a chair and proceeded with it.

I've mentioned in other blog posts that these cancellations take just a couple of minutes.

Miss Tattle came in, saw me "doing cancels" and asked if we (there were three of us in the lab) had checked on "J". Nope, just got here, hadn't gotten down to her area yet to see if all was okay.

"Kate, you shouldn't be doing cancels when the floors are not finished. You wouldn't like it if someone sat in the lab doing cancels and left YOU stranded on a floor."

C'mon, Miss Tattle...you and I have been through this before. It's a shame she's so short on memory. I mean, I can't even begin to count the times that I've come back to the lab and found Miss Tattle sitting on her arse because she doesn't want to go check on anyone else. Or she doesn't feel good. Or she's having heart palpatations again. Or she has to wait for a phone call...you get the idea.

"Why, whatever do you mean, Miss Tattle? I get left on the floor all the time...I don't even expect help any more."

With a startled look, Miss Tattle went off to rescue her buddy. I knew she was just aching to blast me to J, telling her how I was sitting on my ass in the lab while poor J was suffering without help.

And, so she did.

J came back to the lab and didn't say anything for a little bit. Then Abir came in from the peds floor, and got in the supervisor's face and asked why no one who could work peds could come and help her when she had a huge workload of patients?

(A note of explanation: Only a very few people can work in peds. This is the time of year that peds has gotten overloaded with patients, and so another peds person always tries to go assist, just like the rest of us pitch in and try to go help everyone else finish up in a timely manner.) There were three peds folks at work today - Miss Tattle, The Snippet, and WV, our supervisor. None of the three bothered to go help Abir. And, Abir was pissed. Don't blame her, she had 24 babies to draw blood from.

So, WV kind of brushed her aside, stating that they had just gotten back from wherever they were. Then, J started complaining loudly about people who are so rude that they will sit around in the lab when other people need help.

I spoke up. I was ready to do some ripping and tearing. Wolf was very close to the surface today.

"Listen, J. NO ONE was sitting doing all the cancels. Becky saw me sitting here doing one and one only complicated cancel that was easier to do myself than to explain to someone else. What purpose did it serve for Miss Tattle to come down there and tell you that everyone was sitting around in the lab ignoring the fact you were still out on the floor? Believe me, there was no intention on my part to ignore you and be rude. I was simply doing something that would take a minute before coming down to check on you. Get over it."

She shut up. The supervisor didn't say a word. And in some ways I was hoping she would - I'm about ready to let her have a few pieces of my mind.

One of these days I'll post some more about the bullshit that has come to be commonplace in my area since WV, our new supervisor took over. It's quite the story.