Administrative Professional's Day

Last Wednesday was Administrative Professionals Day, or Secretary's Day, whichever. I work as a receptionist twice a week at our office, so I brought in some doughnuts to celebrate the good job my co-workers do. And if you don't believe that... I brought in some doughnuts because I like doughnuts.
On my way in, my Boss says to me, "Doughnuts? Whats the occasion?" and I tell her that today is Administrative Professionals day, and she scoffs: "That's not a real holiday."

Thanks, Boss. In honor of Administrative Professionals Day, my boss under appreciated me.

Dear BHG...

Dear Better Homes and Gardens...

Here is my abbreviated beef with you:

Your food makes my stomach turn. I know that my bachelor recipe for 'mac and cheese and bacon' wasn't exactly beautiful, but your cheeseburger ice cream sandwich should be against the law. And your 'Bestever Casseroles' are desperate. Since when does adding pickled artichokes to tuna make it gourmet? And another thing: goulash is not 'speedy lasagna casserole'. Its just Goulash. And these were your 'Best Ever'?? What on earth were you peddling as regular old daily casseroles?! And your photographer should be cuffed. Even with the super washed-out style that is used in every single image to make it look 'clean' or whatever the desired effect is, the food still looks day old and gross.

And another thing: Your bedroom decor ideas are all nautical themed. What if I have a fear of boats? or drowning? or sharks? I'd never get to sleep in your 'Room with a view' theme, or your 'beach cottage casual' or your 'beach bliss' designs. What if I live Utah? Also, Martha Stewart called, she wants her color scheme back. And so on, and so forth, you get my point.

More like Worst Homes and Gardens. Burn.

A new responsiblity

As I may have mentioned before, after the pregnant girl at work left for maternity leave, I was given all her work. I don't mind really, its not a lot of extra work, but its the work itself that is terrible. Probably the worst, and most morbid, of my hand-me-down jobs is to call people and tell them they have Glaucoma. And to clarify, I don't get to call people and tell them they don't have Glaucoma, another girl gets to do that, I only get to call people when they HAVE glaucoma. I'm like the Grim Reaper of visual acuity. For further clarification the OED describes Glaucoma as the following:

" A disease of the eye, characterized by increased tension of the globe and gradual impairment or loss of vision. "

And its my job to call people and tell them the news. I get a stack every week or so.

I call them at the number they listed for primary source of contact. I recently called a woman while she was working, and she cried. Love my job.

Highlights of my work week...

In honor of Friday, its time I look back on my week. Here are just a few of the highlights:

I tripped over some old lady's artificial leg, multiple times.

A five year old girl belched in my face.

I had the same dream every night that I was being chased. Not directly work related... but I feel it contributed to the overall climate.

I yelled at a ten year old. While she was already crying. In my defense, I was yelling at her to stop crying.

I suggested to a man in a wheel chair he should go 'run away' someplace.

Someone brought reese's easter eggs into the office. I fucking love reese's easter eggs.

My co-worker cut her hand on a bloody scalpel, we're pretty sure she doesn't have some terrible old man disease now, but we're keeping a close eye on her, just in case.

A patient told my co-workers he saw a picture of me on facebook and he wanted to know how I could 'bend that way'. I'm still trying to decide which was worse: my 50-something co-worker jumping on facebook so she could find it, or me doing that.


I had to yank an overweight patient out of the waiting room chair she was wedged in. I have to do that nearly every day, but it never gets old.

Wake-up Call

Every once in a while, I am enlisted to call patients to remind them of their appointments. Now, there are probably a hundred things about this specific job that I could rant about, but today I will focus exclusively on the 96 year old ladies.

First of all, I'm calling to confirm your appointment. And you're old, so you don't remember. But this is a common trait among the over 65, so I'm prepared to not just remind them of an appointment, but the who they're seeing, what for, where we are located, and why they need to be seen. So, I dial the number, and its ringing, and its ringing, and... and they don't answer. And of course they don't have an answering machine, because that would be crazy. But, having called, and failed, I'm left thinking, Betty, where the hell are you? Its quarter to ten on a Tuesday morning, you've been awake for five hours already, and you're 96 years old. Where could you possibly be? Are you dead? because really, that's the only logically explanation here.

Old people make me so angry. Except sometimes they are dead. Which is a bummer.

Hey. I'm e-mailing you something.

Interoffice spam mail has become the bane of my mid-day work week.

Cute Panda babies, scroll-down forwards, Top Ten worst si-fi movies worth seeing-- its all fair game in my work place right now. And I hate all of it. See, aside from gender, and a common employer, I don't have a lot in common with my co-workers. And I never pretended to, so when my inbox suddenly started to become flooded with irrelevant, time wasting video clips, I had to ask myself -- what did I do to deserve this? What cultural sign did I erroneously give off to make my co-workers think I wanted to see a 2 minute video of a skeleton with a boner? And how did they get my e-mail address to begin with?

Humor is the worst. Or what they consider humor. I fancy myself slightly humorous, but what they're sending should not qualify as entertainment. I find myself dreading the outbursts of laughter I hear from around the corner. I know whats coming. They call out from their desk to inform me that they've sent me something, and I am obligated to watch it immediately. As if it were, I don't know, my job. -Did you get it?- Yes. I got it. And, methodically, they wait, the exact time it took them to carefully and diligently look over the e-mail, then they ask me-- no, they tell me-- Isn't that funny -- Yes. Funny. Good. Moving on.

How can anyone possibly enjoy this cycle? I imagine in the future there will be a name for this mental illness. The forced perpetuation of mediocre humor via e-mail. Until then, I will strive to master the art of sounded enthusiastic about a joke while simultaneously deleting an e-mail.

Being old is effortless

While I was at work this week I watched a nice old lady in her eighties struggle to hold one of our instruments with her elderly, mangled, hook-of-a-hand, and as I looked deep into her increasingly frustrated face, I realized that arthritis is really just early-onset riga mortus. And for this woman, it wasn't all that early. And then I took the instrument away, and told her to forget about it. Which I'm sure she did, almost immediately.