Bitching

A few irritating things to rant about. Just a few.

1. The nurse (Ok, I was just assuming she was a nurse. Hospital policy clearly states our ID badges are to be worn visibly at all times on the job, but does anyone on the floors bother? Nooooo. So she might have been an AA, an LPN, whatever. I'm going to call her a nurse) who came down to Blood Bank for a unit of plasma. At that moment, I was up to my eyeballs in work, and was nearing the end of my rope after a really busy night. I told her I'd be with her in just a minute. As I was adding my potentiator solution to my test tubes and trying to keep straight all the many test tubes for 3 stat patients in my rack in front of me, I commented off-hand that I was so wanting to accomplish just ONE thing that night without having to interrupt what I was doing. Ha, ha. Lighthearted commiseration. I finally get to a point where I can stop and get up to get what she needs. After standing there watching me fall over myself to hurry up with my work, she suddenly realizes she's forgotten to bring down the correct form she needs. The one we NEVER issue any blood product without. Well jeez, she supposes she forgot her slip and needs to go back up to the floor and get it. Huh. Imagine that.

Just beautiful. I wave to her, say 'see you in a few minutes' and turn back to my work. If I had had anything bigger than a pen in my hand at the moment, she would have had it embedded in the back of her head.

2. People who fumble/botch/are incapable of doing what they're in the process of, but are doing it anyway, and say to you 'Oh, but I'm just helping out'. Okay, so the next time I inconvenience someone with my cluelessness/incompetence, or just plain don't feel like applying myself to a task, that's the key phrase that will redeem me? Brilliant! I'm not really working, I'm 'helping out'. Everyone loves a helper. Now what I wonder is this: is there a different pay scale for 'helping out', as opposed to actual 'working'?

3. People who are lounging around reading the newspaper when they're on the clock and there are stacks of work to be done. And the first thing you pick up that they have left behind for you is some kind of obvious problem, laying right on top of the pile.

4. People who give you lip for your intolerance of their flakiness/incompetence, and then refuse to speak to you for days.

5. Wasps

6. Hornets. Tim got stung again, Sunday evening. But the good news is he didn't react anywhere near like he did in July. Just plain old run-of-the-mill localized swelling, redness and itching. We suspect it might have been a different species of stinging insect he got nailed with the last time. We just had the exterminator come out this morning and cluster bomb some key areas around the house. There must be a massive wasp nest under the waterfall stairs leading up to the deck. Apparently everything I've been spraying in the cracks is just making them thrive even more. Every day there are bigger swarms of them busily flying in and out of the decking crevices. We can't even use those stairs right now. Unless you kill the queen, you aren't ever going to get rid of the nest. Normally I'm not a big fan of spraying chemicals or killing anything, but this is getting ridiculous. And dangerous.