Boo! Hiss!

One year of Nursing in Hell has changed me, for the worse, I think, in some ways. While I can now enter Crisis Mode at work with fair aplomb (unless my patient's crashing and no one gives a damn; then I regularly fall to pieces, but wouldn't you?) I now have an even shorter temper than I did before.

For those of you that know me well, you know that this Isn't A Good Thing, as I am a real nasty piece of work when I get angry. Lately when pissed off about something, I have very little control over the Bad Words that come out of my mouth. It's a bit like being Linda Blair, except without the head spinning like a top (yet).

For those of you who (thankfully) haven't been subjected to my Evil Emotional Twin, and have only encountered the SuperFakeyNice Jamie (coined from Mason-Dixon Knitting, which is a funny read even if you don't knit) you'll probably not understand how Bad this kind of thing is for me.

I've always been highstrung (read: make coffee nervous) but a year spent in Nursing Hell has refined the fine art of a tantrum. Mostly, I have minimal tolerance for incompetence; once I scent it in the air, I become a right royal bitch. It ain't pretty.

For example, today I was on the phone with a board of nursing employee--who, in her defense, appears to be literally the only employee at the board of nursing that processes license applications, as every one else I've been talking to for the past two months keeps saying, "Oh, I don't know. You'll have to talk to Penelope about that." [Note: names have been changed to protect the guilty].

Any way.

I've sent two transcripts to the board of nursing, who keeps claiming "they don't have it." So I call to check up on whether or not they've finally figured out where the transcript was filed (because I sent two of them in May you understand). At this point, I'm beginning to think somebody used the transcript as toilet paper, or an oragami project for their kid's third grade World Geography project.

First, I am informed that the Royal We "keeps getting mail sent back marked undeliverable." I'm wondering if "they" bothered to let their fingers to do the walking and pick up the phone and call the phone number on the application to see why. I mean, come on, this is the twenty first century, isn't it? Phones aren't a newfangled concept in the state capitols of mid-Atlantic states, are they? I didn't somehow open a portal into the 17th century when I sent in my application, did I?

Then Penelope starts sounding harrassed and defensive, which is odd, because I haven't accused her of being a bad state employee (yet). "This is a really bad time to be applying for a license you know! New grads and everything!" she says, in a distracted tone that sounds much like a sleep-deprived mother of seven very unruly spoiled children.

I ask her again about my transcripts, and for the third time in thirty seconds, she absent-mindedly asks if I've had my name changed. (I'm thinking, "Not unless I'm Liz Taylor."

"Oh well," she says, finally procuring the transcript from god-knows-what-bureaucratic-cubbyhole, "Huh. A master's degree... Hey, are you applying for an nurse practitioner license?"

I'm about to start drilling spikes up my fingernails to distract me from the frustration of this conversation, when I start thinking, "I'm so glad I pay my taxes and everything, because it's so worth it to have such knowledgable, fine state employees lose track of every single piece of paper I've ever sent them."

The good news is, I finally have a valid license (as opposed to temporary permit) in the state in which I currently practice nursing.

And it only took two months of holding on the phone, getting transferred, hung up on, and accused of being stupid enough to dare apply for a license at the same time as new grads.

Then there was the Bitchy Phone Conversation with the Evil Mistress of Financial Aid at Nefarious Ivy League School of Inadequate and Impotent Intellectual Balderdash, who snottily informs me that I haven't been paying my student loans that the Royal We has been so kind and generous as to bestow on my weak chinned, knobby-kneed Oliver Twist-like form.

I explain, quickly losing my patience, that I filled out paper work a year ago when I became a nurse to defer the Perkins loan, and as far as I know, I'm not deliquent on any loan.

I hate it when the claws come out, but out came the talons, and in a voice seething with contempt and loathing, a response cracks across the phone line that they've been sending things to my address and all have been returned.

Here again, I silently wish that people who are being paid slightly over minimum wage for petty office clerical duties would kindly get off their fat arse and pick up the fucking phone and call me when such troubles arise, rather than act as if I'm the problem.

Apparently, however, this bit of common horse sense is way too much of an intellectual reach for people who have a job that barely outstrips the intellect needed to ask "Would you like fries with that order?"

Sigh.

I suggest icily that they send it to my parents' home instead, from where mail does not magically boomerang, and am informed, in a tone that suggest I am the one with a mental deficit, that "We'll need an e-mail in order to do that."

This is where Jamie Loses It.

"WAIT A MINUTE? YOU'RE SAYING YOU CAN SIT HERE AND TELL ME OVER THE PHONE THAT YOU'VE BEEN TRYING TO REACH ME FOR THREE MONTHS OVER THESE SO-CALLED DELIQUENCIES, AND YET NOW THAT YOU HAVE ME ON THE PHONE, YOU CAN'T CHANGE A STUPID ADDRESS THAT OSTENSIBLY YOU HAVE IN YOUR DATABASE ANY WAY?!"

"Yes." replied the self-satisfied and overly smug answer on the phone.

"FINE." I spat, viciously, "IF THIS IS THE WAY YOU PEOPLE CONDUCT BUSINESS, THEN NO WONDER YOU PEOPLE DON'T GET YOUR MONEY."

Click. I hung up the phone in high dudgeon, out-of-breath and feeling as if I'd just been through a hellacious pissing match with a lazy attending who doesn't care his patient is bleeding copiously out of his urethra.

I think the reason I lose my temper so quickly with situations like this is because it reminds me of my salad days in nursing, when crappy situations would be left to fester and fester and fester, and then everything would get dumped on me, the nurse, and then when I'd try to fix it, I'd get blamed for whatever it was, and intellectually insulted for good measure.

Sometimes though, I overshoot the mark and go from assertive This Bitch Don't Take That Shit, to Psychotic Bitch on the Rampage. I rather hate when I lose my temper, because it ruins my otherwise serene day.

And by the way. Those kids, running around like assholes outside on the landing? I hope they trip, fall four flights down the concrete steps, knock out a couple of teeth, and cost their parents a passel of money for a pedi trauma admission, and on going cosmetic dentistry bills.

I really, really really am highly displeased with other people's ill-behaved genetic misfortunes they call "their children." Children like that should be placed in a cage, and watered and fed once a week, twice at most.

Grrrrr.