Middle Aged Man and Sister of Asystole Nurse

A few days ago, one of my friends reminded me of that early 1990's Saturday Night Live skit, Middle Aged Man (and his friend, Drinking Buddy, remember?):

You know, with Mike Myers, and the jingle:

"Middle-Aged Man. Middle-Aged Man.
He has powers and knowledge that are far beyond younger men.
Middle-Aged Man.
Caught between forty and fifty-five
Accruing more interest, yet losing his sex drive.
Middle-Aged Man."

Today, I met The Absolute Worst Version of this guy, in person. (To be fair, I also met the Absolute Worst Version of Over-Forty Woman, too, as detailed in unfortunate length below).

To preface, my orientation group had four guys, all nurses I think. One was Zimbabwe, What The Hell Is He Saying With That Kooky Accent of His, Any way (?) Guy. One was I Used To Be CEO Guy, And Am Actually Articulate, But Somehow, Still A Tool Guy. One was Nice Guy, With The Good Attitude.

And then.

Then:

There was Middle Aged Man. And, okay, so he was Middle Aged Man. But he was also Insecure, Chauvanist, Still Thinks He's A Playa Middle Aged Despite The Fact That He's Clearly Not Twenty Anymore, and That Behavior Wasn't Even All That Appealing Then Man.

You can always spot this guy a mile away, or across the room at a very, very boring orientation session in which chewing off one of your own limbs seems like a fun distraction that might just get you out of the room and somewhere better, like a crowded, filthy ER, if done properly.

He's also known as the Jerky Male Nurse, aka The Cowboy. He's arrogant, cocky, and also, incredibly and very, very obviously, caught up in his own Middle Aged Crisis. He's annoying kind that asks questions that are designed to make him look smart, but actually make him look like a pseudo-intellectual hack with no real academic prowess. He's Belittling To Women Around Him, But Clearly Wants to Score.

In the words of that classic Dennis Leary song, he's an Asshole:

I'm just a regular joe
With a regular job
I'm your average white
Suburbanite slob
I like football, and porno, and books about war
I've got an average house
With a nice hardwood floor
My wife, and my job
My kids, and my car
My feet on my table
And a Cuban cigar

Yeah, he's that guy.

And, to prove I'm not just being sexist here, and that he really is that guy, I also noticed this other nurse, who looked vaguely familar. It wasn't until I got in my car at the end of the day, and was a couple miles away, when I realized who she was, not just in an archetypal sense, but as in "who she reminded me of in real life."

She was one of those Desperate, Past Their Prime And Pretending They Don't Know It Nurses. You know the type. The Trying Too Hard Kind. With the bleached blonde hair teased and hair sprayed stiff in a French twist, cakey-makeup, who just exudes sleaziness, and vapidity. (Sleaziness is okay. Sometimes, it can be kind of classy in an ironic way. If you don't think so, go watch Britney Murphy's performance in 8 Mile. But vapidity? Only if you're really, really nice, or temporarily using psychadelic drugs. Or have a Glasgow Coma Scale rating below 10. Definitely not okay otherwise.)

Well, at the end of the day, I witnessed something that made me want to use those carcinogenic antibacterial wipes we use in the hospital to clean Icky Stuff. To scrub out my eyeballs. Or possibly, just go home and scrub out my eyes with a brillo pad, but first, use that brillo pad to filter the crack I needed to smoke in order to erase the nasty memory from my brain.

And this was the image:

Middle Aged Guy was getting off the elevator with his arm around Sleazy Nurse.

It was just gross. And they weren't old friends, either, because then, as if the icky display of physical affection wasn't enough to make me "vomit a little in my mouth" to quote actress Kate Walsh, he then says to her, loud enough for all to hear, in this smarmy, suggestive tone, "I really enjoyed talking to you."

He might as well have said, "I really think you're an easy piece of ass; can I do you in the parking lot?"

So here's the part I thought about on my way home. I knew I'd seen that nasty teased blonde hair somewhere, and now I remember where. It was on my staff floor, and the nurse was this rehab/ortho idiot who floated to telemetry, and wandered around for an entire shift looking like she was diverting, and currently on, Ativan. She even my asked my friend, "Why does the monitor in that patient's room says "asystole"?" (And, she sounded like she didn't know what "asystole" meant, on top of it.) So, after my friend sniggered about this revelation to me, this poor nurse comes up to me like five minutes later, and asks "Why does the monitor say asystole?"

I assumed, perhaps generously, that the patient was actually not asystole since change of shift thirty minutes ago, and said something to the effect of, "Uh, is the patient hooked up to the monitor properly?'

Her answer was classic: "Oh! I don't work on a cardiac floor! I don't know about these monitors and things!"

And I thought, Yes, I get that the big fancy technology from 1985 intimidates you, but didn't they teach you in nursing school how to tell, just by looking at a patient who's breathing and in no apparent distress, if a patient is living or dead?

Or that, like, if the toaster isn't working, maybe you should make sure you plugged the fucking thing into the electrical outlet, because this is the 21st century, and things run on electricity now, not magic like In The Olden Days, at least most of the time?