thessalian (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thessalian) wrote2011-09-26 11:14 am
thessalian) wrote2011-09-26 11:14 am
The 'Welcome Back' from Hell
First day back at work after a holiday and already I wish I hadn't taken time off. It's not that I didn't enjoy the holiday - it's that even with a float secretary covering some of the workload, this place goes to hell every time I go away for longer than a day. I came in to find notes scattered hell to breakfast all over my workspace - desk, shelves, floor, everywhere. No rhyme or reason, no order ... so I had to sort out at least the desk before I could so much as sit down. I later discovered that a couple of the nurse specialists (or possibly the float, I'm not sure) got the bright idea to leave clinic tapes and associated notes on the floor, on top of a couple of stacks of notes that probably need to be booked in to our department, in front of a filing cabinet. Which meant that when someone knocked the entire pile over to get at the filing cabinet and then didn't bother to pick up the mess they'd made, I was lucky to be able to salvage the clinic tapes and their notes without getting them so blended into a pile of notes that were about to be hidden away that I'd never see them again. Not to mention saving the tapes themselves from getting lost, crushed or otherwise untypable. I was mid-way through sorting out the backlog in my email in-tray (because gods forbid they copy in my colleague when they know I'm away so that he can deal with anything urgent; that'd just be madness) and dealing with an amping-up of the headache that has still not gone away yet, when my colleague turned up and we had the following conversation:
Him: Hey, could you do this tape next?
Me: Yep, sure; it was the first tape I was going to do anyway, because of date order.
Him: It's just because there's this patient that [short explanation of why this needs doing]
Me: (trying to work) Okay; just let--
Him: Yeah, it's just [longer explanation of why this needs doing]
Me: ............. (trying not to explode) Look, just let me clear my email backlog and I will get right on that, okay?
Him: Yeah, sure; it's just--
(Mercifully interrupted by his phone ringing, letting me get back to work.)
My carefully stacked clinic tapes (sorted by consultant) are in shambles. My desk is a disaster. The float did not wipe any of the tapes so that's another job for me to do so that the consultants have tapes to dictate on, but I can't do that while there's typing to be done. And one of my consultants can't read out a hospital number correctly even when he's looking at it. My headache is back in spades, though at least part of that is the noise of the photocopier and the reek of photocopier ink and that bloody hand sanitising gunk, not to mention the fact that people use the space behind my desk as a conference room and the yammer kills my head on top of trying to decipher consultant accents.
In short, the aftermath of holiday has not only erased every bit of benefit the holiday gave me, but has actually made matters worse. All in a single morning. That really should tell me something, shouldn't it? Well, surely matters will settle down once I get this place beaten into some semblance of submission. Until then, I'll just have to get through the headache and the stress and the wanting to kill things, I suppose. I suppose the 'wanting to kill things' is what Warcrack is for.
Also ... two of my colleagues have bad colds. And they've come into the office to spread it around. On top of how I'm feeling right now, a cold would probably put me flat on my back, if not outright kill me. I work with surgeons; there's bound to be a surgical mask around here somewhere, right?
Him: Hey, could you do this tape next?
Me: Yep, sure; it was the first tape I was going to do anyway, because of date order.
Him: It's just because there's this patient that [short explanation of why this needs doing]
Me: (trying to work) Okay; just let--
Him: Yeah, it's just [longer explanation of why this needs doing]
Me: ............. (trying not to explode) Look, just let me clear my email backlog and I will get right on that, okay?
Him: Yeah, sure; it's just--
(Mercifully interrupted by his phone ringing, letting me get back to work.)
My carefully stacked clinic tapes (sorted by consultant) are in shambles. My desk is a disaster. The float did not wipe any of the tapes so that's another job for me to do so that the consultants have tapes to dictate on, but I can't do that while there's typing to be done. And one of my consultants can't read out a hospital number correctly even when he's looking at it. My headache is back in spades, though at least part of that is the noise of the photocopier and the reek of photocopier ink and that bloody hand sanitising gunk, not to mention the fact that people use the space behind my desk as a conference room and the yammer kills my head on top of trying to decipher consultant accents.
In short, the aftermath of holiday has not only erased every bit of benefit the holiday gave me, but has actually made matters worse. All in a single morning. That really should tell me something, shouldn't it? Well, surely matters will settle down once I get this place beaten into some semblance of submission. Until then, I'll just have to get through the headache and the stress and the wanting to kill things, I suppose. I suppose the 'wanting to kill things' is what Warcrack is for.
Also ... two of my colleagues have bad colds. And they've come into the office to spread it around. On top of how I'm feeling right now, a cold would probably put me flat on my back, if not outright kill me. I work with surgeons; there's bound to be a surgical mask around here somewhere, right?