Breaking the fourth wall

Actual CT scan report:

Thank you, M!

Abracadabra

Dr. Grumpy: "Have a seat, what can I do for you?"

Mrs. Anatidae: "My homeopath says his exam showed I have taurine in my brain, and referred me to you to take it out."

 

Pause

  

Dr. Grumpy: "Ma'am, everyone has taurine in their brain. It's critical for nerve function. It's in most organ systems."

 

Pause

 

Mrs. Anatidae: "So... you're telling me there isn't a surgery or something to take it out? He said there was."

Dr. Grumpy: "No. It's normal to have taurine in your brain. You need it to stay alive."

 

Pause

 

Mrs. Anatidae: "I'm sick of all the lies you regular doctors tell people like me to keep us sick so you can make money off our suffering!!!"

 

She stormed out and slammed the door.

 

Change

Since the twins are both at the same university, we bought them a car to share a few months back.

Yesterday we received a letter from the dealer's accounting department, saying they overcharged us in error, along with a check for the amount.

 

I am not making this up.

Write your own caption

This picture, I swear, is taken from the Disney website, showing a family enjoying the all-new MCU Avengers Campus at Disneyland.

If they're having fun, I can't imagine what the families who aren't enjoying it look like.

 

Meanwhile, up front

Mary: "Dr. Grumpy's office, this is Mary."

Ms. Young: "Hi, I was referred by Dr. Neverheardofhim, and he says you need to work me in RIGHT AWAY. Like, today. Now."

Mary: "We have nothing open today... I can do next Wednesday, at 2:30, or..."

Ms. Young: "I looked it up! On the internet it says you are legally obligated to get me in, since my doctor referred me urgently!"

Mary: "Uh, no. If you have an emergency you'll need to go to ER. We don't have any kind of relationship with Dr. Neverheardofhim. The soonest I get you in is Wednesday, though I can put you on a waiting list for..."

Ms. Young: "This is terrible that you're breaking the law like this! I'm going to call my cousin, who's a lawyer!"

She hung up

2 hours later

Mary: "Dr. Grumpy's office, this is Mary."

Ms. Young: "Hi, um, I was referred by Dr. Neverheardofhim, I called earlier, and I decided I'll take the Wednesday appointment."

Mary: "I'm sorry, but it's no longer available. We can see you Friday morning, at 8:00, or..."

Ms. Young: "You gave away my appointment? You can't do that!"

Mary: "You never made an appointment."

Ms. Young: "You offered it to me! That's the same thing! I looked it up! On the internet it says you are legally obligated to hold it for me."

Mary: "I'm not going to argue with you. Would you like the Friday morning slot?"

Ms. Young: "This is terrible that you're breaking the law like this! I'm going to call my cousin, who's a lawyer!"

She hung up 

 

1 hour later. 

 

Mary: "Dr. Grumpy's office, this is Mary."

Ms. Young: "Hi, um, I called earlier, I was referred by Dr. Neverheardofhim, can I take the Friday morning appointment? Is it still available?"

Mary: "It is, that's Friday morning at 8:00. Okay, what insurance do you have?"

Ms. Young: "Federal United Healthcare."

Mary: "Oh... I'm sorry, Dr. Grumpy isn't contracted with F-U Healthcare."

Ms. Young: "Dr. Neverheardofhim referred me! So you have to take it! I looked it up on the internet!"

Mary: "We don't take that plan, so you'll have to try their website to find a neurologist who does."

Ms. Young: "No, that's YOUR job! You need to find someone who takes my insurance, and have them work me in! It's the law! I looked it up on the internet! I'm going to call my cousin, who's a lawyer!"

Mary hung up

Deep thoughts

Mrs. Seegarp: "My headaches have been terrible the last few months, and I don't know why."

Dr. Grumpy: "Have you had more stress? Or does it seem the Perflukin has stopped working?"

Mrs. Seegarp: "I stopped Perflukin 3 months ago when the copay coupon expired."

Supermarket report

Hi, this is Frank.

I'm still working part-time at Local Grocery, carrying groceries out and pushing empty carts in.

At Local Grocery, and at pretty much all the other stores and malls around town, asshats of both sides STILL feel the need to cover someone else's property with stickers that say "Let's go, Brandon!" or "Dump Trump" or whatever. Usually they show up at night, and sometimes there's more than one layer where they try to cover the other side's stickers.

Can you people please stop this? This bullshit is only hurting me and my co-workers.

Because after you leave, thinking how clever you are for sticking the damn things all over cart corrals, lamp posts, "handicapped parking" signs, and even shopping carts that got missed at the closing sweep, we're the ones who have to scrape them off. So each day the morning shift has to send people out with chemicals and scrapers to deal with it, only to have some bozo put them back up the next night.

You think we like doing this at 6:00 a.m. in the Midwestern winter?

You're welcome to your opinion and your stickers. Cover your car, or your house, or your body with them. I don't care.

But all you're doing here is making more work for me, and a lot of other retail store drudges, from sea to shining sea.

The situation has gotten bad enough that now Local Grocery has hired a guy just to come in a few days a week and scrape them off the property, in addition to the extra cameras they've had to put up in the parking lot.

Those cameras aren't cheap. The guys who have to scrape off the stickers aren't volunteers. This stuff increases the store's overhead, and the same for stores, gas stations... wherever else you do this crap.

Which means that your prices are only going to go up. Certainly, this isn't a big driver of inflation in our world gone mad, but it contributes. And everyone has to pay for the asinine behavior of a few.

So grow up. Put them all over your house, car, and face if you want, but leave other people's property out if it.

Thank you.

Vacation memories

Recently my wife and I were going through photos from cruises we've taken, and I thought I'd share a few:

These buffet signs from the "Department of Obvious."

 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps a tad scarier was this item, which falls under "what do we do with all these leftover hot dogs?"

I went down to trivia, and realized I had no chance of winning a key chain:

For those unfamiliar with cruise ship trivia, the game is for bragging rights only. The prizes are generally cheap gift shop crap, like cruise-line themed key chains, beer koozies, golf tees, coasters, and pessaries. Except on Carnival, where it's a plastic trophy shaped like a ship.

One ship we were on had this large artwork in a staircase that, to me, looked like a dead body wrapped in a sheet:

 

Kind of like Kim Basinger being carried out toward the end of "Last Dance with Mary Jane":

One day the ship's activity guide listed an LGBTQ "delicious lunch feast" with camaraderie. Apparently, however, neither the feast nor camaraderie were to exceed 15 minutes:

 

 

 

This fire hazard is, admittedly, my own invention. It was an improvised set-up to keep my MacBook plugged into the only outlet I could find on the sun deck, using a power convertor and some empty cups to keep the whole thing from falling out.

Lastly, one night we were out strolling on deck, where the pool stand routinely had a cute towel animal on display. That evening we were kind of stunned to see it was, uh, something different.

"I dunno. Maybe they put Viagra in the laundry detergent?"

We were somewhat taken aback that the towel booth had taken an R-rated turn, until we continued walking and saw it from another angle:

 

That's all, folks!

Medical news headlines

Seen in a chart

 

Medicine cabinet

Annie: "Dr. Grumpy's office, this is Annie."

Mr. Clueless: "Hi, Dr. Grumpy has my wife on Fukitol, and it's either not helping, or it's making her sick. I'm not sure which."

Annie: "Okay, there's a big difference between those two things. Can you check with her, or just put her on the phone?"

Mr. Clueless: "She's at the casino with some friends, I can have her call you later?"

Annie: "Yeah, please have her..."

Mr. Clueless: "She's taking 2 and 1/2 pills twice each day."

Annie: "All right, it looks like she has both the 50mg and 200mg pill sizes from past scripts. Which size is she taking 2 and 1/2 of?"

Mr. Clueless: "I don't know. What difference does that make?"

Annie: "A lot. Just have her call me."

Mr. Clueless. "I will. Actually, maybe it's the Tidepod he has her on that's doing it."

Annie: "Dr. Grumpy doesn't have her on Tidepod. It's not in his field. Maybe one of her other doctors?"

Mr. Clueless: "Well, it's either Fukitol or Tidepod that she's taking, regardless of size, and it either isn't working or she needs a higher dose. Does that make sense... Actually, I'll just have her call you when she gets back, it will be in about an hour."

Annie: "That's probably for the best."

Best. Wikipedia. Page. Ever.

 

December 31, 2021

Dr. Grumpy: "This is Dr. Grumpy, returning a call."

Mr. Scan: "Hi, doc, I need to talk to Annie, or whoever schedules tests for your practice."

Dr. Grumpy: "She's off this week, sir. My office message says we're closed until after New Years."

Mr. Scan: "Yeah, I heard that. Um, okay, maybe you can help me... Back in, uh, July, you sent me an order for an MRI. I have to get one every few years to follow up on my meningothingioma whatever, to make sure it isn't growing?"

Dr. Grumpy: "Yes."

Mr. Scan: "Anyway, I've been busy, and I need to get the scan done today, otherwise my deductible starts over tomorrow. So I've been calling MRI places, and none of them can get me in today, and I guess I need an insurance authorization for it, too, so I need you or Annie to get an authorization ASAP, and call one of these places and tell them I'm in a life threatening situation or something to get it done. Let me give you the numbers of the places I've called..."

Dr. Grumpy: "No, sir. Look, this isn't going to happen. Your MRI is not medically urgent, for one thing, and..."

Mr. Scan: "You don't know that! If the tumor is growing I could die from it tonight!!!"

Dr. Grumpy: "Well, it was ordered back in July, as you pointed out. You're the one who didn't call to set it up until the last day of the year. My staff is on vacation now."

Mr. Scan: "It's not like your note said 'please call before Christmas or we'll be closed,' did it?"

Dr. Grumpy: "I'm not going to argue with you sir. The bottom line is that the last day of the year is not the time to call to get a test done that you should have had 5 months ago. Just because you didn't think about this until today doesn't make it an emergency. Call back next week and we'll get it set up for you."

Mr. Scan: "You medical people are all such inconsiderate assholes."

Click

Shutting down for holidays

See you next year!

Bad Reputation

Dr. Grumpy: "How's your floral business doing?"

Mrs. Dixon: "I had to close down... The pandemic just wiped it out."

Dr. Grumpy: "I'm so sorry."

Mrs. Dixon: "Yeah, I mean, nobody saw that coming, but still... Anyway, in some ways it's been a blessing because it let me open a business that's closer to what I really wanted."

Dr. Grumpy: "What are you doing now?"

Mrs. Dixon: "I'm a psychic."

Reruns

Mr. Fatherly: "It was really stressful 3 months ago, because my son and his fiancée moved in with me."

Dr. Grumpy: "How are things now?"

Mr. Fatherly: "Better, my son finally moved out last week."

Dr. Grumpy: "What about his fiancée?"

Mr. Fatherly: "I married her. That's why he moved out."

Round and round we go

Dr. Grumpy: "Has the medication helped?"

Mr. Son: "I think mom is doing okay with it, and the staff at the Alzheimer's home tell me..."

Mrs. Mother: "Wait... the place I'm living at is for Alzheimer's disease?"

Mr. Son: "Yes, mom."

Mrs. Mother: "Why do I live there, anyway?"

Modern life

Guy comes into office, Mary slides open her window.

Mary: "Hi, you have a 1:00 appointment? Okay. Can I make a copy of your insurance card? Thank you... Do you have a mask?"

Mr. Beijerinck: "No. I don't need one."

Mary: "Dr. Grumpy asks that all patients wear them. Let me give you one."

Mr. Beijerinck: "Little lady, the pandemic is over, if there ever was one. I ain't wearing a mask."

Mary: "Sir, because of the nature of his field, Dr. Grumpy sees a lot of patients on medications that suppress their immune systems, so for their protection we ask that everyone wear a mask when they go back to see him. Here's one you can wear during your visit."

Mr Beijerinck: "You want me to wear this?"

Mary: "Yes, just while you're here, please."

Mr. Beijerinck: "Okay, here."

He tears the mask into little pieces, tosses them through the window onto Mary's desk.

Mr. Beijerinck: "That's what I think of your bullshit rules. Now, honey, just go tell the doctor that I'm here for my appointment."

Mary: "Thank you for letting me know. Here's your insurance card back, I haven't copied it. I'll let the doctor know that I cancelled your appointment. Have a nice day."

Mary closes her window, pretends to answer her phone, and ignores him until he leaves.

1:47 a.m.

Dr. Grumpy: "This is Dr. Grumpy, returning a page."

Mr. Lacune: "Hi, thish ish Dave Lacune, you shaw me at the hoshpital a few days ago, when I had a shtroke."

Dr. Grumpy: "Yes sir, are you okay? Your speech is pretty slurred, and I don't remember it having been affected by the stroke."

Mr. Lacune: "I'm fine. Look, you preshcribed Nomocva to me, to keep me from having another a shtroke, but I read about all itsh shide effectsh, and sho now I shtopped it and I'm afraid to take it."

Dr. Grumpy: "I'm kind of concerned you've had another stroke, sir. Your speech is pretty slurred."

Mr. Lacune: "Nah, my shpeech ish like thish because I've been doing tequila shotsh and shmoking weed all night because I'm anxioush."

Pause

Dr. Grumpy: "What are you so anxious about?"

Mr. Lacune: "Becaushe I shtopped Nomocva, sho now I'm worried I might have another shtroke."

Seen in a hospital chart

 

Second opinion

Dr. Grumpy: "Let's see... At your last visit I prescribed Flipazol. Did that help?"

Ms. Webb: "No, it didn't do anything."

Dr. Grumpy: "Were there any side effects?"

Ms. Webb: "There were a lot of them. It was terrible! I can't believe you prescribed it for me!"

Dr. Grumpy: "What happened?"

Ms. Webb: "Actually, I never even had it filled. I didn't like all the side effects I read about."

Dr. Grumpy: "Then why did you say it didn't help you?"

Ms. Webb: "A lady I met online told me it wouldn't."

Memories

In the early 1970's, my mom was found to have breast cancer. I was too young at the time to really understand it, and fortunately she's still around.

Anyway, she had a right mastectomy. At the time they waited about a year before they'd put in a breast implant, so during that time she used a prosthetic boob. She'd put it in her bra before leaving for work, and take it out when she got home.

Anyway, there was one day where she had a lot of errands to run, and when she got back was telling my dad how, everywhere she went, she got some strange looks. Nothing horrible, just people seemed surprised. She figured it was something she was wearing, or a large food stain on her blouse, or whatever.

My dad took her down the hall to their bathroom, where she'd left the fake breast lying on the counter.

Random pictures

 Okay, time to put up some stuff you guys have sent in.

First is this pizza place. I can only assume the owner isn't familiar with idioms. Either that or he's trying to keep the place empty.

 

Next, from the "nudge nudge, wink wink" department:

"Only $32? Is that at the same time?"

One reader wants to know why the Slurpee looks like the poop emoji.

 

Another says this beauty salon couldn't look more disreputable if it tried:

 

 

 

And lastly, a reader says he ordered a brisket sandwich with onions, and wished they'd abbreviated it differently.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Dr. Grumpy: "Do you drive?"

Mr. Safety: "Oh, hell no. My seizures have been so unpredictable that I've given it up."

Dr. Grumpy: "Were they ever well-controlled?"

Mr. Safety: "They were good, but not great. It always seemed like one would occur when I'd just started to think they were controlled, and I'd have to stop driving again. I finally gave it up. It just wasn't safe for me, and I don't want to hurt anyone else. My friends and I all work at the same warehouse, so I just carpool with them and chip in gas money each week."

Dr. Grumpy: "That works out. What do you do over there?"

Mr. Safety: "I'm a forklift operator."

Blink

She was 19, here for migraines. She was nervous, had never been to a neurologist before, and her mother was along for emotional support.

We talked a bit, went over some treatment options. Nothing too costly. She worked full-time as a waitress, trying to save money so she could start college soon. We settled on nortriptyline and naproxen, and I began writing out scripts.

As I scribbled, I blinked.

Suddenly the scripts were gone. Instead of paper, I was typing in an online refill for generic sumatriptan… which a minute ago was brand-name, and she couldn’t afford it.

She was still there, across my desk, but she’d changed, too. She wasn’t a waitress anymore. She was working full time as a nurse, was married, and had two daughters. I remembered her having moved away to go to college, then nursing school, then coming back here. I recalled her telling me she'd gotten engaged. I’d treated her migraines through both pregnancies.

The nortriptyline hadn’t helped, and now she was on Aimovig, a drug I hadn’t imagined when she first came to me. In the time between then and now, besides the times she lived out-of-state, I recalled trying a handful of different medications over the years.

During my blink she’d developed a few gray hairs, wrinkles, and pounds from the stresses of daily life, jobs, raising a family, and making ends meet. I’m sure mine are worse.

This is also part of medicine, just as it is in everyday life. Over our careers we see college students mature into adults with jobs and families. We see parents become grandparents. The middle-aged become elderly.

We see people we’ve grown to care about die of things we can’t fix.

Being a doctor reflects the changes we see in our own lives as we travel around the sun. Our patients become a sort of extended family. We aren’t directly involved with their daily events, but we catch up on them here and there, and they see the same changes in us.

The drawings my kids did are still on my office walls, but haven’t been updated in a long time. Picking them up from the after-school program has been replaced by picking them up from the airport.

My hair has gradually thinned over time and become grayer.

The glasses I’ve worn since I was 8 have become bifocals.

All in a blink.

Mary's desk

Mary: "Dr. Grumpy's office, this is Mary."

Mrs. Frantic: "Hi, I have an urgent issue and need to get in RIGHT AWAY!"

Mary: "Hang on... Okay, the doctor can see you this afternoon, at 4:30... we also have an opening at 8:15 tomorrow morning, or..."

Mrs. Frantic: "Those won't work, um, I, uh, I'm actually out-of-town, on vacation, for another 2 weeks."

Pause

Mary: "Okay, when will you be back?"

Mrs. Frantic: "I don't have my work schedule here. Can I just call you after I get home?"

Seen in a chart

From an internist who apparently believes in "brevity is the soul of wit."

 

 

You  just know he billed this as a high-level visit, too.

Thank you, L!

Probably true

Dr. Grumpy: "Okay, then let's try increasing the dose of Flurpizol to 2 pills each night."

Mr. Martin: "That's what Annie had told me to do when I called last month, "

Dr. Grumpy: "I was wondering about that, because I see the phone call listed..."

Mr. Martin: "You're not angry at me, are you? I just wasn't sure."

Dr. Grumpy: "No, of course not. Let's just try the increase now and we'll see..."

Mr. Martin: "You're not going to tell Annie, are you? I don't want her to be angry at me, either."

Dr. Grumpy: "She won't be. Don't worry about it."

Mr. Martin: "Do you promise? Isn't she your boss?"

Medical advertising

Saw this ad in a journal a while back.

It was, I believe, for a back pain treatment. Though I can also see it being used for a martial arts movie. It it were in black & white it could even be something by Robert Mapplethorpe.

But what I really love is the obligatory "Not an actual patient" disclaimer, as if it were common for patients with a metal clamp on their low back and jagged metal protruding from their skin to come in for an appointment (my colleagues in ER may feel differently).

If they did, I'd probably have to turn them away. I couldn't afford the upholstery damage.

Patient quote

“Sorry if my speech is slurred, doc. I was really nervous about the appointment so I took 2 Vicodin and some marijuana gummies while I was driving over."

Moms

Dr. Grumpy: "What medications have you tried for this?"

Mr. Teen: "They... I'm sorry, my mom wrote them all down and I left it at home... Hang on."

Pulls out his phone.

Mother: "Hello. You left the list on the counter here."

Mr. Teen: "Yeah, can you read it off, please, I'm with the doctor."

Mother: "I swear, you'd forget your ass if it weren't attached to you. Remember the thing last week, where you sent a tube of athlete's foot cream through the wash? You need to be more responsible."

Mr. Teen: "Mom, can you just tell me what medications..."

Mother: "I had to replace your father's work shirt, young man. And I bet you got there late for the appointment today, too? Dr. Grumpy, can you hear me? Was he there on time?"

Dr. Grumpy: "Uh..."

Mr. Teen: "I think one of them was Excedrin, and another was called sumaframtam, and..."

Mother: "He means sumatriptan, doctor."

Mr. Teen: "Mom I can't hear you, it keeps cutting out."

He puts the phone in his pocket.

Mr. Teen: "I'll call you with the list after I get home."

Burning down the house

Hi, it's Craig, reporting from Local Grocery.

On Friday night I was doing the usual pre-closing routine in the bakery, sweeping up crumbs, washing out baking trays, making sure no one was locked in the freezer, when suddenly the night got more lively.

One of my colleagues working in deli opened their oven to have flames shoot out of it and set some surrounding materials on fire.

In a large store this occasionally happens, and we're trained for it, so I didn't panic. In fact, the only thing that happened in my department was a lady came over and asked if I could get her 1/2 pound of honey-baked turkey since the deli staff seemed kind of busy (no, I can't).

Then the deli manager suddenly yelled to me "I need your fire extinguisher!"

I grabbed it off the decorating table and ran it over to him. He put out the fire at the same time that the deli's sprinklers switched on, soaking all of us and the lady yelling about honey-baked turkey.

Since the bakery was quiet I helped them mop up while somebody dealt with the turkey lady (who was now also upset over her unexpected participation in wet-floral-print-polyester-blouse night). I was back to boxing up unsold donuts for the homeless shelter pick-up when the deli manager came over.

Deli guy: "Thank you, we really needed that, we couldn't get to ours. I've put in an order for a new one for bakery, and it will be here tomorrow."

Craig: "Thank you. Where is your fire extinguisher?"

Deli guy: "We keep it on the wall behind the oven."

Modern Industry

Dr. Grumpy: "What brings you in to see me, sir?"

Mr. Fishbone: "You don't already know?"

Dr. Grumpy: "Uh, no, we've never met before, and I haven't received any records."

Mr. Fishbone: "It's all on my website, if you'd bothered to look me up."

Dr. Grumpy: "Sir, I don't 'look up' patients online before their appointments."

Mr. Fishbone: "Maybe you should, so we wouldn't be having this conversation."

Pause

Dr. Grumpy: "What brings you in to see me today?"

Mr. Fishbone: "Apparently you wanted to waste my time. I'm out of here."

 He got up and left.

"To each his own."

 

Thank you, S!

Weekend on call

Dr. Grumpy: "Hi, I'm Dr. Grumpy. What's going on here?"

Mrs. Nine-Iron: "Well, we were on the 15th hole when suddenly she had trouble walking and couldn't talk anymore."

Mrs. Sand-Trap looks at her friend, then me, and nods her head.

Dr. Grumpy: "Then what happened?"

Mrs. Putter: "I helped her get back to the golf cart. Fortunately, this one had seat belts, so we were able to use that to hold her in it. Otherwise she might have fallen out."

Dr. Grumpy: "Is that when you called 911?"

Mrs. Nine-Iron: "No, we waited until we finished up and got back to the club house. I mean, we were on the 15th hole, anyway, at that point."

Mrs. Top-Flite: "And it's not like they were going to refund our green fees."

Customer service

This is Craig.

My summer job hunt (also known as the ongoing 2020 college Spring Break), resulted in me working at a bakery.

Okay, not a real bakery. It's not like I'm apprenticing as a pâtissier. I'm working in the bakery department at Local Grocery (same one Frank bags groceries & collect shopping carts at). This consists of me putting frozen pucks (that's what we call them) of cookie dough in the oven, bagging the finished product, putting a mysterious "garlic-flavored spread non-dairy food product" on slices of French bread, getting yelled at by strangers because at 9:45 p.m. we're out of breakfast donuts, writing "Happy Birthday" on some cake for a hyperactive 5-year-old who clearly needs to pee, and other valuable life skills, for minimum wage.

A few times a week I work the closing shift. Beyond the occasional customer questions ("Hey, how many muffins are in a 6-pack of them?"), this entails me wiping out the donut and bagel trays for the morning shift to fill up again, cleaning up the kitchen so the early crew can start baking when they get here, and moving tubs of dough from the freezer to the fridge so it will thaw overnight.

Around 8:55 p.m. the phone rang.

Craig: "Bakery department, can I help you?"

Phone guy: "YEAH. I've been trying to reach someone there for HOURS. I'm out of my medication, and need to make sure it's been refilled so I can come get it tonight."

Craig: "I'm sorry, this is the bakery. I think you're looking for pharmacy. Let me transfer you."

Phone guy: "NO! DON'T DO THAT! I've been calling them for the last 15 minutes and no one answers the phone."

Craig: "Well, they close at 7:00, but you can leave a message about a refill."

Phone guy: "But I need my refill NOW! I AM OUT! Can't you go over there and get it for me? I can just pick it up at the bakery."

Craig: "Sir, I can't do that. It's all locked up. I'm not even allowed in there. They'll be open tomorrow morning at 9:00, so if you..."

Phone guy: "You're being entirely unreasonable. I need my medicine! Can't you just call a pharmacist and tell them to come in for me?"

Craig: "No, sir, I can't, let me get you a manager."

Phone guy: "Is it the pharmacist?"

Craig: "No, it's the night manager who's in charge now."

Phone guy: "That's not who I want."

Craig: "Sir, I really can't help you. You pressed the extension for bakery. That's all I handle here."

Phone guy: "I'm not stupid. I know what I pressed. I'm going to go down the phone menu until I reach someone who can help me. You were the first department."

Craig: "Let me transfer you to..."

Phone guy: "Screw this. You're worthless. I'll try Beer & Wine next, and Deli is after them. Somebody there must know the pharmacist."

Click

 

Job Training

The staff and Dr. Pissy were having lunch the other day, when I made the mistake of wandering up front to use the copy machine. As I copied away, a new marketing rep I hadn't seen before wandered in and zeroed in on the only person she could see - me.

Marketing lady: "HI! I'm Annie Oying! I'm here on behalf of Dr. Bonescrew's new orthopedic office on this side of Grumpyville, right across the street."

She takes a pile of business cards and insurance forms out of her bag and sets them on the counter.

Dr. Grumpy: "Thank you."

Marketing Lady: "It's great to have a chance to introduce myself to you! Are you a secretary, medical assistant, provider, or something else here?"

I should have used my stock line that I'm the guy who cleans the fish tank, but I was focusing on figuring out where a paper jam was.

Dr. Grumpy: "I'm, a, uh provider, I guess."

Marketing Lady: "That's wonderful! It's a pleasure to meet you, uh..." She steps back, opens the office door, and reads the names on it. "Dr. Grumpy or Pissy!"

Musical interlude

Local hospital, like every hospital, has an overhead public address system to page doctors, announce emergencies, and inform visitors of flash specials on stuffed animals in the gift shop.

Mistakes occasionally happen. Sometimes a hospital operator hits the wrong button, so you get a few seconds of someone dialing a phone, or talking to another operator, or the hospital's hold music, or (if the hold music is broken) a local radio station. The operators are actually in an off-campus office, so if a problem occurs it can take a minute for them to find out and correct it.

So yesterday, I was on call, doing a consult in the ICU. A cardiologist was paged overhead to the cath lab, but then the operator hit the wrong button and we got a local radio station.

Normally people just ignore this, but by sheer chance this was what was on the air:

"Another one bites the dust,
Another one bites the dust, Yeah!
And another one's gone and another one's gone
Another one bites the dust!"*

Later in the afternoon there were apology notices up in all the elevators, saying the hospital would be upgrading the PA system to prevent such occurrences.

*Although not intended in this way, you can use either this or "Stayin' Alive" to do CPR properly.

'Murica!

My reader, Mike, sent this in, and says this fine establishment recently opened up near his office.

Thank you, Mike!

Seen in a chart

 Here's some items that I've recently encountered in medical charts.

 

First, from the "she looks good for her age" category:

 

Next from the "that narrows it down" department:

 

 

"How vague can you get?"

Apparently time and chief complaint are now interchangeable:

And lastly, this helpful system telling me that an accountant will be making care decisions instead of me, no matter what I choose.

Show and tell

This is Frank.

As you guys know, for a little over a year I've been working as a courtesy clerk at Local Grocery, bagging purchases, collecting carts, and dealing with the public.

In that year, which rapidly became the most insane year any of us could have imagined, me and my co-workers have faced toilet paper wars, fights over cans of beans and bottles of hand sanitizer, and assholes who feel they need to scream at a guy collecting shopping carts for minimum wage about mask requirements.

But nothing - and I mean nothing - could have prepared me for what happened last week.

I was working the afternoon shift, bagging groceries as people came through. An endless stream of produce, canned stuff, frozen food, whatever, which I'm tossing into bags and trying not to smash anything. Fill a bag with 5 items, turn, put it in the cart, wash, rinse, repeat.

And then... it happened.

As I leaned forward to bag a lady's purchase, somehow, without me noticing it, part of my work shorts got hooked on the metal piece that holds the empties up.

When I turned to put the bag in her cart... RRRRRIPPPPPPPPPPPP.

The lady dropped her sunglasses.

The guy behind her stopped talking on his phone.

I was so zoned into grocery-bagging-autopilot that I didn't even realize what had happened until the cashier I was working with yelled "OH MY GOD! FRANK!" as she dropped the handheld scanner.

I looked down. This is pretty much what everyone saw:

 

 

My manager looked over when he heard the cashier scream. Thinking quickly, he grabbed the intercom mic and yelled for anyone working back in deli to bring an apron up front, like, NOW!

Unfortunately, while this would (sort of) solve the problem, it also resulted in all the customers at check-out suddenly looking around to see why an apron was needed so urgently, as I covered my tighty whities with a plastic bag of frozen pizza dough, asparagus, and 2 cans of minestrone.

The sunglasses were okay.

The handheld scanner was also okay.

My dad ran to Target to get me another pair of shorts.

They let me wear the apron home that night.

Dangerous drugs

After a drug comes to market, a lot can still go wrong. Even though it's been carefully tested, there are sometimes side effects, possibly serious, that won't be found until a large number of people have been on it.

So every drug company out there has a website and phone number where people can contact them to report side effects they've experienced. When this happens the company gets in touch with the physician involved for details.

Last week I put Mrs. Busybody on a new medication. She took her first dose a few hours before her neighbors hosted a large wedding at their home, complete with a live band in the backyard and a DJ in the garage, blasting merrymakers with tunes until the wee hours of the morning.

Mrs. Busybody wasn't invited.

So, of course, sometime after midnight she wandered down the hall to her computer, to contact the drug manufacturer.

When I came in on Monday morning, the drug company's "Adverse Event Reporting" form was sitting on my fax machine, wanting more information on this:

Memories

Growing up we were in a group of 3 families that did a lot together. Vacations, holidays, barbecues... the usual. Inevitably, this sort of thing leads to a lot of pranks.

And in the summer of 1975, a truly great one happened.

That year my family was moving from central city to suburb area, with all the usual preparations that entails. Because of the distance we wouldn't be able to keep our old phone number (people back then ONLY had landlines, young ones).

The other 2 moms in our 3-family group did something awful.

They printed up flyers on colored paper. It's been 46 years since then, so my memory isn't exact. But it said something like this:

"Due to my personality defects and physical shortcomings, I have no friends. Since I am relocating out of state, I am throwing a final, huge, party at my house. Food, drinks, and entertainment provided. Please call to RSVP and get the address."

And it had our home phone number.

They took the flyers to the city's largest mall, and handed them out everywhere. They put them on car windshields in parking lots. They stood at the bottoms of escalators and gave one to anyone who stepped off.

My parents were taken entirely by surprise when the home phone went wild. Call after call after call. Everyone wanted to come to the huge party that we weren't having. The phones back then couldn't be unplugged easily, either, as they were generally hardwired into the wall.

My Dad finally took all our phones off the hook, wrapped the receivers in towels to muffle the "phone off the hook screech" and put them in drawers. My parents thought it was some insane mistake until their friends confessed.

The phone kept ringing insanely until it was turned off when we moved the next week.