Oh, the humanity
I was in my doctor’s office waiting for an order for lab work. I’ve been stressed lately and I guess it’s good to get tests done when you’re super stressed and your blood pressure reads a little higher than usual. Anyway, when the woman in the cute sneakers and beige linen tunic began talking to the only other woman in the waiting room, I kept my eyes glued to my phone, seemingly looking at something extremely important. (I was playing Gummy Drop.) The other woman got called in to her appointment and Cute Sneakers’s head immediately swiveled in my direction. She began talking to me! Couldn’t she see I was engaged in something Extremely Important?
Guess not.
“Do you know if the other doctor is in today? I usually see her, but today I’m seeing the APRN….” she started.
“Why, no, I don’t,” I replied thinking that might cut her off. Nope. Off she went, talking about doctors, ones she’s liked, others she hadn’t and the merits of going to a practice where they are really nice and helpful. As I was the only other person in the waiting area, it didn’t feel good to keep looking down at my game, so I closed the app and turned most of my attention to my new, talkative buddy. On she went as I kept glancing over to the sliding glass window to see if anyone was handing me a lifeline…er…lab order. Nope.
All of a sudden I realized Cute Sneakers was in the middle of a story, telling me about her sister, who had worked in a doctor’s office down in Florida. (Or maybe it was New Jersey, I wasn’t paying that close attention…) The sister and her co-workers worked for a grumpy, taciturn doctor which made for a tense workplace. One day, after they discovered when his birthday was, they hired a belly dancer for him. They had her lying down on a gurney in one of the exam rooms with a sheet covering her. When he came in, she popped off the gurney, threw the sheet aside and began her performance. Sneakers said her sister told her the doctor sat down in a chair and laughed and laughed until the dancer had completed her show. None of the other nurses had ever seen him laugh before. After that, the workplace took on a whole other ambiance, which led to the nurses being able to tell the doctor that his previous behavior made it difficult to work in the office with him. He, in turn, told them that he didn’t realize that was how he was coming across.
It struck me, as I excused myself to check on the whereabouts of that freaking lab order, that I was glad I hadn’t buried my head in a magazine or made obvious attempts at discouraging the conversation. This was a great story. I was actually happy to hear such a tale. But the really interesting thing to me was how unusual it was to hear about a situation where someone — the doctor in this case — wasn’t accused of workplace harassment or had a complaint filed against him. Instead, the nurses sought out a solution that allowed both sides to be open and communicative which resulted in a positive outcome. When does that happen anymore?
I think we’ve become a nation of finger-pointers and blame-delegators. Nothing shows this more than the propagation of so-called viral videos in which people behaving badly are videotaped and promoted as a way of holding them accountable for said bad behavior. We can’t wait to seize upon on someone’s mistake or bad decision and call them out for their offense. The media, colleagues, professionals, neighbors, random passers-by all get caught up in it; teachers aren’t safe from parents, politicians aren’t safe from constituents, children aren’t safe from playmates — we’re all ready to pounce!
I get that this is how our world is now; we all have cell phones and sometimes those videos can show us some important things. It’s not like I haven’t clicked on some of those videos myself. But this chatty woman in the doctor’s office gave me the wonderful and too-often rare opportunity to engage with another human being; and as a bonus…told me an uplifting story about how people can still work with each other in the face of challenges and difficulties. People who saw the humanity in another and exploited that rather than their so-called bad behavior.
That should go viral.