Showering with the Coworkers

My wife and I started our new jobs on the same day: September 13th. She went to work at a private charter school. I went to work at a mental hospital. We were both trying to find our way in this tremblingly wicked little world, trying to find jobs that would keep us afloat, keep us engaged, keep us coming back for more, keep us from going mad.

(Yes, people go to work at mental hospitals to keep from going mad. Well, people like me do.)

"I'm just excited to be working with people who have teeth," my wife said. Some of her coworkers at her former place of employ were from, well, different walks of life than she. And that's okay, as long as there's one or two people with whom you can have a decent conversation. As a Jewish vegetarian, I can't really imagine what it must have been like for her during work potlucks, surrounded by the endless parade of ham-salad and french onion green bean casserole.

Mung.

Coworkers are funny. Some people go out to bars with their coworkers. Some people become friends with their coworkers, or lovers, or even life-partners. My eldest sister works for my father. And she spends a fair amount of her workday crying in the bathroom.

'Nuff said.

Whether you hit the bar or the bowling alley with your coworkers, or whether you wouldn't never consider doing either, you spend a relatively significant proportion of time with them-- even if you never see them after your workday ends. Having coworkers that you can connect with is important, some might even say that it is vital. Yes, there are going to be some that you cannot stand, some that you'd rather gnaw your own eyelids off than spend ten minutes with in the same cube-code. There are also going to be some that you'd like to have been elementary school friends with, had you the luxury of shape-shifting and rearranging and DeLoreanizing. Most of them, though, are just kind of there, and wouldn't it be nice to make some sort of human connection with them? Nothing earth-shattering. Nothing involving bodily-fluids or even omlettes, but a moment that says, "Hey, you're human, I'm human, we're both humans who breathe the same air for forty hours every week together. Let's bond over something, for Christ's sake."

My wife works with a guy who drives a Jeep Compass. Because my wife has The Car Gene, she notices things like this and, also because she has The Car Gene, she knows that a Jeep Compass is usually exclusively reserved for women. Especially a Jeep Compass with a Michelle Obama bumper-sticker on it.

"It's probably his wife's car," I surmised, "he must be borrowing it while his Plymouth Gran Fury is in the shop."

But it wasn't so. Week after week, Dude McGee showed up for work at my wife's school in a Jeep Compass with a Michelle Obama bumper-sticker slapped on its ass, Mrs. Apron reported to me.

"Wow," I replied, with typical eloquence, "that's gay."

And, really, it was.

"Hey," I said, "you should send him a link to that "Car & Driver" Rental Car Olympics test-- he'd probably get a kick out of it."

I am referring to a highly enjoyable set of tests the C&D staff put four rental vehicles (Ford Mustang, Lincoln Town Car, Jeep Compass, and some Cadillac piece of shit) through, including Which Car Goes Fastest in Reverse? (Town Car -- 63mph!) and which car does the handbrake parking test best?

It wasn't the Compass. In fact, I don't think the Compass won any of the tests. That's why I knew she needed to send the link to the web version of the article to her coworker. Any man who drives a Jeep Compass (with a Michelle Obama bumper-sticker on it, no less) must have a sense-of-humor about it.

Turns out, he did. Sort of.

"That was really great," he told Mrs. Apron at work yesterday, "but my car did so poorly!"

Um, yeah. You might as well drive the Malibu Barbie Corvette.

"Thing is-- people don't like it because it's a 4-cylinder and has no power. But I drive it like a little old lady and I actually get pretty decent gas mileage."

I hope that by driving it "like a little old lady" doesn't infer that he drives it whilst wearing diabetic compression stockings and orthopedic shoes.

"Thanks for sending me that link," he said, "it was great."

Mrs. Apron was very happy to now have a connection, a fun, lighthearted, gentle ribbing connection with a coworker.

"That's wonderful, buddy," I said, quick to encourage socialization for either of us as a sign that we're not complete retards, "I had a connection like that at work today, too!"

"Cool, buddy!" my wife said. "Tell me about it."

"Well, a couple of the nurses and social workers were in the chart-room talking about peeing in the shower,"

"Of course they were," my wife intoned.

"And then, of course the conversation turned to masturbating in the shower..."

Oh, The Humanity

I almost threw up at my new job yesterday.

It wasn't because, as a psychiatric technician and allied therapist in a psychiatric hospital, I am exposed to pee-pee and poo-poo, and patients who enjoy creating mayhem and artwork with both. No, I don't especially mind that. It also wasn't because I am exposed to patients who like to... expose.

"lookatmytitslookatmytitslookatmytitsaforeifuckinkillyoumotherfucker"

I... didn't. And, fortunately, she didn't, either.

I almost threw up at my new job yesterday not because of the patients, but because of the staff. My coworkers. My.... peers.

I almost threw up, but I didn't-- because I couldn't even bear the thought of eating after what I saw and heard today at work. Plus the fact that my day started at 7am and my lunch break was at one. What was the point? My appetite was ruined, as was my outlook on mental health as a profession, and my faith in this facility and my zeal for this job.

Gone. Awesome.

Patients were openly ridiculed by staff, openly insulted, openly... threatened.

Staff Member: "How 'bout I come over there and cut you? I'll come over there and cut you so bad your own mother won't recognize you. I'll fuck your motherfuckin' shit up."

Staff Member: "I'm about ready to shove that walker up your ass."

Staff Member: "Hey, did you know that everybody with your last name is a fuckin' queer?"

Staff Member: "Can you say, 'I'm the turtliest turtle in the turtle pond' while wiggling your head around?"

Staff Member: "Do you even know what your name is? Do you know how to tie your shoes or are you still wearing those retard referee sneakers?"

Staff Member: "You're a homo."

These same staff members would then harshly reprimand patients who exhibited sexually inappropriate tendencies-- which isn't hypocritical at all. They fudge paperwork, they slack off on the ward, they're all related or they're all fucking each other-- or both-- and their inattentiveness and inappropriate actions and reactions led to an outburst of violence today that could have been avoided.

They're mostly tattooed college kids-- one has multiple lip-piercings and, really, I wouldn't mind the lip-piercings if they were on the lips of someone who was even mildly appropriate with the patients. They make fun of patients, imitating the noises that the most severely disturbed patients make, right in front of them. To them, in reply.

When a patient approaches a staff member, the default response is invariably,

"WHAT?!"

or "What the hell do you want?"

Or, they're just ignored. A patient can be standing three feet away from a staff member (this is the required distance we're supposed to keep from them) asking a perfectly sane question like, "Do I have courtyard privileges today?" and the patient can be ignored for any number of minutes. But it's the direct verbal abuse that made me want to vomit, and I probably would have had there been anything in my stomach.

Fortunately, there wasn't.

When I took this job, I didn't think it was going to be all peaches and plums, or even apple tart, but I didn't think I would be working with people who exhibit such routine and such open hostility and disdain for the patients supposedly under their care, I didn't think I would be working with the scum of the earth-- disenfranchised people in it for the paycheck and, apparently, the opportunity to fuck with people who have limited cognition, limited coping skills, and unlimited vulnerability.

Yes, the patients are inappropriate-- but they have that excuse of being, you know, crazy. Schizophrenics are supposed to act bonked-up, the psych techs kind of don't really have that excuse. We're not supposed to be the borderlines and the manics and the bipolar.

But, it's not just the patients who get "institutionalized." It's the staff, too.

Management likes to make a bit to-do about the fact that many people who work at this facility have been there for fifteen, eighteen, twenty, even twenty-eight years. And that sounds very nice, but when you see the burn-out, when you see the hostility, when you see brutality-- well, maybe such longevity isn't such a great thing.

It sounds stupid to say this, but I think that the openness of the obscenity-laced, threatening interactions with the patients, which the technicians then tried to manipulate to confuse the patients into forgetting what they had just said, that openness was the most horrifying thing. There are supervisors and nurses and videocameras everywhere-- and, clearly, nobody seems terribly concerned about that. And, clearly, I can't imagine anybody would be terribly concerned or surprised if I reported this to my supervisors.

Hopefully, the state will be both concerned and surprised when I find another job, posthaste, quit this one and report it to the Department of Health and Department of Public Welfare.

Sometimes I joke about being twelve-- when I call my closet's green doorknobs "Elphaba's nipples," I feel twelve. Oftentimes, when I get a new job, I feel twelve, too. I get wooed, positively swept off my feet by lofty mission statements and palaver from VPs and managers about proper protocol and professional conduct and ethical standards, and they pile horsehit lovingly onto my plate until I practically need a bib.

And then.... I actually start the job.

Proverbs 31:10 asks, "Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies."

I know it's a rhetorical question. I know it's just supposed to be longing and beautiful. I know it's just a job. But I also know that I cannot permit myself to be counted amongst these people, to wear their I.D. badge, to park in their lot, to swipe at their timeclock, to sign my name on their papers. And maybe that means that I think I'm rubies and they're costume jewelry.

And maybe I don't give a damn if it does.