Okay, so, when we last left our intrepid adventurers, they were trapped in class with a petty, power-mad bully pretending to be an instructor. I admit, I was dreading Thursday. I turned up, having promised myself that whatever else went on, I would not lose my temper. My dad has always told me that, when dealing with people like this, if you can keep your temper and get them to lose theirs, you win.
So, class starts with a test, which would have been great, had it not included material we hadn’t covered yet. I should point out that these tests are written out by the teachers giving them, which means, ladies and gentlemen, that we were taking a test written by a twazzer who had deliberately included material she hadn’t covered yet. Did I mention that we get graded on this shit, and we have to pass all our tests with a 75% or better? Also, that the tests are only about 20 or 30 questions long, so you don’t have to miss very many to drop below that 75% mark? Yeah.
Fortunately, we all managed to squeak by through combinations of dumb luck and educated guesses.
We watch a couple of movies on taking vitals like blood pressure and temperature and so forth. (I know how to use a blood pressure cuff now! Wheee! I always wondered how those things worked.) So, we get started, and Barb comes around to me, and starts in with her “Are you sure you’re doing that right?” shit.
I stop what I’m doing, put the blood pressure cuff down, and step back. “Y’know, I’m not. Can you go over the steps with me again?” I ask.
She eyes me for a moment, and says, “Well. What should you do first?”
”I’m not sure. Can you remind me?” I say, polite as can be.
She pauses, unamused with my bullshit, and I stand there, just as nice and polite as can be, and finally, she says, “You have to find the pulse, first.”
”Oh, okay.” I said. “That’s what I was doing.”
She gives me another unamused look, and wanders off to harrass someone else. A bit later, we’re measuring each other’s heights and weights, on the doctor’s office scale, and she tackles me again. I go to measure my partner’s height, and Barb turns up at my side and says, “Are you reading that right?”
”I don’t know.” I say promptly. “I’ve never used one of these before. Can you show me?”
”Well, what do the numbers say?” She says, and this time, I get an actual dirty look from her, over my partner’s shoulder.
”I’m not sure. Am I doing it right?”
”Well, read this then add that.” She snaps, and leaves.
Of course, she’d said similar things to a couple of the other girls, by then, and made sure we were all paying attention while she did it. After the second time she tackled me, the rest of the class picked up on what I was doing, and they all started doing it. She’d come up on someone, and they’d quit what they were doing and say, “Am I doing this right?” Barb got so annoyed with us for refusing to play her game, that she quit doing it. Points for us.
In retaliation, she actually started trying to withhold our breaks. We’d already done our morning break, but she took us a half-hour past our lunch break. Finally, Steph stood up and announced, “I’m sorry. I’m hypoglycemic, and I have to eat. Time for lunch!” and picked up her stuff and left. We all trooped out behind her. We pulled the same stunt when she tried going past our afternoon break, too.
So, today, we started out all right. The test was reasonably easy, and we spent the first two hours covering depression in residents. Well, we were supposed to, anyways. We actually spent it listening to Barb detail her daughter’s struggles with depression and how mean Barb’s brother and sister are to her. They’re always belittling her, and running her down.
Uh-huh. Sound familiar? Right. I thought so too.
We called for our own breaks, all day, too, so she couldn’t pull that stunt again. She tried, but with Miss Hypoglycemic backing us up, it was pretty difficult to pull that trick.
For the last hour and a half or so, we were tested on our abilities to take blood pressures, pulse rates, and respiration rates. Oddly enough, those of us who’d been “opposing” her just could not seem to get our vitals taken correctly. It was so strange. I tried three times to take blood pressure, wondering why I wasn’t getting them right — and with a break in the middle where Barb stopped to explain to us, with a nasty little smirk, that, oh, by the way, make sure we have the little knob thingies on our stethoscopes turned just so, or they won’t work, nice — when I finally sat down and gave up. I just sat there, waiting, watching the two other girls she was picking on get madder and madder as well. Finally, Barb turns to me, smirks again, and says, “Want to give it another shot?”
”Y’know,” I said, “my sinuses are all plugged up and I can’t hardly hear, and I’m tired today. I think I’ll wait until Monday, and have Harriet check me.”
Barb stares at me a moment, and from behind her, one of the other girls she’d been picking on, named Abby, I think, says, “Yeah, I’m going to wait until Monday, too. I’m all frustrated, and I think I better take a rest.” The third girl starts to say something along the same lines, and Barb snaps a look at me and says, “Are you sure you don’t want to try again?”
I rub my head like it hurts — it actually did, I have been a bit plugged up today, but not enough so it should be bothering me — and say, “Well, I guess I’ll give it one more shot.”
Y’know, it was the strangest thing, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t get it right that time. So did the other two girls. It was weird.
I’m telling ya, I just can’t wait to do clinicals with this woman.
So, day one, we have a nice, if patronizing, nurse teaching us, named Harriet. Like I said, nice lady. Talks down to you, but I can deal with that. Day two, we’ve got another nice lady named, um, Shelly, I think, and I really like her. Funny, not patronizing, moved class right along. Day three? Of course, my luck can’t possibly hold, and our instructor is a bit of a twazzer. The lady’s named Barb, and I’m sure she’s a decent enough sort. I mean, she doesn’t seem naturally mean, she’s just a shitty teacher, who seems to think she’s hit on a clever way of teaching. Personally, I spent most of the day wanting to slap her.
Now, I feel I should qualify my ire. For one thing, I’m having to wake up at a gawd-awful hour of the morning, and for another, the only chance I get for a cigarette all day is at lunch, and you have to leave the property, which means driving down the road, smoking furiously. In the cold. And trying to do it fast enough that you actually get back in time to have some, oh, I don’t know, lunch.
So, Barb. She has a crappy sense of humor, for one thing. I’m sure she thinks she’s funny, but she just comes across as kind of dumb or childish. I can deal with that. The thing I can’t deal with is that she’s hit on this technique which she calls “testing” us. What she does is fly though the material as fast as she can, and then ask you a question on one minor thing you learned in ten seconds thirty minutes ago. Of course, you sit there, think, and then answer, with a bit of hesitance, because it’s new material. She then stands there and stares at you as though you are the dumbest thing she’s ever encountered in her entire life, and says, “Are you sure?” Or, my favorite, if you’re trying to do some little task or another, she’ll watch you like a hawk and say, “Is that how you should do that?” or “Is that what you’re going to do first?” even if it is how you should do a thing, or what you should do first. This results in us students standing there, feeling stupid, embarrassed, and humiliated in front of an audience, second guessing ourselves. I was watching the other students fairly closely, and I know it’s not just me feeling that way, because even when it wasn’t us on the spot, we all had the same embarrassed, uncomfortable expressions on our faces.
One episode in particular got me, and pissed the girl Barb did it to off pretty good, too. We were learning how to give a person a bed-bath, which is just what it sounds like, a sponge bath in bed. So, she shows us a thirty minute video on the process, and then takes us over to the dummies to do the bed-bath. We’re doing it in pairs, so the first two willing victims head up there, a spunky young woman named Steph, and her partner, Mary.
Barb says to Steph, “What supplies do you need to get?” Steph hems and haws a bit, because the video did tell us what supplies to gather, but it did so in less than a minute, once, at the very beginning of the video, and it wasn’t repeated, nor did Barb repeat it to us. So, hesitantly, with Barb hawking over her shoulder, Steph gathers what she thinks she’ll need, and, with no instruction from Barb other than, “Get started,” she and her partner head over to the bed and try to get the bath started.
Steph and Mary rather nervously begin prepping the dummy, and Barb stands there. They put down the bath blanket, giving it a fluff to settle it right, and Barb barks, “No fluffing!” The two girls jump. Hell, we all jumped. No one told us we’re not supposed to fluff blankets. It’s natural. How the hell are we supposed to know? So, Steph and Mary apologize, and continue, and Barb cuts in, “Are you sure you’re doing everything you’re supposed to?”
Steph and Mary glance at each other, and by the looks on their faces, they’re both now embarrassed, uncomfortable, and nervous. The rest of us look the situation over, glance at each other, all of us a bit worried, now. Did they do everything? Do they have everything? How are we supposed to know? The damn video didn’t cover all this shit!
”I think so.” Steph finally says.
”Are you sure? Got everything? Did everything you’re supposed to?” Barb asks, in a tone of voice that clearly indicates something is wrong with the procedure. The problem is, Barb has used this tone all day, so none of us have any clue as to whether we’re doing what we’re supposed to or not at this point. Mary and Steph look everything over again, and now they’re red in the face and even more nervous.
”I think so.” Steph says, with worried eyes and more hesitance. This goes back and forth a couple more times. Now we’re all getting red-faced and uncomfortable, and since Barb is giving us no clue, no of us can figure out what’s wrong, and Steph is clearly getting pissed off and frustrated. By this point, we’re all shuffling our feet and looking away, and Steph is standing there, hand on her hip, having given up. She can tell she’s fucked up, but damned if she knows how, and she’s pissed with Barb for being a twat about it. By now, Barb is ignoring Mary and going after Steph, pestering her a couple more times over the issue. Finally, Steph throws a hand out and says, “I don’t know!”
Barb continues to go after her, and Steph is obviously on the spot, pissed, embarrassed, and upset. At this point, I’m getting mad on her behalf, and it looks like I’m not the only one. I’m getting ready to say something, when finally, Barb says, in a sharp tone, “You didn’t raise the bed up to hip level!”
The damn bed is a foot off the floor, and it’s an obvious mistake that we probably should have all caught, but it’s really only been mentioned once or twice, and that was yesterday, not today. So, now we’re all feeling stupid and upset, and Barb’s wearing this triumphant expression, as though she thinks she’s tremendously clever for having managed to successfully pick on poor Steph.
That was our entire day today. And this is the woman who’s going to be walking us through our clinicals, where we’re already going to be nervous and uncomfortable. She’s supposed to be our safety net, so we don’t unwittingly hurt the residents or something, and instead, she apparently has a great deal of fun making us nervous and upset.
Fantastic.
I got a shit look from Barb a bit later, too. Now, as we’re all aware, I’m a bit of a potty mouth — ha! — and I certainly have a salty sense of humor. This isn’t out of place in the restaurant business, but I’ve been pretty circumspect in class, because most people don’t use “fuck” as punctuation or appreciate my occasional gutter humor like restaurant folks do. So, we’re standing around the dummies, having (finally, and with a great deal of relief) finished the bed-bath demonstrations, and Barb is going over “peri-care” for residents. Peri-care is washing their privates. It’s the part of the job that none of us are real comfortable with, for obvious reasons.
So, Barb finishes telling us about how to deal with cleaning uncircumcised men, and one of the girls cuts in with a question. “So, um, when you’re cleaning male residents, um, what do you do if they, you know, get an erection?”
”Well, you won’t have to worry about pulling back their foreskin.” I answer, dryly, snickering. Everyone starts to giggling in that scandalized kindergarten way people do when you’ve made an off-color joke that’s funny anyways, and Barb cuts me this absolutely heinous dirty look that stops us all cold. I’m like, “What? You won’t,” which doesn’t help any. So, I shut up, and Barb went on with her instructions with us all trying not to giggle.
I must admit, pissing her off did brighten my day up considerably. I strongly suspect that pissing off the teacher isn’t going to help my grade any, though. I also strongly suspect that since the woman gets on my nerves, and scandalous jokes apparently irritates her, that I’m going to be doing it a lot, now.
Do you people have any idea how early eight in the morning is? I had heard rumors of their being two eight o’clocks, but I hadn’t actually seen it for myself in so long . . . Well, truth be told, I was up this morning before five — couldn’t sleep anymore. I went to be so early, for me, that I was in “nap mode” not “real sleep mode”.
At any rate, today was a long day full of filling out paper work and listening to a lot of basics, common sense information. “Don’t beat the residents, don’t call the residents names, don’t steal from them” etc, etc, etc. My favorite was, “Don’t show up to work under the influence of drugs and alcohol”. I have to say, after ten years in the restaurant industry, it was kind of nice to hear that from another field. In food service, you kind of get to expect half or more of your employees will turn up shit-faced. Glad to know we aren’t the only ones with that problem.
At the end of the day, our instructor took us to see the nursing home where we’d be doing our clinicals. It was the first time I’d ever been in a nursing home. I’ve never seen so many miserable-looking people in one place. I mean, they didn’t look badly-treated, or anything like that. Everyone was clean and tidy, and the facility was clean and smelled good. It’s just that everyone I saw had this gawd-awful tired, waiting-to-die look to them.
I’m not sure exactly what’s in store for tomorrow, but I do know that Wednesday, I have to bring a change of clothes, a hair brush, and a toothbrush, so we can practice dressing each other, brushing each other’s hair, and so forth.
Yay. Some strange person will be brushing my teeth and fiddling with my hair. My favorite. We don’t have to actually get undressed — we were told to bring a size bigger clothes or whatever, so we can dress overtop what we’re wearing. I don’t know how that’s going to work. All I have are jeans and t-shirts, and all my jeans are the same size. I may have to pop in to the local Walmart and buy a pair of bigger sweats for the day, or grab some spandex or something.
In the meantime, I’m exhausted. I need to do something about dinner, and resist napping — a bigger fight than I’d expected it to be. I don’t know how all you day people stand this stuff. I’m whipped.
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