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Work moments you won't forget (Read 4359 times)
Morphy
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Work moments you won't forget
Nov 19th, 2020 at 7:09pm
 
Sorry all lol. I truly am bored. Need to work on the old SITH sling but that requires motivation. Hence another thread. Grin

Name something that happened at work you will never forget. It can be job related or just any experience that happened at work.

For me I can name a couple but won't go into a lot of detail on them. The first few times a patient I was close to died was a little hard to get used to.

My first murder scene left me feeling sick and the YouTube video the a$$hole posted to the woman's daughter to justify his actions made me legitimately ill. Suffice to say true evil up close leaves one feeling queasy. Or at least it does for me.

What about you?

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Mersa
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Re: Work moments you won't forget
Reply #1 - Nov 19th, 2020 at 7:18pm
 
Removing a tree that had just been hit by a car with the deceased still inside making the scene safe for the police and emergency workers, definitely aerie.
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Re: Work moments you won't forget
Reply #2 - Nov 19th, 2020 at 7:41pm
 
Oh good you started this off dark. I was worried I was going to be the one to get... sad. I work with old, ill people. The people that come to us are only leaving one way and it ain't by jetpack. People don't get better with us. My job is to watch people deteriorate.

So! I have two experiences of hundreds.

First. We had a man who had very bad dementia caused by years of alcohol abuse. He had pickled his brain essentially. I think this guy would have been awful to be around for most of his life. When I was first on the ward I was being told about this table which had all the current residents' information: diagnoses, can they eat by themselves, do they use a wheelchair etc. etc. and then my supervisor said "This is where any information about family goes" and pointed at the box for this guy I was talking about "You can see here that unfortunately he doesn't have any family... well, he doesn't have any family he's in contact with". Yeah... Is that the thing I won't forget? Well it's part of it. I got to know this guy over the time I was there. He might have been a monster when he was at home and younger, he might have been a lazy drunkard, he might have been the life and soul of the party and the party moved on without him, I don't know for sure, but whoever he was before, he was now a friendly, slightly confused, slightly frightened old man. Whenever he saw me after I had been away for a while, he stretched out his hand for me to shake. One day, he was upset. I asked him what was wrong. He said that his parents were dead. This isn't unusual with older people with memory problems, they can suddenly remember they're parents are dead or work out how old they are and realise they must be dead. It's sad but hey, old people die, I should know. But he didn't stop there. He said the reason he was upset that his parents were dead was because he was now too old and ill to travel and place flowers on their graves.
That got me. I had to take a second to myself after that. There was nothing I could do or say to help him feel better. Nothing.

Number 2. We had another old guy who had "schizophrenia". Why the quotation marks? Well, he had been diagnosed a LONG time ago back in the days were multiple different mental illnesses and behaviour disorders were labelled "schizophrenia" because psychiatry was a crude instrument back then. It was unclear exactly what was going on with him as there was likely a form of dementia in play at the same time. In any case, much of his time was spent staring into space. He couldn't do anything for himself. One day, I was feeding him lunch. I was spooning the food to him, when he suddenly seemed to focus on something floating in the middle of the room. I couldn't see anything. His eyes were transfixed. His entire face changed to a look I can only describe as sheer bliss, wonder and infatuation. Slowly, incredibly slowly, he lifted his arm and reached out a hand to whatever it was. He stretched his fingers as far as he could, he started leaning forward, he started to lift himself from the bed...

And then stopped. He physically couldn't move any further. He was unable to pull himself up and reach... whatever it was. His face changed as soon as he realised he could get no closer. It went from this look of pure bliss to a look of sadness I can only describe as crushing. He had seen something so incredible, something so awe inspiring that he had looked on the brink of tears and now he knew he would never reach whatever it was. He slowly sank back into the bed. I went back to feeding him soup and then tried not to break down later on my own. I can never fully describe what it was like to see this person see the font of all happiness and joy JUST out of reach. It was honestly one of the most emotional scenes I've seen played out in front of me.

Both of these stories have a commonality. An old man, trapped in his bed.
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You are a great guy Kick but also slightly scary at times. - Morphy
"Nothing matters, but it’s perhaps more comfortable to keep calm and not interfere with other people." - H.P. Lovecraft, in a letter to Frank Belknap Long, 7 October, 1923
 
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Morphy
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Re: Work moments you won't forget
Reply #3 - Nov 19th, 2020 at 7:55pm
 
Damn... that was beautifully said. My Mom has been a hospice nurse for over 3 decades. She has many stories like that. Some maybe most wouldn't believe.

My sister is the D.O.N of a nursing home in Dallas. There's a lot of really bad nurses in homes but the good ones are just about the best people you will ever meet. Because that's a job that requires endless amounts of patience and compassion to do right. As well as standing up for patients against lazy co-workers. First responders often get too much credit for what we do here in America. If you're a good nurse in a nursing home your job is every bit as difficult as a First Responders. It's very emotionally taxing.
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Re: Work moments you won't forget
Reply #4 - Nov 19th, 2020 at 8:33pm
 
Funny you should say that... I will be calling my boss in the morning to say that I am near to burning out. There's been a lot of things this year (corona is actually low on the list for me) and one of those things has been how many people have died on our ward so far this year. Weirdly none to corona but it's still been very high. I actually lost count until I checked a few days ago. We've lost 8 people. I expect it to hit 10 before the year is out. It almost certainly will hit 9 before the end of next week. I haven't had more than three days off in a row since spring. I had an incredibly difficult, long, stressful and tiring evening shift... well yesterday now (I should and will be going to sleep after I send this) and I now only have one day off and I'm back for a morning on Saturday followed by another 4 days of work until I get two days off. I can't keep it up. Thank you for the appreciation Morphy. I've only recently realised how tough this job can be on a person.
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You are a great guy Kick but also slightly scary at times. - Morphy
"Nothing matters, but it’s perhaps more comfortable to keep calm and not interfere with other people." - H.P. Lovecraft, in a letter to Frank Belknap Long, 7 October, 1923
 
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NooneOfConsequence
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Re: Work moments you won't forget
Reply #5 - Nov 20th, 2020 at 6:27am
 
It’s tough to follow those stories, so I’ll go in a completely different direction. Many years ago when I was only 4 months on the job, I had to go out to the desert in Nevada to test an experimental robot.  I was only asked to go after about 4 other engineers said “no”, and I had no idea what I was doing because I was the new guy.

Well the next thing I know, I’m sitting in the back of a rental SUV holding a controller and trying to drive this robot down a dark “road” at night while staring at a tiny little video display on a laptop. This was over 15 years ago, and the fancy thermal camera on the robot had a resolution of 160x120. I couldn’t really make heads or tails of what I was looking at, but I was supposed to be driving down the road, so I tried my best. I could barely keep the robot on the path. It was pitch black, and everything in the desert looked the same from the view of the camera.   
The people I was working with started to get bored because there was nothing to see while I was driving in the dark.  I was trying really hard to concentrate, but everyone else was standing around just looking up at the stars and chatting loudly about whatever came to mind. It was pretty annoying.

The conversation soon turned to a particularly bright light on the horizon.  They were pretty sure it was a planet, but nobody knew whether it was Mars or Venus.  They started to argue back and forth about it, getting louder and louder as they tried to use logic to figure out the answer without actually having enough information. There was no internet connection out there. This was before iPhones existed, and I don’t even think our phones worked out there at all, so nobody really had enough information to come up with an answer... but that didn’t stop them from arguing about it. Finally, I just yelled out, “It’s Venus!”
Now, I was crammed into the back seat of a car with a computer in my lap. I couldn’t see the sky, and I had no idea what the bright light was, but I said it with so much confidence that they all believed me and it ended the conversation! Somebody muttered “oh, ok” and they all finally shut up. That was the most glorious few seconds of silence I have ever experienced Grin
Unfortunately I couldn’t hold it in for long. I burst out laughing and confessed.
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“My final hour is at hand. We face an enemy more numerous and cunning than the world has yet seen. Remember your training, and do not fear the hordes of Judas. I, without sin, shall cast the first stone. That will be your sign to attack! But you shall not fight this unholy enemy with stones. No! RAZOR GLANDES!  Aim for the eyes! May the Lord have mercy, for we shall show none!“  -Jesus the Noodler
 
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Morphy
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Re: Work moments you won't forget
Reply #6 - Nov 20th, 2020 at 7:00am
 
Ya well I've had my ass grabbed on multiple occasions. Look you brought out the big guns NOOC. You had to know this was coming.

Not just by patients. Nurses too. And one wasn't even trying to play it off like a joke or an accident. This was a power move, intimidation at its best. I gave her a side hug and said hi and she without speaking a word slid her hand down my back and gave it a big old squeeze. Never broke eye contact. Now granted this at least made more sense back then since I was actually in pretty good shape at the time. But still. #HeToo

Another lady gave me 5 dollars after. She said it was to buy lunch but we both understood what was going on. I considered offering the other cheek to make it an even $10 but seeing as her blind husband was sitting not 10 feet away from me chatting it up I didn't think that would be appropriate.

No I am not making any of this up.  Embarrassed
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Re: Work moments you won't forget
Reply #7 - Nov 20th, 2020 at 7:10am
 
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NooneOfConsequence
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Re: Work moments you won't forget
Reply #8 - Nov 20th, 2020 at 7:49am
 
Ok, one more...
About a year after the Nevada trip, my boss and I went out to the desert in California to scout out a new test location. It was supposed to be a quick trip. We just needed to hike around and look for some specific terrain features, then get some GPS waypoints so we could find them again when we brought the robot with us in a few weeks. We had a rental 4wd SUV, and we met up with some local marines who knew the area. The marines had borrowed a hybrid electric SUV from a 1-star general (this is important).

After hiking around at one site, my boss, who was a salty old Vietnam veteran, decided we should all hop in the hybrid and ride together to another place we wanted to look at. We went several miles before the car completely died. It was late afternoon, and we were not prepared to spend the night out there. 

So there we were, in the middle of the Mojave Desert with the general’s personal vehicle broken down dozens of miles from anything resembling civilization. It was getting dark... and cold. My boss decides that we should split up (Isn’t this how most horror movies start?).  He was going to walk to our rental SUV with the client who was paying for the trip. One of the local marines was going to stay with the general’s vehicle and try to get it running again. I was supposed to go the complete opposite direction with the other local marine, and we were supposed to try to make it down to the highway where we might have a better chance of getting a cell signal.  That’s right... we didn’t just split up, we split 3 ways, and left one guy alone in a broken-down vehicle! 
But it gets better: I had a camelbak backpack with plenty of water, but my boss, the experienced marine veteran, had left his water in the other vehicle... so he took mine and sent me hiking into the desert... the opposite direction from where all our supplies were! 
I didn’t have water, but I wasn’t completely unprepared. Because it was getting dark, I left a trail of chemical lights along the path so we could see how to get back to the broken-down vehicle again in the dark.  (A wrong turn could drive you right off a cliff or into a ditch). My boss hiked to the rental car, came down the highway, and picked us up. Miraculously, the escape plan was working. We just needed to get the one marine who was now taking a nap in the general’s car after failing to diagnose the problem with the vehicle.
We all hopped into the rental SUV and followed my trail of glowing lights to rescue the last guy.  By this time, the sun had set and it was pitch black. With five people in the vehicle, we started back towards the highway.  The “highway” was still in the middle of nowhere, mind you. A car might not drive past for hours, but it was less remote than being on the side of a mountain several miles into the wilderness. 
We were a few hundred yards from the highway (and hopes of a hot meal) when we suddenly heard a loud “BANG” underneath the vehicle. We were backtracking the same dirt road we had just driven, but with the extra weight of one more marine, the undercarriage was just low enough to slam into the top of a rock.  The driver had sped up because the path looked clear, and we were all anxious to get back to town, since we were not planning to be out after dark. 

That night, I  learned that the lowest point on a 2006 Dodge Durango just happens to be the radiator... a radiator that was now spewing coolant all over the desert floor.
The rest of the story is pretty uneventful. We eventually got a cellphone to work and called for help. I actually got to see the stars this time, and we made it back to the hotel around 2AM.
The general’s 4wd hybrid SUV was fine. It was never designed for off-roading. It had run out of gas and the batteries died because we were driving up and down steep hills in rugged terrain. The small engine couldn’t keep the batteries charged under sustained rugged driving conditions, but when we topped off the tank the next day, we drove it right out of there.

I did learn quite a bit about desert survival though. If you’re not prepared, it’s usually not one thing that causes trouble. It’s a whole bunch of little things adding up that’ll get you to start making stupid mistakes... like listening to your boss and letting him walk in the opposite direction with YOUR water!  Good times Smiley

I like to make fun of him for stealing my water, but my boss actually did a pretty good job getting us out of there overall. He loved his checklists, and even though it was supposed to just be a day hike, we were actually pretty well prepared for contingencies.  For example, I never would have thought to put chem lights in my pack if he hadn’t put it on my checklist. We had plenty of food and water and layered clothing. We would have been ok even if we had spent the night out there.
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« Last Edit: Nov 20th, 2020 at 9:11am by NooneOfConsequence »  

“My final hour is at hand. We face an enemy more numerous and cunning than the world has yet seen. Remember your training, and do not fear the hordes of Judas. I, without sin, shall cast the first stone. That will be your sign to attack! But you shall not fight this unholy enemy with stones. No! RAZOR GLANDES!  Aim for the eyes! May the Lord have mercy, for we shall show none!“  -Jesus the Noodler
 
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Re: Work moments you won't forget
Reply #9 - Nov 21st, 2020 at 10:23am
 
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vetryan15
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Re: Work moments you won't forget
Reply #10 - Nov 21st, 2020 at 12:19pm
 
Back in 2005,  i was in the military.  I had finished bootcamp,  went to my secondary school, out in San Antonio Tx. Waiting for my next deployment papers to submarine school up in Groton CT. Now instead of giving 48 to72 hours to pack up, and be ready. They gave me about18 hours. Then halfway through me getting ready. I get pulled away, and told to report to my superiors. They informed me, i wasnt going alone and to inform the other guy. He ended up only having about 10 hours to get ready. So we are both rushing around getting ready on base.  This means packing up, getting medical records collected, closing down PO boxes. Etc,etc. Now cell phones were still in infancy. Mine was horrible,  but we still had pay phones.  Now we were supposed to dress in civilian clothes, as not to stand out in our military uniforms, due to safety and in case of terrorist attacks.  Because they rank killing military higher then civilians. So we both jump on a plane, we land in Providence RI. There was supposed to be a bus or van waiting for us. Unfortunately it wasn't.  We called the base, couldn't get through to anyone.  We are sitting on our duffel bags,  as we are talking, a Lieutenant an O3, and a Master Chief E9, walk by in full uniform. We actually said hello to them, they acknowledged us, kept walking. We decided to go talk to them since we were all Navy. We explain the situation,  (no van) they say follow us. They popped the trunk of a really, really, really nice Lincoln car.  They tell us to get in, we were an hour and a half from base. They said they were going that way and would drop us off. We all chatted the whole time, the reason they were at the airport,  they had just dropped off an Admiral an O10, and escorted him to the gate and his flight. The vehicle was the Admiral's personal vehicle. Shocked. Lol. ( side note ) In the Navy, we had to salute certain vehicles of the highest ranking officers.  They usually had some sort of tag to tell you, but we only had to salute while on base, and in uniform.  (Back to the story) while in the car, they drove us onto base, right up to the front door of where we had to report. Around that time, there werre a bunch of classes marching around, they had to all stop and salute this car. We thought it was funny and amazing. Then we get to the parking lot to drop us off, 3 different classes were in tanks in the parking lot.  They started saluting,  and staring due to the windows being tinted super dark. The faces we saw when these 2 young 18yo kids jumped out the rear doors of an Admiral's car, and still dressed in normal civilian clothing was priceless  Grin. Ended up meeting a couple guys from that class, they recognized, and remembered us after about a month being there. Thier reactions from what they told us, was hilarious.
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Morphy
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Re: Work moments you won't forget
Reply #11 - Nov 22nd, 2020 at 12:07pm
 
Had a patient last night so high on meth he was in danger of invading US airspace.

He was very large, very hairy, extremely gay and shockingly high. My partner who is a  lesbian found it especially hilarious as I suppose many would.

He had two choices, go to the hospital, get checked out and go home. Or go to jail. Guess which one he chose? When you are so high you think jail sounds like a super awesome fun time you’ve crossed a line.

Who goes into a gas station bathroom for 3 hours to do meth? Apparently this guy. Good times. Still like him more than being woken up at 3 am for a nose bleed. You do you Breaking Bad...you do you.
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Re: Work moments you won't forget
Reply #12 - Nov 23rd, 2020 at 3:25am
 
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Re: Work moments you won't forget
Reply #13 - Nov 23rd, 2020 at 3:38am
 
a wrote on Nov 21st, 2020 at 10:23am:
You have a lot of empathy for people, good to see in someone in your line of work.

Thank you. I guess this is technically a work moment, but I was talking to a careers advisor in college because I was still unsure what I wanted to do. I was explaining how I wanted to do something useful, something that would help people and was worthwhile. She said "You come across as a very empathetic young man". One of the nicest compliments I have ever received and I still remember it today. I'm glad that I can project that aspect of myself across the internet in text form. My dad has a sense of humour drier and darker than a desert night so asked if I had misheard and she actually said "You come across as a very pathetic young man" Grin It sounds super harsh if you don't know my dad. He knows me and knew I would take it as a joke. I thought it was hilarious Cheesy

a wrote on Nov 23rd, 2020 at 3:25am:
You guys have had eventful working lives. All my most memorable moments looking back have just been sights that struck a chord somewhere. A cave pool glistening like silver when the moon was low. A grotto out of a fairy tale story in the middle of nowhere. A tiny stream in the middle of the bush which had 20 metre vertical banks it had cut over hundreds of years. A couple of other planters who'd just climbed a ridge and stripped to the waist, shiny with sweat and with steam rising so thick off them that you knew how hard they'd been working and anticipating how blissful the freezing air will feel once I make it to the ridgetop.

Those are good moments to remember. It's sometimes the simplest, seemingly everyday things that can have the most meaning.
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You are a great guy Kick but also slightly scary at times. - Morphy
"Nothing matters, but it’s perhaps more comfortable to keep calm and not interfere with other people." - H.P. Lovecraft, in a letter to Frank Belknap Long, 7 October, 1923
 
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Re: Work moments you won't forget
Reply #14 - Nov 23rd, 2020 at 3:44am
 
@Morphy.
      That actually reminds me of a incident i had while working at a convenience store ( named Wawa) back in Nj after i got out of the military. I worked the overnight register, this big, biker, dude. 350lbs, Tattooed,  had swastikas and everything. Very scary looking dude. He was high on Meth as well. He came in that night, picked up a milkshake. (They have self serve) called ( freal brand). Well he walks around with it, goes outside without paying for it. Stops bends down like he is gonna get sick, comes back in. Does that about 3 times. He set the milkshake down behind some groceries on a shelf. The store has a deli counter, with a chip shelf in front. He bends down, starts organizing the chips, gets up walks to the register,  climbed up, and tried to take a nap. My manager wanted me to confront him, but i told him i wasnt the manager. Lol. At the time they had company policy to let people do whatever they want. For safety. So he took a 1 minute nap, gets up and goes back to organizing the chips, for 20 minutes. Mutiple customers had called police. They show up,(we gave all cops and first responders free coffee)  6 cops come in, and stand by the register watching him for 10 minutes, laughing. One of the cop radios went off, and the guy heard it, stood up, and started walking away. Thats when they jumped on him, and pinned him up against the register.  A few hours later a cop came in looking foor the surveillance Video of the whole incident.  He never did pay for his milkshake,  which i found 2 hours later while cleaning. He had told his Mom, he was going out for a milkshake,  and borrowed her car.  Grin.

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