This is a story my mom tells about my older brother’s birth. My brother was born with a head full of thick black hair. After he was born, my grandmother would take him to give my mother a break or when she needed to be seen by nurses or doctors.

Once, while she was holding him in her arms out in the hall, someone walked by and noticed him.

Stranger: “Aww, what a cute puppy!”

I imagine that my grandmother must have laughed and told her the truth, and I hope she wasn’t too embarrassed! She gave my mom a great story to tell for years after.

I used to be a hospital aide on an inpatient floor. We changed incontinent patients, did vitals, helped patients walk to and from the bathroom or chairs, and that kind of stuff. Nurses depended on us to do our jobs so they could do theirs.

[Coworker] would avoid doing any work she could. She’d constantly hide in one of the back nursing stations, hunker down where she couldn’t be seen, and read. She’d ignore call bells for select patients who were known to be incontinent and messy. She’d just sit and read while the bell went off and wait for one of the others to grab it. She was allotted a thirty-minute break and constantly took up to an hour. When she was training a new girl, she encouraged the same work avoidance behavior.

One day, [Coworker] was upset that she couldn’t take her break on her schedule, so when she did go, she was gone for an hour and a half. She came back after the second round of vitals for her shift was due, so instead of getting her a** in gear, she made them up — manually typed bulls*** into the computer instead of taking vitals on the machine and saving them. (They went to a Wi-Fi cloud to the chart.)

[Coworker] put an average blood pressure measurement (think 130/85) on a patient whose normal parameters were about 90/60. The nurse saw this and noticed that the patient’s blood pressure was 40 points higher than it should have been, so she gave him a dose of blood pressure meds. The patient’s blood pressure tanked and he nearly died. It was a s***show.

[Coworker] got busted because our heart monitor tech suspected what had happened, gathered all the vitals machines, and printed out copies of every set of vitals that had been taken that evening. Even if you don’t save it to the cloud under a patient’s name, the machine saves it.

None of the numbers matched the ones [Coworker] had put in the computer, which proved she hadn’t done her job. Who knows how long she’d been doing that without getting caught? We’d get busy and lose track of her all the time.

Because of that tech, the nurse wasn’t in trouble and [Coworker] got fired. Good riddance.

The day [Coworker] was fired. we had a prescheduled employee meeting an hour before the evening shift started. [Coworker] was late to that and was floated to another unit, so she flounced off before the bosses could say, “Wait, wait!”

So, she took her purse to another unit. She was called back and shown the evidence. She confessed and was fired. She had to walk back to the other unit to get her purse and then walk back to our unit to get her coat and empty her locker. Then, she had to wait for security to take her ID. The entire time, she was sobbing. She wore a lot of makeup and looked a disaster.

It ended up being very public and embarrassing for her. The entire small hospital knew.

She still deserved to be charged. But d***, I hoped she learned something. She wasn’t prosecuted. I strongly believe she should have been. My bosses thought it was embarrassing and figured firing her was enough.

I encountered some overzealous filters when I worked in a hospital’s records section. I was trying to look up a newly developed type of radical prostatectomy once. The computer’s filter wouldn’t let me look at the British Urological Society’s website because words with “sexual connotations” were found there.

I had to get special permission for some of the websites I routinely used to research terms found in dictated documents.

I also had a link to an “online bartender” site on my computer because I handled paperwork for the drug/alcohol treatment wing and, as a nondrinker, I’d never heard of 90% of the patients’ beverages of choice.

I work as a phlebotomist. One day, I get a little hypoglycemic while working, and I grab a Capri-Sun to get some glucose in me.

My hands shaking a little bit, I keep stabbing the pouch with the straw, and the straw keeps not penetrating. Finally, with a grunt, I manage to work it through. I bring the beverage to my mouth only to find a patient staring at me with wide eyes.

Patient: “Uh… Is there someone else — anyone else — who can draw my blood, please?”

Me: “Why?”

Patient: “No offense, but after watching you stab that juice pack seventeen times with the straw, I can’t help but imagine you doing that to my arm.”

Me: “Oh. Okay.”

I fetched someone else to do his arm. It was a very embarrassing event, and I felt bad about it for weeks after. I’ve never since attempted to drink a juice pack while at work.

This happened a few years ago when I was the groundskeeper at a small hospital. In addition to the plants and greenery, I also maintained the parking lot. In the winter, we were very, very generous with our use of sand in the parking lot for pedestrian traction. We couldn’t have patients or staff falling on their way in.

Every spring, once the snow was done for the season, I had to clean up the parking lot. In addition to all the sand, there was usually garbage and stuff that had been hidden under the snow. Usually, I used heavy equipment with a broom attachment, but this particular year, my supervisor brought me a few hundred feet of fire hose, all the fittings, and the special tools required to open a fire hydrant valve. There was a fire hydrant at one end of the parking lot, near an entrance to the lot from a side street, between the sidewalk and the lot. Another hydrant was at the other end of the lot, outside the building.

Me: “Whoa, this is neat. Is the fire department coming to wash our parking lot this year?” 

Supervisor: “No, you’ll be doing it; that’s why I’ve brought you all this equipment.” 

Me: “I’m guessing we have the permission needed to use the fire hydrant? I don’t imagine the City or the Fire Department want just anyone using the fire hydrants.” 

Supervisor: “These fire hydrants actually belong to the hospital, so we don’t need any special permission.” 

This surprised me.

Me: “Really?” 

Supervisor: “Yes.” 

Me: “Are you sure?” 

Supervisor: “Yes.” 

Me: “Are you super certain, [Supervisor]?”

Supervisor: “Yes!”

Me: “Okay, if you say so!” 

I sort of had my doubts, but my supervisor had never led me astray before, so I made plans for my task. I waited for a sunny day above zero degrees. Due to the shape and layout of the lot, I decided to start at the side entrance first, close to the hydrant, and make my way closer to the centre of the lot. All the sand and garbage would be forced to a particular spot where I would remove it from the lot entirely later. I would have to close parts of the parking lot, in sections, so that vehicles weren’t parking in my workspace — and so that I didn’t accidentally blast anyone’s vehicle with high-pressure water. 

Finally, the day to clean the lot arrived. I hooked up my fire hose, ensured that all of the fittings were correctly in place, and opened the valve. As people parked where I wasn’t working, many admired or made comments about my using a fire hose and fire hydrant. Most were surprised that I was allowed to do this. 

A few minutes in, a City truck drove by. I waved, as I usually do when they drive by. Ten more minutes passed, and another City truck drove by. There was a City park nearby, so I figured the City workers were getting a jump start on spring cleaning in the park.

After a few more minutes, an unmarked truck drove into the parking lot and around my barricades. I was annoyed because some people don’t think that signs or barricades apply to them. A man got out of the truck and approached me.

Man: “Hi. I’m [Man] from the City. You cannot use this fire hydrant.” 

I immediately shut off the water.

Me: “I’m sorry. I’m [My Name] from the hospital. My supervisor, [Supervisor], instructed me to do this. I’ll admit, I was surprised this was allowed!” 

Man: “It’s not. Is your supervisor around?” 

Me: “I saw him get in a few minutes ago. Let me give him a call.” 

I called [Supervisor] and told him that [Man] from the City was shutting me down and that he wanted to talk to him. My supervisor agreed and said he’d be right over. 

I asked [Man] if he was okay with me closing the valve and disconnecting my hoses and fittings. He said yes, and he double-checked afterward that the hydrant was secure. 

My supervisor arrived, and he and [Man] had a good chat while I started wrapping up hundreds of feet of hose. As it turned out, we did “own” the hydrant outside the building but not the hydrant on the side street. We could technically use the hydrant outside the building, but probably due to the way that water was delivered to the hydrants, we would still need permission from the City to use it — more of a heads-up, so that if there was a fire elsewhere in the city, the firefighters would be aware that a hydrant was already in use and to shut us down if more water pressure was needed for the real fire. 

My supervisor did not fight the City on this, but he did decide that this was too much of a hassle for cleaning up the parking lot. While it was fun to use a fire hose, I agreed that I could clean the lot like I usually did: with heavy equipment on a rainy day. I don’t know what happened to the fire hose and fittings my supervisor got.