Time To Go Back To Kindergarten

I’m a home health nurse and take care of primarily medically homebound children. At one home, I found myself using tactics I’d usually use to deal with unruly children to deal with fully cognizant adults. 

Our company provides us with some supplies that we use daily in the home, like hand sanitizer, hand soap, paper towels, and gloves. I had worked for a while with a family with several young children and had learned that if I didn’t lock it up or keep it in my pocket, little hands would find and walk off with everything they could reach. Kids are kids, and they loved playing doctor with real medical supplies — and my pens and chapstick!

After that family moved, I was called into the office for a new client assignment. They asked if I would be willing to work, even very temporarily, in a house where they had a small theft problem. The nurse working a different shift from mine had been complaining of all the company supplies going missing, as well as several of her personal items. It wasn’t her purse or wallet but frustrating little things like her pens, notebooks, personal hand lotion, etc.

They had spoken to the family, and everyone denied taking anything. The parents were very apologetic and had replaced several missing items, but the thefts continued. The office figured since I was so well trained by the last family, I’d be able to help the other nurse solve her problem and protect my own things, as well.

On my first day at the new client’s home, I showed up with my locked supply bag. I explained to the family that I’d gotten in the habit of protecting my supplies from very determined, sticky-fingered children and just kept up the habit wherever I went. I figured it sounded nicer than, “I know there’s a supply thief in the house.”

I had been working for about two or three hours when a family member came in, looked around the room, and asked where the paper towels were.

Me: *Politely* “I assume you keep your paper towels in your kitchen.”

They paused.

Family Member #1: “No, your paper towels. I just need one.”

Me: “I’m sorry, but my company-issued supplies are for the client only due to our infection control policies.”

They tried again, arguing about only needing one, and then gave up when I kept repeating my answer.

Later in the day, another family member asked to borrow my pen “for just a minute”.

Me: “I’m sorry, but I don’t loan out my personal items due to infection control policy.”

Family Member #2: “I only need it for a minute.”

Me: “I’m not endangering myself, my family, or my patient for so much as one second.”

That stopped them in their tracks.

I started keeping little notes in my pocket notebook. By the end of the day, I had been asked for “just one paper towel” about six times, to “borrow” something of mine “for just a minute” about a dozen times, where the hand sanitizer or my personal hand lotion was four or five times, and on and on. It was easy to see that the family had denied taking anything because they didn’t see taking “just one” or “borrowing for a minute” and then never returning something as taking what didn’t belong to them. 

I told the other nurse and the office about the mystery of the missing supplies. Our supervisor spoke with the family again. I had the pleasure of watching her resort to using props and counting things out like she was speaking to a kindergarten class to try to explain to several grown adults that if everyone takes “just one”, that’s how you end up with none, and that “borrowing” without permission and forgetting to return something is how the nurse “lost” several personal items.

They promised to stop taking and borrowing things meant for the client and belonging to the nurse — a promise that didn’t last a day.

So, the last time I worked there, both the other nurse and I took locked bags and kept everything else in our pockets.

I still laugh sometimes thinking of the confused looks on their faces when told that taking one thing is still taking things that don’t belong to you. It made me miss the sticky-fingered kids who just wanted to play Doc McStuffins with my stuff.