It will be a white Christmas
The weather the past few days has been a nightmare. A snowy, wet, freezing nightmare out from which I constantly had to unbury my car. I had all these social activities planned for the weekend, but just about all of them were canceled due to inclement weather. Friday was the first day of the storm, and I had thought I would be able to go home early from work, but that didn't happen because other whiny, wimpy people begged / demanded to leave early or not come in at all. The trip home was my very first time driving in the snow. Since I drove at a snail's pace, I didn't have too much difficulty. Lord knows I received enough advice from everyone on the planet about driving in dangerous weather (which I am thankful for, and it was quite cute how eager everyone was to share their tips and words of caution).
Some weird things have gone down at work lately, including:
(1) A family's cat being brought back by the dog officer after having been missing for 2 months. The cat was not acting himself and bit / scratched several people, including employees at the VCA. He ended up being euthanized and had his head sent to the state lab for rabies testing as is required by law. The results came back POSITIVE for rabies! If you think you'd be pissed as hell that the dog officer was dumb enough to bring your cat RABID back to your home, wait til you hear the real kicker of this story: it turned out to not even be their cat. It was some completely different, probably stray animal. Now, how the family didn't recognize this, I don't know. But what a huge fucking mess. Rabies shots all around!
Fun fact about rabies vaccines: their is a shortage of the vaccine, so you can't get one unless there is proof you were bitten by a rabid animal. I questioned whether people really could afford the time to gather this info, because I know that if I were bitten by a possibly rabid animal, I would not want to wait nearly a week to find out if it were truly rabid as the family in the above story did. A vet told me that in some cases humans don't show signs of the disease until over a year (once signs manifest, death is inevitable) so I guess you don't truly need to get pumped full of vaccine hours after the contact occurred. Even so...
(2) Some weird, jerkwad guy told me that our hospital's medication dispensing policy "sounded like something your lawyers made up." Huh? He continued to hammer me with all these stupid questions about whether the government regulates licenses for dispensing medications, and I finally said, "you know, I don't want to argue about this. The bottom line is that I can't refill your dog's medication." He agreed that he didn't want to argue, and said he "didn't want me to get into any more trouble with my lawyers." Then of course he had to complain about the price of the meds, and said the government should get involved with the pricing...whatever. He can complain to the apparently omnipresent VCA lawyers about it.
(3) A crazy lady called and told me her cat was biting her for no reason and she needed to do something with it before her grandchildren came over. I suggested she isolate the cat in a room; she told me she had no room to put it in. YEAH RIGHT. What, does she live in a box? I asked, "not even the bathroom?" "The kids will be using it!" she snapped. ALL THE FUCKING TIME? I told her the cat needed to be medically evaluated. She replied sharply that there was no medical reason for why he was acting that way. She also apparently had no family or friend who could help with the cat (I assume the grandkids were just driving themselves down to her house all by themselves). Obviously, this woman was just being difficult. She had to throw in that she's disabled and can't get the cat down here blah blah. OF COURSE. At the risk of sounding like an asshole, most of these insane, bitter, ornery people are disabled, on fixed income, have a dying relative, and / or are a senior citizen. I can't take it when people start these pity parties for themselves and rebuff all attempts you make to help them out. She got very irritated very quickly and started yelling about how I need to let her speak to a vet. No way. What did she even want from me or anyone? To drive down to her house and take the cat? I said, "I don't understand why you're getting so frustrated; I'm trying to help you and you're not satisfied with anything I say." She said, "well you're asking me these ridiculous questions about how many bathrooms I have!" She finally hung up on me after shouting, "for Christ's sake!"
(4) The VCA Quincy hospital decided to close early on Wednesday night, which shouldn't happen, and they didn't let any of us know about it. So one of my coworkers told a hysterical client on the phone to go to Quincy with her cat who seemed to be dying, only to realize she had just sent her to an empty building. The people called back more than once needing directions on how to get to our place, and of course they were freaking out, and my coworker was freaking out, to the point where I thought she was going to smash one of the computers because she was too stressed out to navigate Quincy's system. In hindsight, her behavior was pretty funny, but what happened with Quincy certainly wasn't. The cat was dead on arrival, and although it sounded like he may have passed away even before reaching Quincy, one has to wonder if the outcome might have been different if only Quincy had been open LIKE THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN. I am positive they suffered some major backlash for that.
Colin mentioned how he's getting a Christmas bonus on top of some other bonus for good revenue or something, and it makes me so jealous I could just choke on the feeling. I could sure use some kind of bonus right now. My stupid ass company has over 40 locations with our hospital alone making over a million bucks a month, and the only bit of holiday cheer they could share with their employees last year was a $10 gas card. Uuuugggh.
I am looking forward to Christmas, though. I need to get all my gifts assembled and wrapped.
Some weird things have gone down at work lately, including:
(1) A family's cat being brought back by the dog officer after having been missing for 2 months. The cat was not acting himself and bit / scratched several people, including employees at the VCA. He ended up being euthanized and had his head sent to the state lab for rabies testing as is required by law. The results came back POSITIVE for rabies! If you think you'd be pissed as hell that the dog officer was dumb enough to bring your cat RABID back to your home, wait til you hear the real kicker of this story: it turned out to not even be their cat. It was some completely different, probably stray animal. Now, how the family didn't recognize this, I don't know. But what a huge fucking mess. Rabies shots all around!
Fun fact about rabies vaccines: their is a shortage of the vaccine, so you can't get one unless there is proof you were bitten by a rabid animal. I questioned whether people really could afford the time to gather this info, because I know that if I were bitten by a possibly rabid animal, I would not want to wait nearly a week to find out if it were truly rabid as the family in the above story did. A vet told me that in some cases humans don't show signs of the disease until over a year (once signs manifest, death is inevitable) so I guess you don't truly need to get pumped full of vaccine hours after the contact occurred. Even so...
(2) Some weird, jerkwad guy told me that our hospital's medication dispensing policy "sounded like something your lawyers made up." Huh? He continued to hammer me with all these stupid questions about whether the government regulates licenses for dispensing medications, and I finally said, "you know, I don't want to argue about this. The bottom line is that I can't refill your dog's medication." He agreed that he didn't want to argue, and said he "didn't want me to get into any more trouble with my lawyers." Then of course he had to complain about the price of the meds, and said the government should get involved with the pricing...whatever. He can complain to the apparently omnipresent VCA lawyers about it.
(3) A crazy lady called and told me her cat was biting her for no reason and she needed to do something with it before her grandchildren came over. I suggested she isolate the cat in a room; she told me she had no room to put it in. YEAH RIGHT. What, does she live in a box? I asked, "not even the bathroom?" "The kids will be using it!" she snapped. ALL THE FUCKING TIME? I told her the cat needed to be medically evaluated. She replied sharply that there was no medical reason for why he was acting that way. She also apparently had no family or friend who could help with the cat (I assume the grandkids were just driving themselves down to her house all by themselves). Obviously, this woman was just being difficult. She had to throw in that she's disabled and can't get the cat down here blah blah. OF COURSE. At the risk of sounding like an asshole, most of these insane, bitter, ornery people are disabled, on fixed income, have a dying relative, and / or are a senior citizen. I can't take it when people start these pity parties for themselves and rebuff all attempts you make to help them out. She got very irritated very quickly and started yelling about how I need to let her speak to a vet. No way. What did she even want from me or anyone? To drive down to her house and take the cat? I said, "I don't understand why you're getting so frustrated; I'm trying to help you and you're not satisfied with anything I say." She said, "well you're asking me these ridiculous questions about how many bathrooms I have!" She finally hung up on me after shouting, "for Christ's sake!"
(4) The VCA Quincy hospital decided to close early on Wednesday night, which shouldn't happen, and they didn't let any of us know about it. So one of my coworkers told a hysterical client on the phone to go to Quincy with her cat who seemed to be dying, only to realize she had just sent her to an empty building. The people called back more than once needing directions on how to get to our place, and of course they were freaking out, and my coworker was freaking out, to the point where I thought she was going to smash one of the computers because she was too stressed out to navigate Quincy's system. In hindsight, her behavior was pretty funny, but what happened with Quincy certainly wasn't. The cat was dead on arrival, and although it sounded like he may have passed away even before reaching Quincy, one has to wonder if the outcome might have been different if only Quincy had been open LIKE THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN. I am positive they suffered some major backlash for that.
Colin mentioned how he's getting a Christmas bonus on top of some other bonus for good revenue or something, and it makes me so jealous I could just choke on the feeling. I could sure use some kind of bonus right now. My stupid ass company has over 40 locations with our hospital alone making over a million bucks a month, and the only bit of holiday cheer they could share with their employees last year was a $10 gas card. Uuuugggh.
I am looking forward to Christmas, though. I need to get all my gifts assembled and wrapped.