Every so often I overhear unruly commentary from various hospital staff about the doctors. The ones from environmental services are particularly colorful, even more so now that I’m in NYC.

“F-cking docs,” I heard one custodian mutter as he was cleaning up some coffee cups strewn about in the emergency room.

Other times I hear commentary among the cleaning crews about how good we [residents/doctors] “have it”, with our fancy clothes and expensive tastes.

There is a food stand in the lobby of our hospital. As residents, we receive $10 worth of food while on call. I believe that the cashier has gotten wind that we don’t pay for anything up to $10 from the way we stock up on beverages.

There is a cashier working on weekends who appears to be passively aggressive towards our “luxuries”. For the last three weekends I’ve been on call, I’ve always gotten 4 sodas ($1.50 ea) and 4 bags of chips ($1.00 ea). This should naturally ring up as $10, but the register magically rings up as $10.05 every time she is working the register. On weeknights that I’ve gotten the exact same items, I have never been asked to supplement my purchase with an additional 5 cents.

I haven’t attempted to rationalize with her on the absurdity of the purchases. There’s not even a $0.05 tag to any of the items I purchase.

misc