Loaded shopping cart at Trader Joe's

Sure, today is Superbowl Sunday and people have a right to load up on groceries for the big game…but shopping rage? That’s excessive.

This weekend was my only free weekend in 7 weeks, and I decided to drop by Trader Joe’s to pick up some tasty snax. Business is always booming at the local TJ’s–they actually expanded twofold despite the recent economic slump. The store was so crowded, that I decided to just pick up a container of calimyrna figs for the week; while their prices are generally reasonable, my budget is more suited for shopping at the local Hispanic supermercado, where I get most of my groceries.

As I approached the checkout counter, a middle-aged woman (dressed to downplay her age) with a loaded shopping cart shoved in front of me. I glared at her, and prominently displayed my sole container of $3.69 figs as a means to politely hint that she should let me check out first. Naturally, she glanced at me and my figs, and turned to unload her groceries on the counter. B-I-T-C-H.

The further add insult, she decided to switch out a packaged of fresh chicken legs for a frozen bag–the employee had to return to the refrigerator section to bring her a new one. When her final bill rang up $131.XX, she fumbled through her wallet while stating, “Oh, I think I have a giftcard somewhere. I know it doesn’t have much on it, but might as well use it…”

Sadly enough, she’s not the only jerk out there.

Uncategorized rant

I hate writing progress notes. Sure, they’re essential to document to a patient’s hospital course, but most of the note is repetitive. Even worse, my hospital uses a hybrid medical record system.  The computerized portion stores all laboratory values and initial consults. The daily progress notes by the primary team and consults are all handwritten.  The nursing pods usually have only one or two computers, one of which is always used by nursing to view people.com and perez hilton.  Thus, every morning I vie for that lone open computer while fumbling through illegible chickenscratch.  Do we regress that quickly from grade school? And clearly I’ve discovered that penmanship doesn’t correlate with hand dexterity- surgeon scribble is no better than internist scribble. I’m no calligrapher, but at least I make an active effort to be legible.

This cycle repeats for each of the 8-12 patients every morning for 4 week blocks at a time. That’s enough to push anyone into insanity, or any cynical housestaff to reinforce his jaded outlook on the medical system.  And if slovenly human behavior doesn’t do it, the computers like to seize and go into endless reboots daily around 6am – 8am.  That’s hospital IT (information technology) for ya.

medicine inpt medicine, rant

When I was part of the residential networking team back in college, I always cringed at how people let their computers deteriorate.  “You have how many icons on your desktop? 2000? How is that possible?” Then you have the perennial file-sharers who have 3-4 different file sharing apps running at the same time while connected to 237 other computers. No wonder your computer is slow. I, on the other hand, have always maintained a well-tuned system until today. Read more…

computing rant, tech

One of the phrases I hear often in the hospital is this:

Nurse 1: Is he the resident?

Nurse 2: No, he’s the intern.

Last time I checked, an intern is a first-year resident. I suppose that at my current hospital, there is unspoken hierarchy among the nursing and ancillary staff that the “intern” is the dumbass carrying the team pager while the “resident” is the one who should be called in an emergency.  The atrocities do not end there, mind you. Read more…

medicine medicine, rant