Thank you so much for nominating my entry, Cold Heartless Bitch for best coverage of a news event.  And congratulations to all the other nominees, especially SecraTerri, The Bitter Hag, and Charlene of Are We There Yet?

SPINNING STRAW INTO GOLD

17 May 2002

When Dr. G fired my predecessor and hired me, the Nurse Practitioner who shares office space (I'll call her Gisele, since she is also a dancer, in her spare time), who felt a loyalty to my predecessor was a bit miffed with Dr. G for his actions, and she took the woman on as her own assistant.

For the last several months, my predecessor and I have been sharing a desk one day a week and she's been driving me nuts with the way she leaves things, the mess she makes, etc. It's not that I'm a neat person, as we all know, but I was upset the day she broke my office chair and never even told me, the day she used all of my (expensive) coffee, the days she would leave dirty dishes around for me to clean up, etc.

A week ago, the predecessor came in on a day when Gisele was expected. Dr. G also had patients that day so when she went into Gisele's office, I didn't think much about it. She often came in to pick up messages, return phone calls, etc.

About 10 minutes later, she came out of the office, told me she was going to run an errand and would be right back.

When Gisele arrived, she went into her office, came out stunned and said "She left me the key to the office and a note saying she has quit." Apparently the note also said "please don't call me."

So now Gisele is trying to be both practitioner and assistant and she is getting a feel for why Dr. G let the predecessor go in the first place.

She's discovered that her business bills weren't paid, the files are a mess, the office is a disaster, etc.

I offered to help her get organized this week.

Now, before you chortle (especially those of you who know me personally), while I may be a total disaster as a housekeeper, for some reason I really enjoy bringing order to someone else's mess.

It's probably the Aquarius in me. I read once that Aquarians typically (there are exceptions--and you know who you are!) can ignore messes for days, weeks, or months on end, but then something will snap and they have to clean up NOW. I seem to have recovered from that Aquarian trait, but when I was younger, my room would be a total disaster forever, the bane of my Virgo mother's existence, and then one day I'd take everything out of every cupboard and turn them into pristeen storage areas. (They would eventually revert to the former state, and then we'd do it all over again.)

As a teen age babysitter, I used to take care of children of a woman who keeps house the way I do now. I was paid 50 cents an hour, and for that I took care of two young children, fed them dinner, put them to bed, and then cleaned the house. Sucha deal!

So anyway, looking at the mess wrought by my predecessor is a real challenge. Today I started putting the files in order. There are some 100-200 files which are supposed to be organized in a way that facilitates finding things--all the progress notes together, all the x-rays together, all the lab results together, all correspondence together. Preferably each category in chronological order. Seems kinda logical, doesn't it?

Well....these charts don't even come close to that kind of order. Things are just shoved in haphazardly, some attached to the chart, other things just stuffed inside so that whenever Gisele picks up a chart, half of it falls on the floor. I spent about an hour and a half today and finished about 10 of the charts, with lots and lots and lots to go. I had no idea it was going to be such a monumental task. But I have to admit that when I saw those charts neatly stacked for the first time since I'd been there, it was a good feeling of satisfaction.

I intend to go in tomorrow (my day off) and get a bunch more done.

(It gives me some smug satisfaction to know that this woman is someone that Sutter hired to replace me when they felt that I wasn't able to handle the job I'd had for 2 years—and that this woman lasted all of six weeks.)

We haven't discussed whether I'm doing this for money, or just to be a good guy. At the moment, I'm assuming I'm doing it to be a good guy (which means I can pick and choose my own hours, of course!)