New Pet Peeve

[lydy]

I really like my job. I do. And part of my job is to provide some incidental services upon request. It's really not a big deal. But I am currently really irritated with the variations on, "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be a pain," and "I hope you don't think I'm too inconvenient," because, really, what the fuck do you expect me to say? Reach deep into your imagination, assume I like my job enough to want to continue to be employed, and what responses can you blu-sky I might come up with? If you can come up with anything other than a variation on "It's fine, I don't mind at all, you are not a pain," you are an idiot.

What we have here is an hierarchical, economic relationship. Sorry, tough, but that's what's going on. When you ask me for reassurance about you being importunate, you are doing one of two things. The first is demanding reassurance for your insecurities from someone who has no choice but to offer them to you. This is a shitty thing to do, akin to threatening someone unless they say that they love you. While your physical needs do fall within my purview, your emotional needs do not, and you are extending the relationship to coerce me into serving your emotional needs, and really, if I weren't at work I'd tell you to fuck yourself. But, of course, I am at work, and that's entirely the point. So I will reassure your sorry ass that you're a fine human being, even if I don't mean it. And if I do mean it? There's absolutely no way to be sure, because see "hierarchical, economic relationship" above. You can only get one response out of me, and now you have it, and yes, it's unsatisfactory. Sorry about that. Nothing to be done. On the other hand, if you are so utterly oblivious to the actual nature of our relationship that you think that I might tell you the truth, I spit on your delusions and your arrogant ignorance of what it is like to work in a service industry.

For fuck's sake, for enough money, any whore will tell you she loves you and that you give her the best orgasms ever. Some people find that satisfying. But it's not an authentic relationship, bucko.

But I would like to reiterate that I really do love my job, and that I don't usually mind doing the various things that my job entails, and that does include a certain amount of personal care and service. However, it's not personal. It's not you. I do it because I love my job. You, I barely know you. And, you just got on my last nerve.

Can you tell it's Friday? Also, I need a fucking vacation.

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

But what's the alternative? "I demand that you do this thing, after all, I'm paying you!" I think expressing it in the terms of "I'm sorry to be a pain, but..." is an acknowledgement that you are a human being too. They're in a strange place, at night, with medical issues, and they probably don't want to be a pain or ask for whatever. I think diffidence wins over arrogance there? And yes, you're an employee, but you are also a person and so are they. If you don't want to say it's fine and you don't want to be forced to acknowledge your shared humanity and their helplessness maybe you could say "All part of my job, sir/ma'am" or (if true) "Some people are much worse!" or "Well, it is a bit of a pain, but I appreciate that you wouldn't ask if it wasn't necessary."

I'm projecting my loneliness and fear and anxiety of being in hospital here, but it has really helped with that to feel occasionally that medical professionals are seeing me as a person and not one more leg. Maybe it isn't possible, maybe in that situation everyone feels like that, they barely know me, I'm just meat, they're only being nice because they fear for their jobs. You're probably right. Another time I will just lie there and not ask.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

More than anything, it's the anxious repetition that gets my goat. And what's wrong with a polite request? "Excuse me, I need to get up for a moment." "Pardon me, I can you get me a drink of water?" "I'm sorry to interrupt, but I really need to get up right now and use the rest room." None of these particularly irritate me. Politely phrased, it's all good. It acknowledges me as a human, and it states their current needs. It precisely meets my idea of a functional relationship. It's the request for validation that gets to me. Actually, I respond rather badly to "I demand this thing," also. Because, yes, you are paying, but no, I'm not your servant.

Here's the thing. I really do see my patients as people. I almost always like them, and I try very hard to do well by them. I try to make their lives easier, and I am actually really happy when I can help them. But I get bent out of shape by demands for reassurance that cannot be authentic. I mean, I like some of my patients a lot, some of them I'm indifferent to, and some of them I actively dislike -- that last category is very, very small. But there is no circumstance in which I can tell them any of these things in a way that allows both of us to know that I have told them the truth. The sad fact is that, because of the way way these things work, the best I can manage is to be bright and cheerful, and the worst I can manage is to be polite and compliant, and it would be a terrible mistake to think that you can divine my inner feelings from this.

Medical stuff is scary. I try very hard to make things easy and comfortable. I attempt to project a cheerful, caring demeanor. I actually do care. I take special pains with people who have anxiety disorders. I never, ever make fun of my patients, not even behind their backs to other techs. If I can make someone happier, I am happy to do so. But I am irritated by a presumption upon a professional relationship as if it were a personal one. It's not. And I am profoundly unhappy with people who think that saying "I"m sorry to be so demanding," somehow makes it ok to be demanding. It doesn't. If what you need is reasonable, then I'm all happy. If what you need is unreasonable, I'm going to provide it as best I can, and you pretending to be apologetic isn't going to help, and your faux apology doesn't make me feel any better about it, it just adds salt to the wound.

And all of this is being written on a Friday after a difficult night with two medically very challenging patients, and a huge computer failure and a lot of stress. Also, if I tell you three times that this thing you need is not a problem, and I'm happy to provide it, would you please, for the love of god stop apologizing for a a completely normal, human need? Please? Just to save my sanity?

Ok, thank god it's the week end.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

And I will say that it's possible that I'm misreading the situation, and that my patient was reaching for a human contact rather than an affirmation of being a good person. And if so, well, I hope he got it. I tried. Among other things, I think it is much harder for my male patients to reach out for that human touch than it is for my female patients. It may be that some of the things that I'm finding so upsetting are actually misplaced attempts to ask for human compassion, rather than attempts to be reassured about their value and worth. Must cogitate on this.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

The East-Coaster in me applauds you for your impatience with the drawn-out fake humility thing. Enough with the dancing around, can we just get to the transaction and be done with it? No, I don't want another cup of coffee or a paper plate full of lefse, I just want to leave. No, really, I meant it when I complimented your new dress, you don't have to protest that you only bought it because it was on sale and normally you would never own anything that nice. Why thank you for offering to chip in for gas - wait, I forgot that I have to say no three times before I'm sure you actually meant it. Sheesh.

But you don't actually want my applause, as I would be a resounding failure at the kind of job you have, especially in this part of the country. Papersky is probably right - it was just an overly anxious attempt to be polite and not appear entitled. And you're probably right that it was Friday.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I remember being in Brooklyn, and going into a bodega for some basics. I found what I needed, took them to the counter. The gentleman behind the counter was on the phone, speaking rapidly in Spanish. I caught his eye, set down my items. He smiled, continued to talk while he rang me up, interrupted his conversation to tell me the amount, went back to talking while I gave him money, he gave me change, bagged my items, and was still talking as I left the bodega. I was pleased with the transaction, pleased that there had been no need for him to interrupt the conversation he was having. The interaction was brisk, efficient, and in my eyes, friendly. I was happy that I hadn't needed to interrupt him, and happy that he hadn't felt it necessary to interrupt himself. It wasn't until I had walked a half a block or so that I realized that to many of my Midwestern friends, this would have been considered an unpleasant, possibly even hostile exchange. For my sensibilities, it was pleasant and respectful, and allowed both of us to be completely real and human. I have no idea what it looked like to the cashier in the bodega, of course.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Of course, you aren't originally from the Upper Midwest, are you? Somewhere in Pennsylvania, wasn't it?

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Pittsburgh, ages 9 through 17. Parents from Boston, Mass. From ages 2 through 9, very rural Upstate New York, which isn't as blunt as NYC, but way less circumlocutory as the Midwest.

There are advantages to the very indirect way in which Midwesterners attack interpersonal conflicts. But what I find continually chaps my ass is the weird, inauthentic nature of some professional relationships. This is, by the way, exactly why I was a terrible whore. The whole pretending that the relationship is way more than it actually is, I don't do that well. For me, an integral part of respecting other people is noticing their context, as well as your own. In a professional context, I can never tell you to fuck right off, so presenting a situation which pretends that this is an option, when we both should know that it isn't, is irritating, even if I have absolutely no inclination to tell you to fuck right off. Even if I'm kindly inclined, and cheerfully willing to do what you are asking for, pretending that I somehow have an option I don't irritates me. But, it's not Friday anymore, and I've slept once, so I'm a lot less irritated than I was. Yay for sleep.

[quadong.livejournal.com]

For normalization purposes, I would like to check whether you would find the conduct of the people working at my local post office to be New York-polite. (I was just there and thought of this post.) They stare deadly past you, making no personal contact at all, to you or anyone else. I think they mutter "canihelpyou" and "thankyouhaveaniceday" at the appropriate times. They don't do anything unambiguously rude, and they do provide the services that you ask of them. Does that make them polite in other parts of the country, or do we mostly agree that they are not very friendly?

[lydy.livejournal.com]

If they're swift and efficient, then it wouldn't bother me, although it might not read as polite. If they're slow and sullen, it would annoy me. In the bodega example, I felt like I got a friendly acknowledgment, in that the cashier smiled at me, but didn't bother with extraneous interactions. I think that this sort of interaction is more polite in large cities, where people are overloaded with other people, and so its polite to give as many people as possible additional space and privacy. There is a thing service people do, where they pretend you're not really there, that I find rude and condescending. But I prefer the sorts of interactions where there's no extraneous socializing. I also prefer people who talk fast and get to the point.

[faunhaert.livejournal.com]

you are encountering someone
whose caretakers-famiy,
who saw everything as an inconvenience.
they are used to apologizing for being alive.
that family prays they were dead.

This is not about you
this is them, their burden,
they are afraid to be alive and interrupting you .
you are a professional person.
they don't think they are worth your attention over everyone else there.
everyone, anyone else, must be more important than them.

hope you have a good weekend
and regain the psychological distance
you need for doing what you are doing.

[ctein3.livejournal.com]

Dear Lydy,

Yeah, it does sound like you need a break, because I think you're wrong on this one.

You know “crip manners,” right? That's what you're the recipient of. It's not about you, it's not even about them (not in the way you think it is). It's survival behavior!

This is what it feels like on the patient's side:

Medical stuff isn't like buying that loaf of bread. The transaction and process aren't clear-cut and well-defined, the outcome is in doubt, and the “customer” is in a substantially uncertain, subservient and vulnerable position. Consequently, we (patients) fall into crip manners. We say please and thank you way too much and too effusively for the circumstances, we express the desire to not be a pain, to express hopes that we're not bothering you too much for asking too much of you.

And by “we,” I also mean “I,” because I do this to some degree In medical situations. It's not a logical response, it's an emotional one. I'm putting myself in the hands of someone who could really screw me over, maybe even without me even knowing it, and if they did there's little I could do about it without going through a lot of trouble. So I'm doing some of the fawning, submissive, placating thing. I don't want reassurance that I'm a “good person.” What I want is for you not to think I'm a “bad person,” or one who doesn't appreciate what you're doing or one who is simply unpleasant enough that you don't do everything you might do for me, either consciously or unconsciously.

It doesn't matter that I hired you, that I'm paying you. The folks out there using crip manners every day of their lives, because they really are vulnerable all the time, are paying PCA's and other kinds of caregivers and support personnel for their services. Still, they are at their mercy, and the transactions are not well defined, and there's things a PCA can do for you that they aren't strictly obligated to do, and so you'd really like them to like you and know that you aren't taking them for granted.

And that's what it feels like for whole lot of us when we undergo medical scrutiny or procedures. You, for better or worse, are part of the medical establishment when you're at your job. You may be a lower acolyte instead of one of the high priests, but you are.

Of course there are the pathological extreme cases, patients who are just absolutely horrible (because they feel scared or hugely entitled or they're just assholes) and the ones who are practically troll-ish in their demanding of approval, who would likely be equally intolerable in any normal circumstance––“Do you like me, do you like me, do you reaalllllly like me, do you like me…”. But that's kind of hard to determine in that situation, because they are playing a role just as you are: they are no more going to behave with normal levels of politeness then you are going to say to them, “No, you really are a bother.”

The norm, though? Crip manners. Ya gotta roll with it.

pax \ Ctein
[ Please excuse any word-salad. MacSpeech in training! ]
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[lydy.livejournal.com]

Ctein, I am a consumer of medical care. I do know what it feels like to be a patient. I have, in fact, had in my life five sleep studies, four of them before I became a sleep tech. I do not need to be schooled in what it looks like from the other side.

I concede that my irritation is excessive, and that it is indicative of having had a hard day and needing a vacation.

At the same time, no one seems to understand the nature of my complaint, and that is also irritating me. My complaint is people who presume upon a personal relationship that does not and cannot obtain. People do it to service staff all the time, waitresses, cashiers, nurses, sleep techs. It's a casual bit of rudeness that is dressed up as politeness, and it bothers me.

There also seems to be an assumption that I am not kind and careful with my patients if they irritate me, and that really upsets me, because I work very, very hard to be supportive and cheerful, even to the blatantly abusive ones, and I get them, too. The one who managed to irritate me recently was not blatantly abusive, thank god. I hope that I am sensitive to the weird power imbalance between us, and gentle with the insecurity of being alone in a strange place with a stranger watching you sleep. It's a vulnerable position. And it's made much, much worse by the fact that you have to ask me to help you every time you need to get up to use the rest room. Gods, yes, it's an embarrassing and difficult situation. I understand that.

I like my relationships clean and authentic. This includes my professional relationships. It is clear that other people do not have that preference. As a professional, I do my best to cater to the need for an inauthentic friendship which lasts for a night. That is the part of my job I find a strain, though. Do you understand why?

[ctein3.livejournal.com]

Dear Lydy,

I think we have a basic disagreement. You think this is in the same category as the "friends with a server" thing. I think it is not. That is not about crip manners; this is. It may feel the same to you, but I am asserting it is a fundamentally different interaction.

I know you've been on the other side. But it sounds like you don't have the same response to it a lot of us do

Yeah, it's irritating for patients to assume you won't be supportive if they aren't supplicative. It's not driven by them thinking poorly of you. It's driven by uncertainty.

Really, it ain't about you.

No, I gotta admit I don't understand why this is a strain for you to deal with. I certainly accept your statement that it is. But I don't get why.

Guy Thomas (a fan some of you may know; he used to run the Center for Independent Living in Berkeley) was the one who explained "crip manners" to me. I was at a party at his house and he asked if I'd mind getting him a soft drink (he is very mobility impaired), so of course I did and he thanked me profusely, excessively, really, for an old friend. Like I wouldn't get him a drink? Really??? It did seem like, in a very minor way, he was surprised by my minimal considerateness. It was a little bothersome, given our friendship.

I said something to that effect, and he explained crip manners to me. He also explained that he'd trained himself to make it automatic, so that he'd never forget to do it, because his well-being might depend on it.

It stopped bothering me. I got that it was "etiquette theatre" (to coin a phrase)-- it wasn't about me or about him. It was true on some level, it wasn't hypocrisy, but it was about as literally and personally meaningful as starting off a letter with "Dear" and signing it with "Sincerely."

Ericka did it all the time with me and we spent, literally, years of our lives together. It was a formalism, nothing more. I never found it bothersome after I understood what it was.

I argue that this is the interaction you're having with your patients, not the "I am making believe I am friends with the hired help" one.

pax / Ctein

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Ok, most of my patients are able-bodied, and a huge number of them are very certain that they don't have any sort of problem at all. If this is "crip manners" it's coming out of no place. These are not people who have long experience with being disabled and having to petition for the least little bit of accommodation in order to make their lives tolerable. In point of fact, I do see "crip manners" from people who are wheel-chair bound, or have other significant health issues, and I interact with that just fine. I hadn't really parsed it that way, but it makes sense that this would happen, and that's a useful thing to have a word for.

Of course this is about me, dammit. This is my blog, and I'm talking about my feelings. It's totally about me. It's not about me at work. At work, it's about my patients, and making them feel comfortable, safe, and relaxed. And for some of them, they need to do this thing which I, me, find incredibly irritating. Provided that irritation doesn't blow back on my essentially innocent if irritating patients, I fail to see why it's a problem for me to be irritated. In private. In my own blog. Which is about, you know, me.

[ctein3.livejournal.com]

Dear Lydy,

It's coming out of the place I described in the first comment-- fear, insecurity, helplessness. You're the Medical Goddess (alright, a really minor goddess), we cower before you.

"Crip manners" isn't just a conscious strategy, it's an instinctive (with a very small "i") emotional reaction to being in that situation. Totally, not about you.

Oh, and probably you didn't get the memo, but we collectivized the Interweb while you were asleep and this blog no longer belongs to you, it now belongs to the People.

Land Reform is soooo Twentieth Century. We've move on to Cyber Reform. Viva la Revolucion!

(The revolution will not be televised, but we will tweet the hell out of it!)

pax / Ctein

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Tweet on, McDuff!

[ctein3.livejournal.com]

Dear Lydy,

I have parrots for that.

pax / Ctein

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I'm similarly irritated by a directive from our supervisors in G4S that we are required to smile and make eye contact with the people passing our security desks.

My natural inclination is to smile and make eye contact - with those who seem open to it. But not everyone is. Some people are clearly involved in conversations with others, or on their phones, or actively cringing from social contact of any sort.

I love exchanging friendly greetings with those who are into it - and I've seen many a dour face sprout a beautiful smile given some human contact at a low moment. I don't want anyone turning into an 'invisible girl' on my watch.

But being /ordered/ to be sociable cheapens my natural impulse and sours my attitude.
.