Rigidity

One of the longest tenured members of our clinic is being forced by a shoulder injury to call it a career on the 1st of December. She has been with the clinic for better than 8 years and seen her share of changes along the way. She is a wealth of information and a valuable resource who knows seemingly all the ins and outs of the clinic. So, why is it that with near unanimity people are more than happy to see her go?

Well, the simple answer is rigidity. She is as inflexible a person I have ever met. There is clearly one and only one right way to do things. For example, I walk to work, and though I always leave from the same place and arrive at the same place, I kind of decide on a whim how I will get there and what streets I will meander down, sometimes based on mood and sometimes in such a fugue state I honestly don't know why I go the way I do. However, I don't doubt that N (lets just call her that) would walk the exact same way day in and day out. This in itself would be fine except she is not content to just do that and call it an idiosyncrasy, she would also take pains to point out all the reasons why her path to work was in all ways superior and point out all the flaws in the method in which you decide to get to work. And she does this constantly and to everyone: doctors, staff, or peers.

Everyone has a story about her, and none are positive. Doctors roll their eyes. Staff swap stories about past conflicts. And I, and the new nurse, both asked to have our training with her cut short because we could not stand to be around her. Better to be ignorant and learn as we go than to be bullied and belittled as we learn. She doesn't teach, so much as lecture and scold. She is the kind of person that, when you talk about a rough patient or a bad day, does not empathize but rather talks incessantly about how much tougher a day she had or how much worse it was before. It is almost pathological.........and you wonder how none of this penetrates. How can one person be okay with being so universally disliked? I know I couldn't.

There is certainly a part of me that feels a bit badly for her, or would if she wasn't always so self-satisfied. But mostly, like everyone else, I just want to see her gone. I don't love my job and I have strong doubts that I ever will, but I do genuinely like my coworkers and I think we will all be much relieved to not have her standing behind us, ever critical.

So long N..........may the door hit you where the good lord split you.