I'll tell you how.
We had to work on a beautiful, bright Sunday morning owing to a supposed holiday on Monday. That means I had to spend the first few hours of my day with people coughing, sneezing and wheezing all around me; instead of me spending time with my beloved dog...sorry, Caspar with extra long walks, a refreshing bath, some fooling around the house and playing his favorite fetch (of course, these days the time spent on fetch is being reduced and redirected to more of...what I'll call scratch-my-tummy game!)
So there I was, point on time, in my ward, taking blood pressures and pulses, hearing to their their long and never ending aliments and jotting down everything I could and everything I should.
No regrets so far.
Then started the downfall of my day. First person to annoy me that day was the nurse. I had never seen her before. She must be the one who comes on Sundays and holidays (my guess). She began grumbling as I had asked her to distribute the case papers to the respective beds. That's it. And there she was muttering to herself and complaining it to an elder nurse who came along as if it was the most difficult difficult task I've allotted to her and how it was as tiring as the carrying the world on your back would be! Seriously neither do I have ascaris up me to come and ruin my Sunday, my only holiday, like this. It was a "Work" ,to be done.
The second person to come along and annoy me was the RMO office guy, who thinks he is a big shot which he is definitely not and nothing more than a servant in that office who has served longer than any other person working in the hospital. He has an attitude and well, even a personality good enough to exercise his authority allotted to him, mind you "allotted" which means it can even be self allotted. Anyways, so he came up to me and asked me to be at a blood donation camp being held somewhere in the city. Initially I was reluctant, but then gave up easily as he said it would be very short with just round 10 donors. One donor will take 10 minutes time plus 10 min observation time. You do the math.
So we set off. "We" would be myself, 2 nurses, 1 technician and 1 driver. Now ask me where the MO in charge is...well she is none other than Dr. Bairagi whom I've highly criticized in one of my previous posts. To hell with her.
The driver had the slightest idea of the place we were supposed to reach. Do you know those buses which take you around the city at a speed with which you can enjoy all the sights of the city without actually having to get down? Well, I had a similar kinda experience with just one tiny little exception. I had a sight seeing of extremely less developed parts of the city. I could actually peep into the house and tell the lady to switch off the light in the next empty room. I didn't.
So after around half hour of wasting time we reached the school where the camp was gonna be held. As we entered, the third person of the day, who annoyed me was standing at the dice, giving a speech....alone. Yesss, there was no audience. Just him. =)
I went up to him, told him who we are and asked where the room for our stuff would be, to which he snapped back at me with words...."There is still time. Program starts at 12:30. You have to adjust with whatever we have. Our resources are meager. I know how you people are from the Civil hospital!"
When his so-called mouth was shitting this, I was thinking....is this what I asked?!?
Firstly, when they give an application at the RMO office, shouldn't they give the time from which the team should be present...like from 12:30 to 3?? Right?
The paper he submitted said, the camp starts from 9:30 which clearly couldn't have unless he was expecting to suck blood out of us and himself for donation.
I totally lost my temper and asked him that it would be better if he lessened the use of his tongue and utilized his energy to work if he wants me to be there. He did so.
So around 12:30 when all his "big shots" from some corner of this city appeared, he again began his speech. With all the broken words in his own language and with all the flowers he had to offer to all of them, he sure was getting on my nerves...like a caterpillar climbing up.
Then out of no where, I heard "Dr. Raut Madam" ....and she was asked to come up to the stage! O yea, that would be me I told myself and jumped up my chair. That was the first time I was being felicitated for nothing, was asked to sit on the stage among people I have never seen, being clicked by newspapers I will never read and given flowers that I didn't bring along.
After his 20 minutes of non-stop blabbering I was happy about one thing and had one question....
Happy that among everything and every person there..at least I wasn't the mike, which was being spat one. It was the mikes' worst nightmare come true, right in it's face.
And the question was...what kind of a kid would he have been?!?
My journey of a ruined Sunday went on till 3:30 pm with just 4 donors, a lot of indiscipline, noise and explanations. Some even asked me if my tattoo was real?! Dude, seriously when will people learn to mind their own business!?
I came home exhausted strangely not coz of work but because I wanted to change so many things that went wrong on so many levels.
As I was telling it to my father and grumbling about how government work is so ill planned and how authority is been given to people who don't even deserve....and blah blah blah....(I don't even remember what my Ma had made for lunch) ...he just said me one thing.
"I've worked in this system for 29 years and I can only tell you one thing Rashmi...If you have to work with these people, at this level, in India....be their Boss." =)
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