The Tao of Apathy (7 page)

Yes, the money-saving measures were effective
lines on many of management’s resumes, but they were proving to be
costly.

Some of the many changes had been for the
better and had made sense, which really pissed off the employees.
The administrators of Saint Jude’s were fed up. After years of
hearing whining that things needed changing, they had gone and
changed everything and the employees were still not happy. Crapper,
reading his remarks off a prepared speech at the director’s meeting
had said, “Ah, umm… What is their, the employees, the s-staff, what
is their problem, anyway? If they uhh… think they could do a better
job, I would like to see them.”

The staff’s problem was exactly that they
could do a better job. They actually knew what was going on and
where the inefficiencies were in the hospital. The directors
deciding how each department should be changed was like a husband
telling his wife how to give birth. The husband doesn’t know what
is going on, and even if he did, she wouldn’t listen to
him.

Every director now ran his department as a
team as mandated by “The Company.” The directors’ contribution to
the teams were to make random cuts to staff and expenses and the
staffs’ part was to figure out how to continue to keep getting
people well. Nurses, LPN, techs, aides, and the volunteers had to
work double shifts on overtime. They worked six, seven, eight days
a week. Everyone was tired, frustrated, richer than they had ever
been, and depressed.

The directors did step in at this point and
started to have pizza delivered on Fridays. But even after the
pizza, the directors still had to give lectures on morale and
explain why things had to be the way they were. Mr. Seuss, in that
way that he had, summed it up best when he said, “We are a team, we
have equal say. Just make sure you do it my way. So remember this
before you get in a tiz. It was the team (not me) that made our
department the way it is. The team is me, the team is you. You
decided to make yourself work the whole week through."

Supervisors in the departments, people of
experience with expertise in what they did were replaced with
pinheads. A new position called “Team Guider” was created for the
pinheads. It was not a supervisor job, but completely different in
that a team guider needed to have a college degree. Good
supervisors were removed because being good was not a qualification
and because, as everyone knows,everyone that graduated from college
was an intelligent well-rounded human being.

The supervisor of the Maintenance Department,
Jim, was unjobbed eight years before retirement, but he could not
complain because he was not fired. The qualifications for his job
that he had held for twenty years had simply changed so that he was
immediately turned down when forced to reapply for his position. He
could even stay on at the hospital and continue to be jobbed as the
head overnight custodian.

Jim had mechanical expertise, but no college
degree. However, the cashier from the gift shop had a degree in
history and became the Team Guider of Continuity Rejuvenation
Services, which had replaced the Maintenance Department. An
eccentric comic one told a joke about how burglars broke into his
house and replaced everything with exact replicas.

This was that, but worse.

Things still got done and the cashier was
heralded as a success. The fact that some important things went
undone; the fact that the cashier had outside people come in to fix
things that Jim could have fixed; and the fact that the cashier had
the maintenance guys fix things that should have been contracted
out were only minor adjustments that were expected with change. But
Jim had only created ethereal silence with properly repaired
heating and cooling units and significant symphonies with
electrical systems. He had only worked magic with a pair of
pliers.

The twenty-six year old cashier was friendly,
courteous and always gave the correct change. He wore a tie, but he
genuinely cared about the appearance of contentment of his staff.
He did everything to get the men to like him and to share their
thoughts.

“
I think I might have to kill that
new jerk-off supervisor,” Craig, a maintenance man of ten years,
said sharing his thoughts at lunch. Craig did not seem to know that
his Team Guider was not a supervisor, but an ex-cashier from the
gift shop making five thousand more a year than Jim had made. After
all, he needed to be compensated for his years of study on the
Civil War. He did not know how to rewire a fuse box, but he knew
who invented electricity. The Team Guider’s desk was in Jim’s old
office though, so, Craig called him a supervisor. Craig wasn’t
smart enough to know the difference between a supervisor and a Team
Guider.

Chapter 10

Joe drove home recklessly in sheets of rain.
Next to him was The Pretty Housekeeper, Susan. They had been going
out for almost a year and she sometimes spent an entire week at
Joe’s. Joe had, of course, noticed her when she began working at
Saint Jude’s, but she had garnered so much attention from the male
employees that he didn’t want to be one of the pack of men that
would leave their assigned work area to bump into her. A lot of
maintenance got done on the wing that she worked and non-smoking
men began to smoke so that they could meet her on her break. When
her three-month probation was up, the men gave her a party with
decorations, a cake, and gifts. These were the same men that let
people that they worked with for decades retire without so much as
a pat on the back.

To Joe’s credit, he wanted no part of that. To
his shame, he didn’t take part because he figured he didn’t have a
chance. However, one day he was talking about NASCAR with Bigger in
the Butt Hutt and he overheard Susan say to her co-worker and about
eight men around her that she hated shopping. Joe’s heart began to
race with love, but he continued on talking to Bigger like nothing
was happening.

Then Susan divided the guys around her, leaned
over to him and said, “Dale Earnhardt was the dirtiest fucking
driver ever.” From the moment on, he knew he was in wonderful
trouble. She seemed to always be complaining about an elderly
housekeeper that smelled of BO, but Joe was able to tune that
out.

Joe and Susan ran to his door. They stripped
off their wet clothes and made love. Then they put on some
comfortable clothes and ate a pizza. At seven o’ clock, Bigger
showed up at Joe’s door, drunk. “I’ve gotts ta talk to you, buddy,”
he said.

Susan volunteered to go home and water her
plants and see if her cat was still alive. Joe saw that Bigger was
in bad shape and way gone. He grabbed a bottle of Bacardi off his
kitchen table and tried to catch up.

“
You know you should be home with
your wife and kids.”

“
I’m pissed off and pissed up and
I don’t want to be around them like that. That’s why I come by you.
Besides Jenny understands I’m having a rough time. She’s a
castrating nag, but she understands.”

Joe mixed some more rum in some Coke and
stirred with his finger. Bigger was still working on the drink he
had in his hand when he had arrived. “I don’t. You’re not upset
that I wish you’d get fired, are you?”

“
Ah, Hell no,” Bigger said. “I
have no idea why you would want that, but I figure you have a good
reason. I am the ones with the big plans, but you’re the ones with
the brains, Joe.”

“
I don’t know, Bigger. I think
we’re both pretty stupid.”

“
See? You’re even right about
that.” Bigger burped and then hiccupped. “You’re always right.
That’s why I was hoping you could help me understand all the
changes going on at work. I just don’t like change. It’s like when
I was little.”

Bigger stared into space for a moment. “My dad
would be taking a shower or a dump and my mom would barge in on him
with towels or to comb her hair. Daddy didn’t seem to mind, but I’d
be thinking, ‘Ick. Icky. I’d hate for my wife to barge in on me the
bathroom and see all my private parts.’ Now that I am older, do you
know what? I hate when my wife barges in on me and sees my
privates.”

“
What in the hell are you talking
about, Bigger? What the hell does that have to do with
anything?”

“
I want to know why things have to
change or why I don’t like it. Either one.” Bigger spilled his
drink on the couch with several deep hiccups. “Anything after
childhood sucks. Maybe that’s my point, damn it. But I need your
advice on if I should start wearing my uniform.” Bigger shuttered.
“I even hate those words. Uniform. To me it means being the same.
But should I start wearing all white, Joe? Come on, Joe. You know
what I’s should do.”

Joe shuttered, too. He was trying to get the
picture of Bigger naked in the bathroom out of his head. “Bigger,
the reason I want you to get fired is so that it forces you to do
want you want with your life. Because I think you are never leaving
Saint Jude’s unless you get fired. You’re too comfortable here as
much as you hate it. As a failure, you don’t have to risk failing.
But you do have a family to support. With times, the way they are,
I think you should probably start wearing your uniform.”

“
Will this make me happy at
work?”

Joe shook his head. “It will make you feel
worse and more bitter, but you need this job. That’s the bottom
line. So get in white from head to toe, eat your dignity, and
conform to some stupid rule that some asshole thought up. That’s
what everyone else does. Let Seuss pretend you are a team player
one hundred and ten percent.”

They sat for a while drinking and wanting to
go to bed, but not wanting to waste a buzz. Joe turned on ESPN and
turned down the sound. He didn’t want the sound because he wanted
to talk to his friend, but he turned the TV on to avoid the
awkwardness of being alone in a room with another man. He really
wanted to turn his stereo on, but thought that would be too
gay.

“
Do you love me Joe?” Bigger
asked. “Because I think you’re great. You are so in control. Your
life has turned out the way you wanted it to, didn’t
it?”

“
Wouldn’t I have to be a jackass
to want my life to be this, Bigger?” He took a long drink. “But all
in all, I got what I need, except-”

“
Except what?”

“
Hmm. I don’t think I should tell
you, but I hate people that let you know they have a secret and
then make you beg them for like five minutes, ‘Come on, tell me.
Tell me.’ until they tell you. So, I’m just going to tell
you.”

“
Come on, tell me. Tell
me.”

Joe concentrated on getting a cigarette out
and lighting it for a few moments. “The one thing that really
consumes me, that I feel the need to do, is …bang a nurse. I don’t
think I’ll be truly happy until I do.”

“
My ears must be drunk. Shleep
with a nurse? You hate nurses.”

“
I hate everyone.” Joe shrugged
his shoulders.

“
Yeah, but you shay nurses are all
insensitive bitches with big asshes. You shay the first class in
nursing school must be bitch 101. You shay that all the time, Joe.
And what about Susan? She’s really great. You’re going out with the
Good-Looking-Housekeeper,” Bigger said drunkenly
distraught.

“
Susan is the best person I’ve
ever known. She has really gotten her life together after really
screwing it up in high school. I couldn’t do what she does with
holding down two jobs and going to cosmetology school. It’s not
just the sex either. But God, Susan is beautiful. Those classic
looks. Smooth white skin. Long blonde hair.”

“
Well, she’s got the boniest ass
I’ve ever seen.”

“
Yeah,” Joe replied dreamily. “But
I still feel I need to bag a nurse.”

Bigger let his head drop back so that he was
looking at the ceiling. “The room is spinning. Why?”

“
It’s not really spinning. You’re
just drunk.”

“
No. Why do you need to put it to
a nurse? Tell me quick, because in a little while I’m going to go
puke.”

“
Pretty much for the same reason,
I ignore Susan at work. I never go to lunch or out to the Butt Hutt
when she might be there. I could never show her affection at
work.”

Bigger took a drink with his head still
drooped back. “Well you guys practically do it in public when we go
out drinking.”

“
That’s not work. If I were to
kiss her at work, I would feel like two children kissing in front
of adults. I can just imagine people saying, ‘Aren’t they cute. Two
little laborers together like real people. Its so nice they can be
together.”

“
So you want to fuck a nurse
why?”
Joe thought about it. To nail a nurse, he would have to be
recognized as a real person and not a retard. Many people at Saint
Jude’s believed that the kitchen staff were mentally retarded
persons hired under a special government program. Most weren’t. “It
would prove that even though I don’t have an education or a nice
job, I don’t have to be looked down on. I know it’s stupid. But
people like the nurses think that because we don’t have retirement
funds and cash our checks at the tavern on Friday, that we are not
worth knowing. But to be with one of them would prove that I
am.”