I think Birthday Girl may suspect a party is being planned, because she’d let it be known in the Community Room, yesterday, that Subway would be her preference.
So let’s see … Subway for 20/30 people would total up to $100/$150.
Nice try, but inasmuch as deviled eggs will keep me within budget, I was able to put a few dollars on a Subway gift card which I think will tickle her fancy.
So this morning I went down to the Community Room to let the party organizers know chicken is off the menu, deviled eggs are on.
While there, that senior I’d found in distress came in. She’s still alive, but not well, saying she’d fainted earlier in her unit, that her care giver has yet to make an appearance, but “My son is coming by today to work out some things.”
I’m not sure I believe that her son is coming by today. She may be hallucinating that but, on the off chance he actually does come by to "work out some things", I urged her to be sure to tell him about the fainting spells – so he can make proper arrangements for her (but I didn’t tell her that reason, because seniors fear and resist losing their independence and being placed in a care facility, which is where she should now be).
I also learned this morning that Nurse Ratched’s newly hired Head Maintenance Man (“Big Head” as we already had a Head Maintenance Man, but to let him (“Little Head”) know who’s boss, Nurse Ratched had hired someone over him) quit. I’d posted just the other day, when the guys came in to repair my fan, that Big Head said she was getting on his last nerve.
When she’d embarrassed him yesterday by yelling at him in front of residents and making a snide remark about his facial appearance, he quit on the spot.
But at least this time, upper management is aware it’s Nurse Ratched’s fault they’ve lost yet another staffer. Usually, the departing staffer, wanting to avoid conflict, says “I’m quitting to go back to school … or I’ve got another job.” But this time, Big Head went straight to Miss Bigwig and told her why he was out. Miss Bigwig tried to talk him out of it, but he’d had enough after …what? … two months/three months?
And then there’s The Leftover Strawberry Pie Caper.
Practice around here has been, when we have leftovers from events, to either sneak a plate home (past Nurse Ratched who has been known to try to make herself important with, “I can’t let food be taken out of here”) or put the leftovers in the Community Room refrigerator for residents to partake of at-will.
“Nurse Ratched”, for those of you new to this blog, is the Complex Manager and is referred to as Nurse Ratched because the way complex manager relates to staff and residents is so like the way the fictional character of Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest related to others … “steely, unyielding, employing humiliation, and unpleasant treatment to suppress”.
So following the usual practice of storing leftovers in the Community Room refrigerator, when I had almost a whole half gallon container of chocolate ice cream left from the July 28 surprise going away us residents sprung for the Assistant Manager, I didn’t trust ice cream in my unit as I've been off sugar for like 12 weeks now and did not want to be tempted, so I put it in the Community Room refrigerator for whomever and didn’t given it a second thought.
Not so with Nurse Ratched.
The story is … there was leftover strawberry pie from the August 3rd Pool Party. She’d put it in the Community Room refrigerator and a day or so later, six residents were sitting around, saw it in the refrigerator and decided to finish it off.
When Nurse Ratched discovered THE PIE was gone, she went ballistic that someone had eaten what she described as MY PIE.
Instead of security personnel, management has installed video recording devices all over the complex. Nurse Ratched uses those recordings to spy on us residents to catch people smoking so she can issue violation citations, and to try to catch and call out those who’ve displeased or challenged her on the smallest of perceived infractions. However, residents have challenged back that Nurse Ratched never reviews the tapes for important things – like when a new flat screen was stolen from the Community Room … twice or to verify complaints about suspected drug dealing and young suspicious looking people living on the property with residents in violation of lease agreements, et al. When residents complain and she tells them “You have no proof. I can’t do anything unless you can prove it”, residents come back with “Look at the tapes”. Nurse Ratched standard reply is, “We’re not looking at the tapes for that.”
Yet, when Nurse Ratched discovered the leftover strawberry pie had been eaten, she reviewed the tapes to discover who’d committed this dastardly deed, hunted each and every one down and tore them a new one with “That was MY PIE!”
I offered to the group the true reason she went ballistic was that two of the residents involved in the pie eating are the two most vocal and challenging.
Nevertheless, making an issue of “MY PIE” is insane and I don’t think we’ve heard the last on the issue.
Reminds me of that old movie, The Caine Mutiny, in which Humphrey Bogart played the insane Lieutenant Commander Philip Francis Queeg, and began clicking steel balls in his hands as he went to “absurd lengths to hunt down the culprit when strawberries went missing from the officers’ mess”.
I don’t recall if, at the end of the movie, Queeg was determined to be insane and summarily dealt with, but it’s rather creepy that Nurse Ratched’s latest escapade and meltdowns in real life are so much like insane fictional characters.
Life imitating art.
Good grief. It was leftover pie. Get over it. That woman really is crazy.
ReplyDeleteCertifiably so.
ReplyDelete