My Name is Luka

If you were to have asked me three years ago if I thought Suzanne Vega's "My Name is Luka"--a song that sketches a child's perspective of parental abuse--would ever speak to me as a metaphor for workplace violence, I would have laughed and asked you what made you think of that theory.

Alas, no longer.

Now if you brought it up I'd probably see it as a badge of identity in the Sisterhood and say, "Oh yeah, you a nurse, too? Thought so."

I think an abusive, codependent, passive-agressive game of power play describes exactly what half if not some days all of my encounters with people at work are like.

"If you hear something late at night/Some kind of trouble, some kind of fight/Just don't ask me what it was.../They only hit until you cry/And after that you don't ask why/You just don't argue anymore..."

Suddenly, Vega's stark lyrics of profound isolation and brutal violence take on a new, deeper meaning, as I realize she may as well have meant "don't argue with a paged on-call attending who spends five minutes of your life roundly insulting your intelligence, without, however, actually doing anything about the patient's condition." Half of the time they hang up in fine dudgeon, and you either get a response that "buffs the chart" (medical argot for an order set that does not address the problem but makes it appear something was done) or an extension of "benign neglect" in which they do nothing, hoping the patient will miraculously stop bleeding out their ass of their own accord, or whatever, and waits to code preferably after they're post-call.

Of course, no one (other than severely confused and combative demented patients) has ever hit me before at work, but it seems at least once a week I get yelled at, cursed at, put down and my intelligence underestimated and belittled.

And I have to wonder how normal can this ruthless subjection to abuse be in a workplace?

Sometimes the power play is very subtle. You might miss if i you weren't a human being with higher intellectual capabilities than say, that of an invertebrate.

I have had charts ripped out of my hands or pawed through as I'm reading them/doing an admission. I had one resident who came in with her attending, sighed huffily and drawled impatiently: "Are you about done with that chart, already?" This was after she'd attempted to read part of the chart while I was, you know, using the chart myself already. At which point I looked up and said, "Actually, no; the patient just got on the floor, and I'll need the chart for a few more minutes to do her admission. You can have it if you'd l when I'm through."

I think I scared her though, because the next time the attending came in and asked for the chart. Like people with manners might.

Beee-yatch.

It seems to me that the already marginal socialization skills of most medical students were quashed in favor of cramming loads of bullshit into their heads about what great fucking healers they are all going to grow up to be.

Fuckwads.

I can see people have an off day or three during, like, an entire year at work... I get it, if your car gets broken into and you snap at the secretary for not faxing documents or something unrelated, because hey, we all have shitty days... but dude, every week?!

I'm trying to deduce whether or not the prevalence of limp-dick attitude I meet at my job is a feature representative of other professions. I mean, do people in other departments of a business, say accounting, come up to the their coworkers in some unrelated office, like risk managment, and start sniggering loudly and deriding said folks professionally and personally because their opinion was needed in a company matter? Does this cycle of passive-aggressive-sniping-lack-of-anger-management-skills occur as frequently as I've noted in our profession? Or do I just I work in some Jerry Springer Memorial Hospital set-up and no one ever clued me in? (Some days I refer to my job as Hospital Staff Smackdown).

I mean, dude, what gives?!

Any way, a friend of mine who is much wiser to these sorts of morale-crushing workplace violence fests had one of her usual brilliant observations: it would be better use of our time, and actually kind of funny, if when some White Boys Can't Jump "personality deprived" pseudo-intellectual prat starts insulting us roundly s/he actually used said something inspired, and amusing. So at least that way you could kind of laugh and see if you can rap with it.

You see, we also both share a theory about gangsta rap and its cathartic effects on a nurse's psyche, as well as its sheer brilliance at capturing the fine art of The All American Put-Down. We both have our favorite de-stressing rhymes, but I vote for DMX's quintessential "Up In Here": "First of all, you ain't rapped long enough to be fuckin with me /and you you ain't strong enough/ So whatever it is you puffin on that got you think that you Superman/ Igot the Kryptonite?should I smack him with my dick and the mic?"

I love that song so much that I think, if I ever got a nursing union going somewhere, I'd personally write DMX and ask the rapsta if he wouldn't mind being one of our official spokespersons.

And one more random thought before I give myself high blood pressure by thinking about my job on my day off... another similarity to family violence: the honeymoon phase. Had a verbal tete-a-tete with some snotty prig with a stick clearly impaled up his or her arse yesterday? Well, today, said asshole will pretend it never happened, and smile and ask you how your day is going. Then later, more yelling and pointless arguing. (Why always the yelling? With the anger? And the noise?!)

It's like working with a bunch of Joan Crawfords in "Mommy Dearest."