One of my kids is allergic to peanuts, tree nuts, sesame seeds, and their oils — oh, and garden peas — but not other legumes.

One school wanted to keep their EpiPens locked in a secure cabinet. Which was locked in a secure walk-in cupboard. Which was accessed via a secure strongroom that was always kept locked. Which opened off the Head’s Study. Which was locked whenever they weren’t in the room.

When I — and other parents of children with EpiPens — went and asked the Head and the Bursar how much the school was worth, they wanted to know why.

Me: “So we know how much to sue you for when one of our kids dies because people can’t find the keys in time.”

Suddenly, every classroom was issued with a secure medications cabinet, which was accessed either by entering a code on the pin-pad or hitting the big, red medical emergency alarm button above the cabinet. (It was beyond the reach of little kids, very loud and scary, and designed to summon help QUICKLY. It couldn’t be switched off without the special key, which was only issued to the Head, the Bursar, and the Secretary.)

This story takes place a few years back when I was doing a clinical rotation in phlebotomy for my degree in Medical Laboratory Science. I was placed in the Emergency Department of a local hospital, practicing poking patients and drawing their blood. All the staff knew that my snow-white scrubs meant I was a student, but some patients took them to mean I was a physician.

One night, I happened to walk by an exam room where an altercation was taking place between a patient and a very patient Registered Nurse. Altercations were a fairly common occurrence in the ED, but I was still pretty green so it was hard not to stop and listen in.

Nurse: “I’ve been doing this for thirty years, Mr. [Patient]. I can assure you—”

Patient: “I don’t care how long you’ve been doing this. I want a doctor to place my IV!”

Nurse: “Mr. [Patient], if you hold still, I promise I’ll have it in in a flash. You’ll hardly feel a thing.”

Patient: “Are you deaf or just stupid? I want…”

At that point, the man caught sight of me loitering in the hallway.

Patient: “I want her to place my IV!”

Me: *Flabbergasted* “But I can’t thread IVs. I only know how to draw blood.”

Nurse: “Sir, she’s just a student.”

This affront seemed to put the patient into overdrive, and he began slamming his fist on the bed rail and screaming for a doctor. The nurse quietly took me aside and asked me to go fetch one of the physicians on duty. I ran to get the kindest one, as I was afraid of getting snapped at by the other doctors working that night.

[Doctor] patiently listened to my explanation, wordlessly grabbed an IV kit out of the cupboard, and followed me to the patient’s room. We could hear the patient still throwing his tantrum as we walked down the hall. As soon as [Doctor] stepped into the room in his white coat, the patient switched it off like a light and breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

Patient: *With a smug smile at his nurse* “Finally!”

Doctor: *With a big friendly smile* “Hello, Mr. [Patient]! I hear you want a doctor to place your IV. Well, I haven’t done this since medical school, so that’s, what, twenty-five years ago now? I might be a little rusty, but I’m happy to give it a shot! Nurse, will you please position the patient’s head? I’m going for the jugular.”

Suddenly, the patient decided he didn’t want a doctor to place his IV after all, and the nurse with thirty years of experience placing IVs would do just fine.

Related:
Why Nurses Should Rule The World, Part 19
Why Nurses Should Rule The World, Part 18
Why Nurses Should Rule The World, Part 17
Why Nurses Should Rule The World, Part 16
Why Nurses Should Rule The World, Part 15

I am working the breakfast service, and a lady of considerable wealth, dripping in diamonds and fur, orders from one of our servers.

Customer: “I want a three-minute — and precisely three-minute — soft-boiled egg. You will also peel the egg for me.”

The server brings the order to me.

Me: “No, I won’t be doing that. I know if I peel the egg it’ll burst it, or I’ll leave a tiny piece of eggshell on it or something. She will complain, and we will go through this runaround three times before [Manager] gets called in and just gives her a free meal. I’m not doing it.”

The poor server looks a bit scared; he doesn’t know how to say no to this customer.

Me: “Get [Manager] to do it for you.”

He does so, and the manager comes over to me.

Manager: “You have quite strong feelings about the egg, eh?”

Me: “I’ve been doing this for over twenty years, and I know her type. She just wants something to complain about.”

Manager: “She will complain about this.”

Me: “Let her. Ten bucks says she kicks up such a stink you need to ask her to leave. If she doesn’t, I will try to peel the egg for her.”

My manager tells her. She gets up, slams her chair back, and comes for me at the back — literally comes for me, arms in the air.

The manager gets in between us and ushers her out the door as she calls me everything under the sun. I give her a smile and a salute.

Manager: “How did you know?”

Me: “Twenty years, you can smell the customers who just live to make a scene. It’s like a sixth sense…”

Luckily, it didn’t happen too often, but the manager didn’t question my “sixth sense” again.

Customer: “Double cheeseburger. I want you to — and this is very important — I want you to burn everything.”

Me: “You want the patty cooked extra well done?”

Customer: “No, I literally want the meat, the bun, and every topping burnt to a crisp.”

We cooked the burger until it looked like a hockey puck, the onions looked like black tentacles, and the bun was as hard as a rock. We went a step above and beyond and threw the burger patty into the deep fryer for good measure.

We fully expected to have it sent back, but instead:

Customer: “That was the best burger I’ve ever had!”

People are weird, yo.

CONTENT WARNING: Car Accidents, Fatality Mentioned, Blood

My neighborhood went to war with some of our neighbors. They don’t live here, but they owned property on the road via a deceased relation. (May she rest in peace; she was a sweet lady.) The wife wanted to build a huge wedding barn for paid events of all sorts, mostly weddings, with a maximum capacity of around 300 people. They claimed they’d have a “no alcohol” rule, but we all know how that would go. There are always people who bring booze regardless of the rules. And it’s not like this place would have security personnel to search bags and make sure alcohol didn’t get brought in.

The location is on a part of the road with three possible routes to get to it. ALL of them are freakin’ dangerous if you don’t know the road. There are two deadly curves on my stretch, a one-car bridge on a dirt road with deadly curves on the long way ’round (the road’s a circle), and a gravel/dirt road with a single-car bridge at the bottom of a pair of steep hills. (A classmate died going off the bridge into the ravine when I was in high school. The road has a body count.)

This ain’t a place you want drunk or tired drivers cruising through. My mom had me make some big maps of the roads to show the county people (whatever group is in charge of permitting for building such projects) to illustrate just how dangerous our little roads are.

So, there was that dangerous road, the inevitability of alcohol being present at a party barn, the complete and utter lack of infrastructure (no county water, no sewers, and no public transit of any kind), and the fact this is prime hunting land and dogs are running all through the woods behind the property. (Who wants hounds baying in their wedding videos?) That, plus the fact that nearly the entire neighborhood showed up to hiss and protest the project…

Well, it was denied.

We celebrated. The would-be party barn planners posted on social media about “ignorant hillbillies” ruining their plans.

It was a very emotional subject. My parents still remember when I was tiny and they came home to find bloody handprints all over the lower half of our front door. It turned out that a guy had rolled his van on the dangerous curve. Luckily, he was spotted by a passing motorist and got help in time, but that was a scary homecoming. It stuck with us. And that guy wasn’t drunk, just speeding a little.