kidneyfailure the hospitals have a very clear Zero Tolerance Policy about abuse on healthcare staff, both physical and verbal. This is because it is frighteningly common.
This was a situation that was escalating rapidly towards physical abuse (after being told there was no other doctor things deteriorated somewhat) and the “verbal abuse” line had already be crossed well before that. The sister in charge decided having him remain in the department was a risk to staff and he was ejected.
If you will die or your life is at risk in the immediate future if I do not treat you…you get treated no matter what.
If (as in this case) you have some minor scrapes and a bloody nose after a bar-fight and you are within a 15 minute taxi ride of 3 other Emergency departments (as was the case here) I (and the other staff) do not have to put up with your crap.
He was by no means the only verbally abusive drunk we dealt with- he was, however, one of the few who refused to zip it and behave when warned that he was looking at being refused treatment and the one I remember most because it was specifically racist language that he was using towards me.
My wife’s grandmother came over from Ireland in the 1940s with her family.
They still have irish accents, and keep the customs of the “old country” going.
At our wedding I overheard their clan complaining about the number of Polish immigrants in Wales with the usual “coming over her, taking our jobs” routine. I guess the irony didn’t register.
This guy was talking like it was only Africans who cycle at night with the wrong clothes, not enough reflectors, if ya get me. I think he also mentioned the Chinese too. I understand what you are saying but this guy was talking out of his nether regions.
Some people really do try . . . it was the late seventies, 'round this time of year. I was serving nuts in their shells - you know: hazelnuts, pecans, almonds, etc.
Back then Brazil nuts had a common nickname: “n****r toes”. One of my guests asked me to pass them, by that name. I admonished him, pointing out those words were highly offensive and he really shouldn’t use that language.
I suppose he learned something, as he then asked me to pass him the “Negroes toes”. sigh
My employers are rich, bigoted, homophobic jerks (which is beside the point, I suppose!) Anyway, I am their one-year-old son’s nanny. They had me bring him over to their office holiday party, where, as it turns out, I was persona non grata (again, beside the point!) The Mrs. walked Jr. up to a table of warehouse workers and said, “You need to say thank you to these people. They work hard so that you can have a good life and get everything you want!” I was mortified!
I never even learned the proper name for Brazil nuts until I was probably 10, or 11 years old. Having the redneck family that I do, the ‘n’ word or ‘darkies’ was used freely, and my eldest sister used to joke about seeing her first black person and being amazed at his skin color to the point she rubbed her hand over his arm to see if the color would come off. :rolleyes:
I found myself in a situation sort of like the OPs a few years back. I was working at a warehouse and was pretty friendly with most of the guys on the crew. In fact, one of the guys was my best friend. Now he had a friend … a guy he knew since high-school … who I became, not a friend, but at least an aquaintance of – always spoke friendly enough to each other, joked around easy enough, had a drink with a time or two.
And then one day, in the midst of a conversation, he said something along the lines of: “I’m not looking forward to going back to North Carolina for the holidays … there’s too many of ‘them’ around.”
“‘Them?’ Who’s ‘them?’”
“Niggers.”
“WTF” didn’t even come close to the gobsmackedness.
I started with the, “I’m shocked to hear that coming from someone with your education (he was a college graduate)” and he gave the, “oh you don’t know what it’s like because there aren’t that many black people around here (Maine).”
“Dude, I was born in Buffalo. They bussed black kids into my school when I was little. Black people aren’t like Big Foot. They aren’t that elusive.”
I didn’t really speak to him too much after that one.
The (very similar) grandmother of a friend was watching TV with her, and there were some black people on screen. “They can put a man on the Moon, you’d think they could find a way to turn those people white.”
On a lighter note, but a similar vein … when I was married and lived in San Francisco, I worked in a computer room with this very pleasant Vietnamese lady, and we had much time to converse. I would go on and on about my wife this and my wife that, but it never dawned on me for the first few days or weeks or whatever it was that I’d never said her name. Then one day I was saying something about Alice and she stopped me and said, “Who’s Alice?”
“My wife.”
“Your wife is named Alice?”
“Yes.”
“Is your wife a woman?”
“Um … yes.”
“I thought you were gay.”
“Why did you think I was gay?”
“You live in the Castro; everybody who lives in the Castro is gay.”
Wa back in the late 80’s, I was getting ready to leave for Seoul as my first assignement in the air Force. My folks had a going away bbq the day beforeI left, and while I was drinking an ice cold Ranieer Beer, my uncle Doug came up to me, put his arm around my shoulder and in a very low conspiritorial voice let me know that…“you need to look out for them Ornamentals. They’d just as soon steal from you as say hello.”
Needless to say, three years in Korea, two in japan, and I’m still looking out for the Ornamentals. Haven’t found any yet.
Of course, there’s the time I made one of those comments. See, in some of my younger days I had an alternative hairstyle for that time, and so when I made comments about “Damn dirty hippies” ruining things, it was clear that I was joking. Therefore I got in the habit of making the comments in a serious vituperative tone in order to make the joke funnier. Then in the course of events I got a straight haircut, but unfortunately forgot to make a point of getting rid of that joking habit, until a few weeks later when I was leaving somewhere with a friend and made another ‘damn dirty hippies’ comment.
The shocked look on the face of the woman going the other way reminded me to stop with that habit. Of course, it was too late to turn around and tell her I was joking, so she’s probably posting on a message board somewhere about the horrible cursing-out-the-hippies person she went past one day.
My dad died about a year ago. His memorial service was held about 6 months later, and at the luncheon afterward, my mother was sitting with some of the ladies she used to work with, chatting away as ladies will do. My asshole uncle came up to them and started griping about some “nigger” who was suing him. (He’s a landlord, so because he’s also an asshole he gets sued all the time.)
Appropriate time and place? Not so much. The ladies’ jaws all just dropped.
