My co workers are current events illiterate.(Lame)

The BBQ Pit
#1

I am a nurse. My colleauges are also nurses. College level, at least education. Some are very street smart. Some are very good nurses. But by and large most of them… (I did say most, not all) they are ignorant, completely about world events, books, history, anything they didn’t find out from People Magazine Okay, most days Im ok with that. But I dont know, this week, I really wanted to comment on the death of Benazir Bhutto. One of my co workers wanted to watch the CBC Newsworld during lunch about some crime thing that happened in Alberta.

Benazir Bhutto had been assasinated.

Who?

You know, Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan.

Oh, is that woman his widow?

No, Benazir is a woman. Was a woman. Whatever.

But Pakistan and all those countries hate women. She’d never have gotten elected.

Um she comes from a political family…its a tradition… somewhat like Indira Gandhi in India

Who?

Ak I gave up there. Then my comment that this cannot be good for the whole Afghanistan, Iraq thing… Al Qeda… blankblank faces. I wish it was just a whoosh. I got 4 other nurses spouting 4 different kinds of ignorance. I gave up. Didnt matter… had a few coming back to argue with me hours later that a woman could not possibly have had a leadership role in Pakistan. Some were sure Pakistan was no where near the trouble spots, just in a nice place in Africa.

Oh yes, you’re right. Of course. Carry on.

(Note: I am not some grandly informed person on world events. I watch the news, somedays I even read the paper (but more on line these days,) I claim no specialized interest or saavy. But I read with some comprehension, I can find Pakistan on a map, and I remember some names of past world leaders. Compared to my colleauges, Im a fricken genius Sadly, this is just one example lately. No one I work with reads other than crime fiction or romance/chic lit things. Or diet books. But thats a whole 'nother rant.)
Ah this is probably too mild for the pit, moderators do as you see fit.

#2

Consider yourself lucky they don’t take an interest in current events. My co-minions only take an interest in the news if it involves death and conspiracy to commit same. Bush arranged for the A-Q attacks in 2001. Prince Philip arranged for Princess D to not wear a seatbelt while driving around Paris at top speed. The bad guys from The DaVinci Code got JP the first. I think Elvis is still alive, though…

#3

Ha ha, Annie, thats interesting! It might make for better conversation at work though. Im bored of the gossip about co workers that makes for conversation at work. Im bored of celebrities, playing text-twist, (im as bad as Lisa Simpson is at anagrams,) looking at sales flyers and discussing the best laundry soap, reading the obits…

I usually don’t try to talk about the news… just you know, an assassination, in a politically unstable region…with elections coming up? But no. Just no.

#4

RN checking in here and I concur with your diagnosis. Boy, they sure know who won on American Idol and who got voted off that stupid island, but name the governor of our state? Can’t do it. The prime minister of Pakistan? Where is Pakistan? :rolleyes:

I know a nurse (from the South) who cannot name, as in identify on an umarked map, all 50 states. I think she’s an anomaly, but gah…
I do know a few nurses who are up on current events–but politics etc is not something we talk about at the nurse’s station (and that’s not a bad thing). Oddly enough, at my hospital, they have no problem discussing religion and the divinity and supremacy of Christ. That gets old, quickly.

#5

A few years ago I said to a co-worker that I didnt really know who Brittany Spears was, just a famous girl-celebrity. She asked me how I could not know, since she was 60 and knew, and I was mid thirties, and didn’t. As a joke I said “Well I live in a cave, you know…”

Live in a cave? What do you mean, you live in a cave? Where? Is it in a hill? You make good money, why do you live in a cave?

:smack:

So, uh, how about this weather we’re having?

#6

I wrote a beautiful and scathing post, which was eaten by angry gods. I will merely repeat the datum that as a counselor on a psychiatric unit I was not allowed to read psychology books in the nurses’ station, which was my only “office” space, but the nurses were allowed to read celebrity magazines, something like the Weekly World News in Spanish, and word-find collections. Apparently reading psychology “looks unprofessional” (and one might ask, if so, to whom? I worked post-visiting hour shifts most of the time).

#7

Why is it so often those people are the ones so big on saying “just nuke 'em all and let that be the end of it”? And they vote!

#8

Too bad you gave up! Are you sure your co-workers are uninterested, and not merely uninformed? That voiced surprise about a woman president in Pakistan could have been an opening. (yeah, I get it that you’re a nurse, not a teacher :slight_smile: ) Personally, I always appreciate someone taking the time to explain something to me. In the same vein, I like to try to explain something complicated into beginners terms.

#9

I’m amazed you can earn a nursing degree by reading only People magazine. :stuck_out_tongue:

#10

Half of the “housing” in one of the villages near mine is caves :slight_smile: It was all caves except for the church until the 1960s, when the Ministry of Housing decided it was about time we stopped having folks living in caves. Most people move back to the cave in the summer - it’s naturally cool and a lot cheaper than a/c. Nothing wrong with living in a cave, if you ask those folks (at least if your next-cave neighbor’s musical tastes don’t clash too badly with yours, the doors aren’t too tight).
At my brother’s house, the only acceptable TV programs are:
jai-alai and westerns, which Bro’s bedridden FiL likes,
and kiddie programs, because as Bro had to argue, “if we’re going to use the dumb box as a baby sitter, at least it should be with age-somewhat-appropiate stuff.”
Since most of the guys he works with only pay attention to the sports section and he’s allergic to sports, he hears of big news through otherbro or myself. No time to read the paper.

#11

Heck, I can’t quite do that. I always mix up the order of the three or four states directly west of Florida, I can never remember which one Missouri is, I mess up Kansas and Nebraska, Illinois and Indiana, and Vermont and New Hampshire.

Well, I know where all of them are, but I might be one state off in some cases.

#12

Oh, I’d love to explain to people, but in between feeding our patients, the nurses worrying about their “smoke breaks” (what I love best is the pre-break smoke break that brings the other nurses who smoke, but arent going on break out off the floor with them… but thats a whole other rant…) and the "Cant we change it back to (game show, or country music television) I don’t bother.

Some people are interested in some things. Others are interested in quite different things. In general, most of my co workers have little to no knowledge about world events. Most of my co workers know I follow “all that stuff” and a few have asked me about political things. Some even know I was a history and literature major before I became a nurse. I have had some interesting conversations. But mostly, I just keep my mouth shut except to occasionally answer a crossword puzzle question…

#13

Yeah, I can’t either. I mess up all the big square states. Plus I constantly mislabel Iowa and Idaho. I’d be willing to bet a large percentage of even well-educated people can’t . I consider it on the order of knowing all the state capitals; impressive but not essential.

#14

Of my former coworkers, one knew football, sort of, and none of the other ones really knew much at all, as far as I could tell. Granted i was a cashier at a grocery store, not a hotbed of intellectualism, but any attempt to bring up anything resembling news met with blank or obviously puzzled looks.

Also chiming in, I mess up some of the states too. I think I’d get it by process of elimination eventually, but some states I’d have a devil of a time identifying out of thin air. nebraska, for example, for some reason I got it in my head that it was in a totally different part of the country…

#15

I work with nurses who can’t identify all six states on a map…

#16

I teach at a college. I mentioned that I used to live in Germany.
One of my students asked, “How far is Germany from Europe?”
Only about half the class laughed at the question.

#17

I really, really don’t want to be making fun of my co workers. Most of them are good, excellent even, hard working nurses. (as I dodge Og’s lightening bolt) They were smart enough to pass nursing school, and write exams. But for many of them, learning stopped that day. Its sad, really the anti-intellectual state of my co workers. Other places I have worked have not been like that.

I’m just fed up. Im not laughing in my sleeve, look how dumb they are. I just want to have someone to talk to about something more than personal lives or celebrity gossip. I spend 1/4 of all my time at work. (12 hour days, 7 days out of 14) It would be nice if world events, or anything else took up some of the conversation time. Instead its who’s got chicken on sale, and did anyone watch … (insert top rated show that I don’t watch ) last night, or something else just as inane.

I go on line at work, but not supposed to go to non nursing sites. I will on weekends read the SDMB-- its educational, and keeps me from mental atrophy. I think.

#18

I had a friend who moved to Alaska as part of a move by her husband who was in the Air Force. Their next move was to San Antonio, Texas. When she went to get a Texas driver’s licence the worker at the DMV told her she had to take the driving test, a battery of written tests, and so on. When my friend asked why, since she had a valid Alaskan license, the worker told her “we don’t take driver’s licensed from foreign countries.” Couldn’t be swayed from her position. My friend asked for her supervisor, who also seemd dubious but passed her on, probably just not to have to go through more hassle.

#19

Well, I’ll be honest here. I don’t think I’m a complete fucking idiot. I don’t watch American Idol, Survivor, read People or other celb rags. I try to keep up on news, current events, etc. I know where Pakistan is.

I never heard the name Benazir Bhutto until she was killed. I educated myself after the fact, read up on who she was and what she did, but before that, she did not blip my radar. So?

I used to make fun of a friend of mine that constantly turned the news off in favor of anything else because she found it “too depressing”. But don’t you want to KNOW what’s going on? Don’t you want to be informed? It was unimaginable! Now? I turn the news off most of the time because it’s too damned depressing. I get very little downtime from work and I hate spending it listening about how many more soldiers were killed, what world leader did awful things to their citizens, and who we’re bombing next. My local news out of Miami is a freaking horror a lot of days; carjackings, murders, rapes, child molesters. Sometimes you just need a fucking BREAK from it all.

#20

I work with smart and funny architects and designers (I’m the receptionist) and I was shocked that one of my buddies had never heard of Bhutto. She mentioned feeling sorry for “his widow”, then admitted she’d never heard of her.

I made reference one day to “Cannery Row” and a group of blank faces stared back at me. I mentioned Steinbeck - blank faces again.