Not inclined to call her a professional. I assume she’s educated in some way.
I know she’s not a RN or LPN or CNA.
But she works at the dialysis center I attend 3 times a week. There’s a huge turnover in these individuals. I suppose the pay is crap. I don’t know.
I’ve rarely had the same person for a whole week. The old timers are around. They’re usually doing something else. Not sure what. Since there’s like one service this place provides. Well.
Today new lady. These people are in your personal space for a good amount of time. I’m always masked up. Ivy is always with me. She’s masked. There’s a sign out front: Must be masked to enter. Clear, concise, understood.
The first thing out of this lady’s mouth was “You don’t need to be masked in here”
Huh?
Ivy told her, yeah we kinda do. The lady got snippy. Ivy told her mind her business. We were staying masked.
The lady said, rudely, “It’s not necessary”
Ivy said, you are misinformed. It might be you need to ask your supervisor about that.
The lady says we’ve had no COVID reported in staff, patients or family.
Ivy tells her no one has asked us about COVID in months.
I’m in the dialysis chair, hoping I don’t die today thinking these two are fixin’ to fight. As I’m hooked up by now it’s not like I can go get help.
In my chicken shit heart I decide to pretend I’m asleep. Ivy is never fooled by my hyjinx. But she let it ride.
We reported her in writing.
They gonna kill me for sure Wednesday. I just know it.
Good on you and Ivy for helping to make the world a better place. And good thing you never bothered to ask her who she thinks really won in 2020! You should save that one for when she’s fired and her ass is hitting the door on the way out.
Dear Beck, you are a treasure, and the constant dialysis must be such an ordeal. My heart goes out to you.
It irritates me when people think masking is just about covid. Where I work even before covid we’d get people masked. I don’t ask but some volunteered things like “getting chemo” or “immune disorder”. There are folks who just don’t want to get anything no matter how minor, and folks for whom stuff I’d never notice might be serious danger for them.
Heck, I’m supposed to be healthy and all, but during a local covid outbreak with some sprinkles of flu on top all of us at work started masking up again without need for official decree.
OTOH, there are lots of leftover “masks required” signs hanging in places where the management and staff no longer consider that to be the case, but nobody wants to remove the sign because that’s extra work or will tear up the paint or whatever. Same thing with 6’ distance markers on the floors or signs to that effect.
So these useless signs are scattered here, there, and everywhere indoors all around the world and nobody walking in has any clue whether the signs are (still) meaningful or not. If I was King every sign would be either fully enforced or fully removed today as the case may be.
Broadly IMO there are three classes of people wearing masks
People who do so willingly and happily for their own sake or the sake of others.
People who’d rather not, but will if asked and it’s no big deal.
People who will do it only when demanded of them and be pissed off or physically uncomfortable every second they’re masked.
In a world where group 2 is the large majority, and there’s also a lot more group 3 than group 1, it makes a certain sense for customer service workers, medical or otherwise, to try to defuse group 3 problems, and make group 2 people more welcome. If the environment is one where masks really truly are not required by signs, by management, or by customary practice.
There is a fraction of the US populace that “woke up” due to COVID and now believe masks are a good idea for everyone in many settings, and particularly in health care. There is a far larger fraction who think masks probably were beneficial in the darkest days of COVID but are a silly affectation in 2023.
The OP’s med tech getting pissy is crap customer service.
But she may well have been 100% right that a) masks are not required by their policy, and b) if you don’t want to wear one, you don’t have to for their sake. That she lacked the skill to deliver that message and only that message, and you two lacked the skill to understand that message is a shame.
Assuming that was the message she was trying to deliver.
I recently saw my nephrologist at a local kidney center. She maintains an office there because many of her patients go there regularly. I didn’t bring a mask but there was a big sign on the door that said “DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT A MASK”. There is no receptionist there, but there was a woman waiting in the lobby, not wearing a mask. She thought I didn’t know how to open the automatic door, and got up to do it for me, not having seen the sign herself(?). She was not wearing a mask. Neither were a couple of personnel who passed through the lobby I pointed out the sign and she said she didn’t see anyone wearing a mask. Then my doctor came out, she was seeing the woman who opened the door for me first and not wearing a mask either. As mentioned above, there are a lot of leftover signs. The state isn’t requiring masking anymore either. This was mid November. With a COVID variant surging it probably is a good idea if they returned to the mask policy.
@Beckdawrek, I know you are the nicest person on earth, or at least in the top ten on the Dope, but other people with kidney disease have a tendency to be cranky as do those suffering from other diseases, unrewarding jobs, spouses who did or did not change as expected, etc. Enforcing mask a requirement again will not be easily accepted again around here, and trying to overcome local attitudes just brings up that adage about teaching a pig to sing.
I think they’re counting on self reporting.
I’ve personally tested at this place many times.
Always negative.
We’ve had COVID for the first time in my family over Christmas. No one asked about it for any official reason. I don’t think the woman had any idea of any of it.
I don’t mask or distance because of a sign. I do it for self preservation. It’s how I am. I have reasons.
I’m not cranky. I’m a pleasant patient (as much as possible). Rarely say a word. That’s why I have my mouthpiece Ivy.
The woman was snippy, rude and had no clue what she was on about.
You know I’m agreeing with you, right? I resent (on your behalf) her implication that there is no Covid here, no possibility of getting Covid, because we are Covid-report-free. Well, heck, if my sex partners don’t report their syphillis to me, I’m guaranteed not to get it, right? /s
Oh yes, I understood you. It’s silly of people to not realize it’s on the rise. It’s probably not as bad as an infection as it was.
But I’m careful for my own sake.
Got a call from the director of the center for more information.
I asked her what the policy was on masking. The word is they require it. So many folks on dialysis are immuno-comprimised and they don’t take chances with that.
She didn’t tell me but I bet the tech was let go.
I kinda feel bad about it.
I still mask in public unless I’m eating. I was on an elevator in a medical building recently, and another passenger asked why I was masked. I said something about feeling more comfortable that way. He starts to blather about how masks don’t help, Covid’s no big deal–his daughter got it and was over it in 48 hours, so why should anyone worry?, etc.
Next time I’m going to say, “It’s a fashion choice.”
I’m group 2. My wife, alas, is group 3 – she could never wear Hallowe’en masks when she was a kid, and she once tore an oxygen mask off because she felt like she was suffocating.
I’m group 2. I did my duty uncomplainingly, but don’t see the point in normal circumstances totay. If im I’ll in public sure. But I dont do that.
As to group 3 it probably depends on where one lives, but I’d bet the “I hate humanity” brigade is far more numerous than the “I can’t for anxiety” brigade.
