It WAS callous, but how nasty was she about it? Maybe she didn’t mean it to sound that way. Or maybe she just didn’t care about the guy.
I’m glad to say I haven’t witnessed any behavior like this. But I can’t say I’m surprised it happens. I will admit that if this happened when I had a connecting flight, I WOULD worry about missing my connection. But no way in hell would I do any more than ask if we were still on time, and even then I’d ask that very very carefully. (This is assuming I’m not busy in case nobody else on the plane knew CPR and somebody needed it; in that case, I’d be too busy to worry about being late!)
One of my former college professors nearly died of a blood clot problem after giving birth to her child. I called several days into it to ask after her and to see if there was anything I could do. Her husband told me that one student’s reaction had been to say “I hope she doesn’t die, she’s supposed to write me a recommendation letter this month!”
The callousness of some people is simply jaw-dropping.
I was attending the opera, sitting near the front of the balcony. The show was late starting, and a few minutes after the scheduled starting time I saw paramedics making their way through the crowd down below to reach a fellow still in his seat in the middle of the row.
Most of the people in the balcony had no idea what was going on because they couldn’t see the lower seats. While the paramedics were doing their thing, the crowd behind me on the balcony started clapping in unison to get the show started. The people in front shushed them and they went quiet.
I was pleased that nobody who saw the paramedics complained (loudly enough for me to hear) and that those who did complain recognized that something was going on when they were shushed. Apart from the brief clapping, everyone sat quietly and patiently waited for the show to start. Moral: not all crowds are as callous as all that.
Mind you, there was that case of the woman who stopped rush-hour traffic as a potential bridge-jumper (location forgotten). Apparently some of the inconvenienced drivers were egging her on to get her out of the way of the bridge traffic. Nasty.
(After the paramedics took their patient away, a voice on the PA told us the show was late due to a medical emergency, and the show started. I never did find out what the problem was; I hope the guy was alright.)
maybe i’m alone, but i don’t find that rude. If she were saying ‘its either his needs or my needs’ as Zette’s scenario showed someone as saying (which i did find very offensive), then it would be offensive. But i didn’t see her ask anyone to stop helping, just to find a way that both her needs & the dying guy’s needs could be met. if she asked you to leave him thereto die so she could catch her flight that would be rude. But she just asked if there was a way for her to make her flight.
This is something I always strive to explain to those who would attend for the first time. You WILL behave yourself at the opera. There is no alternative.
One of mu co-workers at the grocery store dropped dead of a heart attack. We all knew what happened, but had to keep on working. We were all sad, several of the cashiers were bawling, and a few especially upset ones were allowed to leave and go home. A customer called in to complain that the cashiers seemed “unfriendly and upset” and that she “didn’t enjoy her shopping experience”. When the situation was explained to her, she just said, “Oh. Well, that’s really no excuse for ruining my trip.”
With some people, it’s not that big of a leap between thinking something and speaking it. Could this have been a thought that inadvertently slipped out of her mouth in the form of words? I can’t tell from the OP where the woman’s actions fell on the scale from off-hand remark to full-fledged tirade.
It’s human nature to react to situations with self-centered “how will this affect me?” kinds of thoughts. Fortunately, many of us grow beyond this stage.
Or maybe some of us have seen so much death, distress, and injury on TV and movies that we’ve become conditioned to it, used to it, and are callous toward it when it happens in real life?
MissBungle , we carry enhanced medical kits on the aircraft that have a lot of primary care-type stuff (including IVs, bandages, several types of drugs including anti-histamines, blood pressure cuffs,etc.) We also carry the AEDs (Automatic External Defibrillators) in case of cardiac arrest. The flight attendants are trained in the use of the AEDs but to administer drugs or IVs you need a doctor (either on board, like we had) or we can go to our physician on call through a phone patch and get his expertise.
Thudlow Boink yes, I think this may be what happened. That’s why I used the word “callous” in the OP. I KNOW that you are thinking about your connection, just like I am thinking (on some level) about getting home. But use your self-control, remember that we live in a SOCIETY, and right now someone else needs help a lot more than you do.
That would have bee right here in Seattle. Round spring/early summer of 2001 if memory serves. Basically, the woman was on a bridge during rush hour and they had to shut down I-5 in both directions for several hours in order to deal with the situation. This was when I realized that the people of Seattle are polite (usually), not nice.
Now, I want to be a bit careful about how I say this because, for the most part, I am not a me first kind of a guy. That said, I will confess that I am a bit ambivalent here.
It seems to me, using the bridge lady as an example, that I can understand after a few hours of this how people would basically get fed up and want her to decide what she was going to do. Horrible, I know, and I would never egg someone on. But I do understand. She did wind up jumping by the way.
It seems to me that we as a society have our priorities way out of whack. Take the guy on the plane. Now I do not know his story, and I am not a doctor, but it would surprise me if he did not know that traveling was probably not such a hot idea. I think the lady worried about her connections may not have been the only me first person here.
And I guess that I am saying that it would be nice if we could all just slow down. Lady contemplating suicide during rush hour? Shit, that brought the city to a halt anyway, why could this have not been hundreds of people yelling out things that are worth living for? And hell, so you miss work, most of us out here have cell phones implanted in our skulls anyway, call in and tell them something more important came up.
I was at a baseball game once - my one and only major league game. A woman a few rows in fornt of us gets beaned by a foul ball. She really got hit hard, right in the head, and the paramedics were called. The game continued, and this woman’s husband just kept to his seat, craning his neck to see the game over the backs of the EMTs. You could see the paramedics talking and gesturing to the man about the woman’s condition, but he made no move. Finally they took her away and he reached down and got her purse and put it on the gurney with her. The EMTs came back once but he didn’t leave. He stayed for the rest of the game, until the bottom of the ninth when it was clear the Twins were going to lose. Finally he got up and to see about his wife (presumably).
I work in customer service over the telephone, and one day the fire alarm went off. (It was loud, and definitely audible over the phone.)
There were a number of us who had customers yell at us and demand we help them even after being told the fire alarm was going off and the entire building was being evacuated. A woman I was speaking to (the call came in before I had a chance to log off) had a hissy fit because she had to take a shower! She didn’t have time for this disruption! A few coworkers had customers demand they stay put.
There was no way they didn’t hear the alarm, and if by chance they didn’t, there’s no way they couldn’t hear the panic in our voices. (I was so scared my voice was shaking and I was practically whining at the hissy-fit woman about needing to let her go.) Those wonderful people would rather see someone die in a burning building rather than wait ten minutes for a CSR (from another location) to call them back.
I don’t understand that mentality. I just don’t understand it at all.
I see a lot of “me, me, me” behavior because I work in the ER. Now while I’m sure that everyone feels like the sickest patient in the building, it’s the job of the triage nurse (that’s me, most days) to decide who gets treatment first. I wish I had a nickel for everytime I was interrupted from triaging a 90 year old with respiratory distress because a 20 year old with a cold was demanding to know how much longer she would have to wait.
True story. I was working in the “Critical” area one day when a patient went bad on us – big heart attack. He stopped breathing, lost a pulse, everything. The other patients in the room were stable, so for about forty-five minutes several of the nurses and a couple of doctors worked to stabilize this man. We intubated him, did chest compressions, gave meds, and were generally very loud and noisy and keyed up in our efforts to save the man’s life. The beds in that room are only separated by curtains, so every patient in there knew that Something Bad was happening. The episode concluded with us rushing him to the cardiac cath lab while I rode the stretcher, doing chest compressions the whole time. So anybody who didn’t hear us probably saw us, y’know? We didn’t have the luxury of being discreet. When I got back to the ER and began making rounds on my other patients, the first thing one old lady said to me was “I’ve been waiting for a blanket for over an hour! This place has the worst service I’ve ever seen!” I just sighed and got her the blanket.
[hijack] Has anyone ever seen one of these in action? They are so cool! They talk and everything! They are also much smaller than I would have imagined. I always pictured a suitcase, when in reality, it’s not much larger than a PDA. I want one! [/hijack]
Pilot141, have you ever had to divert to a different airport? I was on a flight that diverted due to a man with chest pains, and I didn’t hear a peep from a single person on the plane. Is that an exception or the norm? Does something like that usually get a callous comment?
NurseCarmen , yes about two months ago we were on our way to San Diego when a man started having chest pains. We diverted into Las Vegas and got him off the airplane and into the hospital. After refueling and departing we arrived in San Diego about 45 minutes late. I heard nothing but good things from the people on board - most of them at one point thought “What if that was me who was sick?” and were glad to see us do whatever it took to get him to a hospital as fast as possible.
I think that the lady who made the comment last week is the exception, not the norm.