Ok, so this story may be kinda long - but it seems weird to me to have had a surprise shower at work. I am officially employed by Medical Records, but nearly 3 years ago one of the IR (Interventional Radiology) docs came to my bosses asking for someone from medical records to be able to go to IR and help out with documentation stuff on a few clinical trials he was starting to work on. He had a nurse already, but still needed a documentation professional to make sure the data was being submitted correctly and such. This is where I came in.
My bosses came to me and asked me to go and work in IR to help with the trials. I've loved every minute of it. I didn't get a promotion or a raise, I just did it for my own growth in my field. Medical Records was becoming redundant and monotonous anyway.
So, I moved to IR, and the folks in IR are all about doing procedures on patients, and the direct patient contact - which is all stuff I've never done. So, I come from a different world than they do. Slowly, I've learned - as they have too - as they are normally a very tight knit group who can be VERY hateful to others outside that group. They are very mean in general, so I've kept my distance - because I'm not used to mean people. We in Medical Records are very much customer service oriented, and are generally very nice to everyone. So, the IR switch was difficult since now I'm in an office with just me and the nurse on the clinical trials - and then the mean people...
So, skip to today...
Normally, when the nurse (Jaime) and I go to see the mean people of IR, I am behind Jaime. It is a rare occasion that I speak to them as a group when I'm alone. There's no reason for it really - except for intimidation - but I will talk to them one on one, as they tend to be much nicer that way.
Today, Jaime and I head out to lunch - she grabs my water and says we need to take it with us (which is weird cuz we normally grab food and bring it back to the office to eat and read msn.com) - She walks me into the break room of the mean people, and there are 5 of them standing there (the rest were in a procedure) surrounded by gifts and food. Patti (one of the nurses) says "surprise..."
I was totally shocked. I didn't know whether or not I should laugh or cry.
Everything they got, they bought from my registries - which is a FIRST! They all brought food in and apparentlly had been planning it for a few weeks. The only thing I could do was call them names, and thank them. My defense mechanisms popped up, and I said "You guys suck!" Yeah, way to appreciate it, right!?
I couldn't help it, I was on the verge of tears, and the only thing I could do was make some obscene comment to make the tears stop in their tracks. Now I will have to come up with some really wonderful thank you letter to all of them.
It is weird. It happened at lunch time, and I still am blown away by their generosity - especially given how mean and cold they can be. I'm even a little confused! One of the first things that went through my head as I walked into the room was "They like me? They really like me??"
