The Tao of Apathy

by Thomas Cannon

  Tim shrugged. “It’s not like I misplaced a winning lottery ticket. This job pays minimum wage and I had to buy this uniform myself.” Then he looked at the bright red jeans Bigger had on. “Still health insurance was nice.”

  Chapter 9

  It was April in Lansing. Green new weeds sprouted among the aluminum cans and empty fast food wrappers left from the melted snow banks. All that was left of the winter, except for a chance of a late spring blizzard, were the oily tufts of snow in the armpits of the freeway ditches. The reorganization was in full swing and the day to day operation of Saint Jude’s had begun to tighten. Tighten like you had accidentally yanked your child’s underwear on. A warm, but rainy spring and retirees returning from the winter in Florida had brought the annual spring influx of patients which was against the new budget policy that budgeted and maintained staff at the most cost effective level of the average patient count.

  The new staffing levels made good fiscal sense. The reorganization company had taken the number of patients per year and divided by 365 to get the number of beds occupied. They then rounded down a few to account for HMO reducing the number of days patients stay to recover and developed a formula for the amount of staff needed. Once the board of trustees had those numbers in their hands, they immediately began to leave positions open and convert patient rooms into offices. However, spring was not average; it was a breeding ground for sickness and accidents and old people back from Florida that did not exist according to the new budget.

  And although the layoffs had stopped as the administration relished and languished in the planning of the second phase of the reorganization, the staff was still worried that their jobs would end tomorrow. At the same time, many were at the point of walking out. They were rush around without time to think busy with the overflow of patients. They were paid overtime and double-time while the Public Relations Department bought ads on radio stations asking sick people not to come to the hospital.

  Yes, the money-saving measures were effective lines on many of management’s resumes, but they were proving to be costly.

  Some of the many changes had been for the better and had made sense, which really pissed off the employees. The administrators of Saint Jude’s were fed up. After years of hearing whining that things needed changing, they had gone and changed everything and the employees were still not happy. Crapper, reading his remarks off a prepared speech at the director’s meeting had said, “Ah, umm… What is their, the employees, the s-staff, what is their problem, anyway? If they uhh… think they could do a better job, I would like to see them.”

  The staff’s problem was exactly that they could do a better job. They actually knew what was going on and where the inefficiencies were in the hospital. The directors deciding how each department should be changed was like a husband telling his wife how to give birth. The husband doesn’t know what is going on, and even if he did, she wouldn’t listen to him.

  Every director now ran his department as a team as mandated by “The Company.” The directors’ contribution to the teams were to make random cuts to staff and expenses and the staffs’ part was to figure out how to continue to keep getting people well. Nurses, LPN, techs, aides, and the volunteers had to work double shifts on overtime. They worked six, seven, eight days a week. Everyone was tired, frustrated, richer than they had ever been, and depressed.

  The directors did step in at this point and started to have pizza delivered on Fridays. But even after the pizza, the directors still had to give lectures on morale and explain why things had to be the way they were. Mr. Seuss, in that way that he had, summed it up best when he said, “We are a team, we have equal say. Just make sure you do it my way. So remember this before you get in a tiz. It was the team (not me) that made our department the way it is. The team is me, the team is you. You decided to make yourself work the whole week through."

  Supervisors in the departments, people of experience with expertise in what they did were replaced with pinheads. A new position called “Team Guider” was created for the pinheads. It was not a supervisor job, but completely different in that a team guider needed to have a college degree. Good supervisors were removed because being good was not a qualification and because, as everyone knows,everyone that graduated from college was an intelligent well-rounded human being.

  The supervisor of the Maintenance Department, Jim, was unjobbed eight years before retirement, but he could not complain because he was not fired. The qualifications for his job that he had held for twenty years had simply changed so that he was immediately turned down when forced to reapply for his position. He could even stay on at the hospital and continue to be jobbed as the head overnight custodian.

  Jim had mechanical expertise, but no college degree. However, the cashier from the gift shop had a degree in history and became the Team Guider of Continuity Rejuvenation Services, which had replaced the Maintenance Department. An eccentric comic one told a joke about how burglars broke into his house and replaced everything with exact replicas.

  This was that, but worse.

  Things still got done and the cashier was heralded as a success. The fact that some important things went undone; the fact that the cashier had outside people come in to fix things that Jim could have fixed; and the fact that the cashier had the maintenance guys fix things that should have been contracted out were only minor adjustments that were expected with change. But Jim had only created ethereal silence with properly repaired heating and cooling units and significant symphonies with electrical systems. He had only worked magic with a pair of pliers.

  The twenty-six year old cashier was friendly, courteous and always gave the correct change. He wore a tie, but he genuinely cared about the appearance of contentment of his staff. He did everything to get the men to like him and to share their thoughts.

  “I think I might have to kill that new jerk-off supervisor,” Craig, a maintenance man of ten years, said sharing his thoughts at lunch. Craig did not seem to know that his Team Guider was not a supervisor, but an ex-cashier from the gift shop making five thousand more a year than Jim had made. After all, he needed to be compensated for his years of study on the Civil War. He did not know how to rewire a fuse box, but he knew who invented electricity. The Team Guider’s desk was in Jim’s old office though, so, Craig called him a supervisor. Craig wasn’t smart enough to know the difference between a supervisor and a Team Guider.

  Chapter 10

  Joe drove home recklessly in sheets of rain. Next to him was The Pretty Housekeeper, Susan. They had been going out for almost a year and she sometimes spent an entire week at Joe’s. Joe had, of course, noticed her when she began working at Saint Jude’s, but she had garnered so much attention from the male employees that he didn’t want to be one of the pack of men that would leave their assigned work area to bump into her. A lot of maintenance got done on the wing that she worked and non-smoking men began to smoke so that they could meet her on her break. When her three-month probation was up, the men gave her a party with decorations, a cake, and gifts. These were the same men that let people that they worked with for decades retire without so much as a pat on the back.

  To Joe’s credit, he wanted no part of that. To his shame, he didn’t take part because he figured he didn’t have a chance. However, one day he was talking about NASCAR with Bigger in the Butt Hutt and he overheard Susan say to her co-worker and about eight men around her that she hated shopping. Joe’s heart began to race with love, but he continued on talking to Bigger like nothing was happening.

  Then Susan divided the guys around her, leaned over to him and said, “Dale Earnhardt was the dirtiest fucking driver ever.” From the moment on, he knew he was in wonderful trouble. She seemed to always be complaining about an elderly housekeeper that smelled of BO, but Joe was able to tune that out.

  Joe and Susan ran to his door. They stripped off their wet clothes and made love. Then they put on some comfortable clothes and ate a pizza. At seven o’ clock, Bigger showed up at Joe�
�s door, drunk. “I’ve gotts ta talk to you, buddy,” he said.

  Susan volunteered to go home and water her plants and see if her cat was still alive. Joe saw that Bigger was in bad shape and way gone. He grabbed a bottle of Bacardi off his kitchen table and tried to catch up.

  “You know you should be home with your wife and kids.”

  “I’m pissed off and pissed up and I don’t want to be around them like that. That’s why I come by you. Besides Jenny understands I’m having a rough time. She’s a castrating nag, but she understands.”

  Joe mixed some more rum in some Coke and stirred with his finger. Bigger was still working on the drink he had in his hand when he had arrived. “I don’t. You’re not upset that I wish you’d get fired, are you?”

  “Ah, Hell no,” Bigger said. “I have no idea why you would want that, but I figure you have a good reason. I am the ones with the big plans, but you’re the ones with the brains, Joe.”

  “I don’t know, Bigger. I think we’re both pretty stupid.”

  “See? You’re even right about that.” Bigger burped and then hiccupped. “You’re always right. That’s why I was hoping you could help me understand all the changes going on at work. I just don’t like change. It’s like when I was little.”

  Bigger stared into space for a moment. “My dad would be taking a shower or a dump and my mom would barge in on him with towels or to comb her hair. Daddy didn’t seem to mind, but I’d be thinking, ‘Ick. Icky. I’d hate for my wife to barge in on me the bathroom and see all my private parts.’ Now that I am older, do you know what? I hate when my wife barges in on me and sees my privates.”

  “What in the hell are you talking about, Bigger? What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

  “I want to know why things have to change or why I don’t like it. Either one.” Bigger spilled his drink on the couch with several deep hiccups. “Anything after childhood sucks. Maybe that’s my point, damn it. But I need your advice on if I should start wearing my uniform.” Bigger shuttered. “I even hate those words. Uniform. To me it means being the same. But should I start wearing all white, Joe? Come on, Joe. You know what I’s should do.”

  Joe shuttered, too. He was trying to get the picture of Bigger naked in the bathroom out of his head. “Bigger, the reason I want you to get fired is so that it forces you to do want you want with your life. Because I think you are never leaving Saint Jude’s unless you get fired. You’re too comfortable here as much as you hate it. As a failure, you don’t have to risk failing. But you do have a family to support. With times, the way they are, I think you should probably start wearing your uniform.”

  “Will this make me happy at work?”

  Joe shook his head. “It will make you feel worse and more bitter, but you need this job. That’s the bottom line. So get in white from head to toe, eat your dignity, and conform to some stupid rule that some asshole thought up. That’s what everyone else does. Let Seuss pretend you are a team player one hundred and ten percent.”

  They sat for a while drinking and wanting to go to bed, but not wanting to waste a buzz. Joe turned on ESPN and turned down the sound. He didn’t want the sound because he wanted to talk to his friend, but he turned the TV on to avoid the awkwardness of being alone in a room with another man. He really wanted to turn his stereo on, but thought that would be too gay.

  “Do you love me Joe?” Bigger asked. “Because I think you’re great. You are so in control. Your life has turned out the way you wanted it to, didn’t it?”

  “Wouldn’t I have to be a jackass to want my life to be this, Bigger?” He took a long drink. “But all in all, I got what I need, except-”

  “Except what?”

  “Hmm. I don’t think I should tell you, but I hate people that let you know they have a secret and then make you beg them for like five minutes, ‘Come on, tell me. Tell me.’ until they tell you. So, I’m just going to tell you.”

  “Come on, tell me. Tell me.”

  Joe concentrated on getting a cigarette out and lighting it for a few moments. “The one thing that really consumes me, that I feel the need to do, is …bang a nurse. I don’t think I’ll be truly happy until I do.”

  “My ears must be drunk. Shleep with a nurse? You hate nurses.”

  “I hate everyone.” Joe shrugged his shoulders.

  “Yeah, but you shay nurses are all insensitive bitches with big asshes. You shay the first class in nursing school must be bitch 101. You shay that all the time, Joe. And what about Susan? She’s really great. You’re going out with the Good-Looking-Housekeeper,” Bigger said drunkenly distraught.

  “Susan is the best person I’ve ever known. She has really gotten her life together after really screwing it up in high school. I couldn’t do what she does with holding down two jobs and going to cosmetology school. It’s not just the sex either. But God, Susan is beautiful. Those classic looks. Smooth white skin. Long blonde hair.”

  “Well, she’s got the boniest ass I’ve ever seen.”

  “Yeah,” Joe replied dreamily. “But I still feel I need to bag a nurse.”

  Bigger let his head drop back so that he was looking at the ceiling. “The room is spinning. Why?”

  “It’s not really spinning. You’re just drunk.”

  “No. Why do you need to put it to a nurse? Tell me quick, because in a little while I’m going to go puke.”

  “Pretty much for the same reason, I ignore Susan at work. I never go to lunch or out to the Butt Hutt when she might be there. I could never show her affection at work.”

  Bigger took a drink with his head still drooped back. “Well you guys practically do it in public when we go out drinking.”

  “That’s not work. If I were to kiss her at work, I would feel like two children kissing in front of adults. I can just imagine people saying, ‘Aren’t they cute. Two little laborers together like real people. Its so nice they can be together.”

  “So you want to fuck a nurse why?”

  Joe thought about it. To nail a nurse, he would have to be recognized as a real person and not a retard. Many people at Saint Jude’s believed that the kitchen staff were mentally retarded persons hired under a special government program. Most weren’t. “It would prove that even though I don’t have an education or a nice job, I don’t have to be looked down on. I know it’s stupid. But people like the nurses think that because we don’t have retirement funds and cash our checks at the tavern on Friday, that we are not worth knowing. But to be with one of them would prove that I am.”

  Bigger sat up. “Prove it to who? The only person that would see the connection is you.”

  “I’m the only person that needs to know it.” Joe laughed and finished his drink. “I think I’m caught up to you.”

  Chapter 11

  It was 0600 and the critical care unit (as most people still called the SOL) was quiet and dark. The machines that monitored the four patients made their necessary sounds. The steady rumble of air tumbling down the ventilation ducts was there too. The ceiling lights were off and the staff used florescent desk lamps to read the paper and drink coffee by.

  Without making a noise, as if to sneak out unnoticed, Mr. Annunzio passed away fourteen hours after his wife allowed the life support to be disconnected from him. She had come to terms with being without him and decided that it was better to be haunted by him than have her Gabby suffer.

  The night before, their children had come to say their good-byes and then sit in the waiting room, talking about their dad. Mrs. Annunzio had been with him through the night, stuffing her used Kleenexes in her sleeve and holding his hand. He did not move and when his heart stopped, she stroked his cheek.

  “See, lady, we were right.” The nurse came out of the room after getting the body ready for the morgue. “There are no ghosts.”

  “Oh, Gabby, my Gabby.”

  The nurse marked his chart. “Hey, you have to go now.”

  Mrs. Annunzio almost smiled at the young man’s rudeness be
cause she could tell it was not of anger, but from growing up talking to a video game and not to other kids. She nodded her head. With tears in her eyes, she left the room. She felt at peace with faith that Gabby had gone to a better place and had forgiven her. With a final whispered good-bye, she turned into the hallway to go to the chapel.

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.” She hit her knees and crossed herself in the hallway. “Gabby. Gabby, forgive me,” she pleaded to a white ghoul coming toward her. It had human features, but its face was a pale white and its hair coated its head like a snowdrift. Its dress, although looking of this earth, was all white, too.

  “Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” the spirit moaned as it grabbed its head. It grimaced and moaned again. “Uhhhhhh.”

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.” Mrs. Annunzio’s screams brought the staff from the CCU and three other units. Mrs. Annunzio pointed to them. “It was them, Gabriele. They made me do it.”

  “I ain’t Gabriele,” the apparition moaned. “I’m Bigger.”

  “Forgive me bigger than Gabriele. Please don’t torture me. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

  Two security guards grabbed the ghoul as he spoke. “I’m going to lose my job as it is lady. I am not going to torture anyone. And please stop yelling, I have a hangover the size of Rhode Island.”

  They got Mrs. Annunzio sedated and the staff figured out Bigger was the weird boy from the kitchen that usually work green pants and purple shoes, but now was in a fresh, white uniform. A nurse reeking of bacon and cigarettes looked at his pale face and freshly bleached hair. “You ghoul,” she said.

  Chapter 12

  Petty began his first directors’ meeting with roll call. And even though, he had never met any of the directors since their last meeting with Mr. Grumby, he did not call out their names, but looked at each one and said their name and their department. He got everyone right, which was intimidating which is why he did that which is why he was hired to replace Grumby. “Let me begin this meeting,” he began, “the way I plan to begin every director’s meeting. And that is to remind you that we must be in a continual process of reducing costs. Any waste, any expense must be sought out and eliminated.