"The Reward"

<font color="blue">True Story- <font color="red"> </font> I worked with some real characters in the past. One of the ENT surgeons was a particular prankster (back when you could do these things without fear of being arrested or something). His neighbor, a general/vascular surgeon had a cute little Heinz 57 family dog. Well, the ENT surgeon went by the house and picked up the dog. (Prior to leash laws) He took the dog downtown and stopped a taxi driver. He told the taxi driver that the dog belonged to Dr. so-in-so and that there was a reward for the return and asked if the guy wanted to return the dog and get the reward. Well, Mrs.Dr. answered the door to find this stranger holding their dog (who was not missing). It took her a minute but she figured out the prank and paid the man some $. </font> <font color="green"> The same ENT Dr. watched this surgeon's house one Christmas while the family was out of town. When they returned, there was a Christmas tree in every room in their house! </font> <font color="purple">Those were the good ol' days and these guys were sooo much fun. What has happened? </font>

I don't know about regarding to those things, but part of the fact of things is that people are sueing fast food restaurants for making them fat. I mean, hello. Cigarette packages CLEARLY state, or may as well state, "if you smoke and continue to do so, IT WILL KILL YOU", and yet people are still sueing them for causing cancer. Yeah, they sold it to you, but they also used half the dang package to tell you how bad it is for you. Who's at fault there?

If someone drowns in your pool after climbing your ten foot brick wall to get in there, they can sue you! You should have put a sign up on that ten foot wall. BUT THEN, if you had a sign up, then you KNEW that the pool was a danger! So you are even more at fault. Same with beware of dog signs. No sign, shoulda warned me. Sign, knew you had a vicious dog, even put up a sign telling about it, didn't keep the dog from biting me when I came into your yard to steal your something or other.

People are winning lawsuits for ridiculous amounts of money by suing for things that are even more ridiculous than the money they'll get from it.

The real problem....lawyers

Do very little work, take 40% of that money. They promote it and do all they can to make it happen. Why wouldn't they, they're making 40% plus about a gillion dollars an hour.

I mean, anything remotely requiring a lawyer, no matter how simple, and how little the lawyer has to do, is going to cost an enormous amount of money. And don't think that your court date for whatever it is won't get delayed at least 10 or 15 times, all the while the lawyer went there to hear that it was delayed, costing the client even more money.

No, I haven't been to court lately or anything like that, I just know how it works....

Sorry for the rant and hijacking the thread, you just hit on one of my nerves. What I mean to say, only in a few less words is:

I agree.

I used to work as an aide at this little 12 bed AFC for the developmentally disabled, through a CMH contract company. Our slogan was "Community Mental Health: Mental is our middle name!" or "Putting the FUN back in dysFUNction". Mind you, these things were only said in-house. But pranks were pretty run-of-the-mill stuff. One April fools day we sent a "urine specimen" to the lab. We got a call from the manager personally asking us what the hell was going on. He didn't know what was wrong with this person, other than their glucose was off the chart, and they would need another sample. -We'd sent him a sample of Mountain Dew! It only gets worse from there...
Next April fool's day we got a consenting patient to lie on the floor next to his bed and scream while one of the aides lay under the bed next to him to make sure he was ok. The nurse walked in and started flipping out, and this pt. started laughing so hard we actually got a little worried about him, but he was fine. Ahhh... good times...

Some of the nurses on my unit played a particularly funny joke on a poor unsuspecting but easily frazzled intern. They had a snipped end of a NG tube, and placed it so that it looked like it was exiting from the comatose patient's rearend, then proceeded to let the intern try to drop an NG for the first time. You should have seen the look on his face when the nurse said--- look at this, it went all the way through!. Hee hee hee. He thought he had a magical NG tube for a little while there!

Oh that is priceless!! I love it!! Thanks for a good laugh...it's been a rough day!

Oh you guys crack me up... I have a few good ones...

1. We took resusi-annie and hooked her up to the monitor.. hooked up a ventilator...and when the open heart surgeon ran in to help the nurse calling "call a code" it took him like 2-3 minutes to realize what was happening...really good.

2. Sent our ER doc into see a patient who was dead.. he didn't realize it for about 10 minutes...it was 2 am and he was dead asleep (ha!) the look on his face was priceless

3. Set up a pretend half in the ER bathroom...with a wheel chair and clothes and a dictation tape with moans and groans..dayshift nurses about had a cow when they went to help the patient and her head (a cast bucket with a wig) fell off into the toilet...
4. took a picture of the MD who was chief of staff.. made a copy of his "portrait" hanging in the hall...made a bullseye around his head..hug it in the br with syringes as darts...hid the evidence in someone else's locker.. Oh the joys of nightshift!! I do miss those days sometimes..

Laura

Note To Self-- :stay on Laura's good side: