Plan ahead

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I don't get the mentality (or, more precisely, lack thereof...) behind scheduling nurses at the hospital.

Per diems submit their availability on each day of the upcoming cycle, waay in advance, I might add. Then, the scheduler takes about three weeks (c'mon, really, three weeks?) to produce our schedule. The schedule that will dictate our lives and income for the next month.

Then, we begin our work cycle and show up as arranged. The problem comes when there are staffing holes in the schedule. Big ones. And the charge nurses come around soliciting volunteers to work extra days. Today, for example, my unit is six nurses short. Six! That is just plain poor planning.

So, I am not working today. I am relishing the rest, the ease, the chance to not be on my feet for nine hours straight. And, I am a little smug at saying 'no' to coming in on a day off that has been a day off for nearly a month. Plan ahead, scheduler. It's your job. Learn to do it.

As they say, lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.

Err- runs

Don't you hate it when you buy something and it's not the:

--right size

--right color

--right quality

--one you thought it was

--thing your husband said to get

--whatever

--?????

Then, you're stuck with the damn thing until you can return it.  That is, if you can get it back in the packaging.  Or find the receipt.  Or are going in that vicinity in the next two years.

Ideally, one ought to plan these returns in order to preserve time and gas.  Ha.  I never seem to quite get it right, either forgetting the receipt, spacing out my intentions, or someone will borrow the car, taking the thing(s) out of the back seat and placing them who-knows-where.  Or I do.  I then discover them months later, with faded receipt and now-unreturnable merchandise.

That's why I call them Err-runs.