The Lunch Room

In the last post, I alluded to the discussions that occur in the conference room at lunch time. Our unit is small and the conference room doubles as a lunch room. The designated lunch room is too small and too cold for most to tolerate. The staff of a psychiatric unit is more constant than med-surg because it requires a different kind of knowledge to work with this patient group, so the staff get to know each other pretty well. Lunch conversations can get rather, well, interesting to say the least. Among recent topics covered:

Who amongst us was the biggest nerd in high school.

Who had the most dysfunctional family while growing up and what they are like now.

Naughty things we did while in high school/college that we were not too proud of. Children of dysfunctional homes do tend to have rather rebellious pasts and those who fit into this category were not different.

Naughty things we did that we were proud of.

Amazing feats of nature that one can accomplish if one is intoxicated enough. In a related note, amazing feats of shear stupidity that can be accomplished in intoxicated enough. We put that park bench back, by the way.

Naughty things that we would probably be doing now if we did not have a reputation on the line to maintain.

What our naughty things were: sex, partying, skipping school or stealing park benches.

Reminiscing about past road trips to various college football bowl games and the debauchery that occurred during said road trips.

Who is most deserving of a swirly: Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, the CEO of BP or Dick Cheney.

Who is most deserving of a total ass whooping: Ben Rothlissberger, Chris Brown, Rush Limbaugh, or Paris Hilton.

What is more boring: CSpan II or Mitch McConnell on one of his "tirades"?

That Fox News is nothing more than a bastion of right wing propaganda headed by Rupert Murdoch and that the staff members who come in with all the delusional sounding horror stories about what is going to happen in health care need to stop watching that station.

New and more creative ways that our patients have found to abuse prescribed medications.

The most hysterical thing a patient has said to us in the past 24 hours.

The most hysterical thing our children have said to us in the past 24 hours.

How we responded when an angry patient called us a tramp/asshole/douche/MF'er, etc.

How we would have liked to respond.

Jokes about who present in the room is most likely to have a pair of leather pants with the butt cheeks cut out, handcuffs and a cat o'nine tails.

Speculation on who owns the two Ferraris that park in the doctor's lot and how I can coerce said individual to letting me drive one of them.

Asking about just exactly did BP intend to do about all those walruses in the Gulf of Mexico?

How disgusting some of our patients tattoos were.

If anyone staff had a tattoo. If so, where it is and what it is. Most of the time, the tattoo NEED NOT be revealed, please. Usually there is the usual discussion about how that dragon on one's butt at 30 is going to be a walrus on the back of one's knee at 80 and then the owner is going to look like a real douchbag. Of course, if that person were to go swimming in the Gulf of Mexico, he could rest assured that BP would protect him.

The conventional wisdom states that one should never discuss religion or politics in a public venue. Both of those topics do come up in the conference room setting and seem to usually get discussed peacefully, although beyond the above mentioned discussion about swirlys and Fox News, the level of discussion tends to be superficial. There are a few topics that are never discussed under any circumstances. To bring these up would most certainly destabilize the fabric of the universe and cause most certain disaster. They are:

Whether or not anyone actually does own pants with the butt cheeks cut out, or related type items.

Personal opinions on the nurses union by anyone who is not a nurse.

Specifics about one's salary.

If one owns any stock in BP.