On 8/11/2010 11:03, Pete C. wrote:
>
> The human psyche is particularly susceptible to "victim mentality" and
> we are seeing that more and more. It's all part of the Great Global Tidy
> Bowl Swirl (tm)...

Hey look, I have no sympathy for the Costco cow and the McNuggets nut,
but I am full to the brim with understanding for the flight attendant.
I've been a nurse for three decades, an occupation that is treated more
and more by the public and employers alike as a servant class rather
than educated professionals with specialized skills. We are treated like
waiters and waitresses every day we work by the people we work for and
the people we are there to take care of, valued as warm bodies that take
orders and not for our reasoning brains and adeptness with skills that
can save your life. Patients and their families yell at us, swear at us,
threaten to have us fired, hit us, spit at us, make ridiculous demands
of our ever-decreasing time and resources, insult and demean us every
time we show up for work. Verbal and physical abuses that used to be the
privilege of psych patients are now hurled at us by otherwise functional
and rational patients who are highly unrealistic and intolerant of not
getting what they want when they want it, and our employers, under the
new and improved "customer service" approach to health care delivery,
stoke and stroke and feed and encourage these shitty behaviors in a
schizophrenic *******ization of the-customer-is-always-right philosophy
to the detriment of workplace functionality. I understand what this guy
has been seeing and hearing for the last twenty years. In the last two
days, I've heard more people say that they wish they could grab a beer
and take a slide out of their crappy work environment AND chew the
stupid ****ing patients and their stupid ****ing families and stupid
****ing visitors out before they go too. It would seem that any idiot
would know better than to behave the way these people do, but the Victim
Mentality in conjunction with the Entitlement Mentality have hold of
them and make them insufferable at a time when they need to shut their
****ing traps, do what they're told, show more gratitude and at least
say "thank you" once or twice instead of a constant litany of "gimme,"
"you have to," "I pay the bill so I can have anything I want," "if you
don't, I'll _________ (fill in the blank with stupid threat)," "so the
sign says we can't smoke in the rooms. Who's going to stop me, a sign?",
etc., etc., etc. There are good patients, to be sure. But the patients
who fill their and our time with their tantrums, noncompliance, abuse,
petty complaints, following us into other patients' rooms to hog our
attention, calling us out of other patients' rooms to hog our attention,
calling us at the nurses station from the phones in their rooms or their
cell phones to hog our attention, having their families make endless
phone calls to us for information, playing staff against each other,
playing managers against each other and, yes, even playing patients
against each other can be a total waste of time and breath.