Pretend to care.

Once upon a time, there was a Dilbert computer game and the evil boss people would constantly chide you: "Pretend to care, PRETEND TO CARE."

Dilbert was funny until you lived it, and then it was humorous pain. Millions of people understand this same existential state. Sartre for Dummies. Doesn't matter what country you live in or language you speak. Absurdity is real and indomitable.

So PRETENDTOCARE was running through my head after a talk this morning with J, another NOC stepdown person. He was The New Guy until I arrived. For advanced practice school, they're having him attend Meetings. It's cruel of them, really. So he's going to QI meetings...QI means Quality I...Insects? I...I...nouns that begin with I.

(What does it mean if 'imbecile' and 'idiot' come to mind and oh, NOTHING ELSE?)

These QI people, however, are quite smart, regardless of what the ignominious (see? I can come up with adjectives with I) I nouns in their title. I faintly know two of them, and at least, they are smart. I'm gonna go with my gut and say other smart people are there, too. (My gut also tells me that at least one person at the table is somebody the rest of the people at the table want to throttle. It's a universal truth. You cannot come to a meeting without at least one village idiot.)

Improvement. I betcha it's 'improvement'. That took wayyyy too long. Sorry.

What's happening is that J is getting ensnared the way I feel like I am, too. Like a fly who touched a strand, and then another and another until I am a dry, hollow husk dangling in the breeze, discarded in a greyed and moldy cobweb.

Yeah, that really is preCISEly the image I'm living. It's corporate purgatory I fear.

J has the same problem as me. He cares. He, like me, may hate caring, but he cares. I do like going to work to do my job, leaving it there and coming home. This doesn't always happen. For anybody. But when I see something stupid, I kinda wanna fix it. MyHospital does some stupid things. And they're big stupid. It's not about my unit at all. When I hear things about how the big Meditech Rollout is er, NOT going, it irks me because it's gonna disrupt my ability to do things for my patients. When I know how rehab is kept attached to MyHospital like a gangrenous limb that nobody talks about, I kinda wanna say, "You wanna be a Magnet hospital with THAT putrefying thing dangling off 4east?" I go to these Town Hall Meetings with all the mucketymucks and they'll have FIVE new initiatives and directions for Porter. Who ARE you people?

They are MBAs.

And this is what they do.

Many wonder why they're ineffectual and the status quo is continually reconfirmed. They really do. Ask one, and many will have their insides chewed out of them wondering why their Visions don't get implemented. Many are genuinely baffled at why their efforts to improve x or y don't happen.

This is why I was a consultant. I really did read _Spiral Dynamics_. Cover to cover. (It's a sickness.)

And you know what? I just wanna be a nurse. I really love taking care of my people. I have a huge amount to learn still and I'm all elbows and scabbed kneecaps. I feel like a burden because I'm such a freshman in my new home. I'm really workin on it. I flub, and fatfinger, and I wish I were bulletproof.

And yet, some people want me to come to meetings. Somebody told J, "JustCallMeJo is just what we need at nurse practice council." For real. He told me that. He had Dead Serious Face. I was mortified. If that were true, we're doomed. Doooooooooooooom.



J's next. He is. They got him, too. He's gonna start coming to NPC, too. At least we can commiserate. Pretend to care PRETENDTOCARE.