I didn’t want to walk to the dark end of the hospital’s hallway.
“You have to cover that exit.” My boss, Diana, the director of education for the hospital, pointed with her acrylic-tipped finger. I looked from where we stood in a bright corridor, and counted the hallway doors – sixteen; eight on either side. The furthest two doors lay in near-complete darkness. “You may not be able to hear the all-clear over the system down there, so I’ll come and let you know. Just stay down there. During last year’s drill, Anne made it to the parking lot with the toy-baby in a duffel bag without anyone saying a word to her and…” Diana turned on her high heel and click-clacked toward her self-assigned post near the sunny front entrance to our building. She finished her sentence without turning around, “We’re not letting that happen again.”
I blew air out my lips. I would not intercept Anne anywhere near this hallway even if she, as the “abductor” in our annual hospital-wide abduction drill, thought it may be unguarded. The drill tested all hospital staff on our responsiveness to the abductor-code when we heard it announced overhead. Each department had assigned posts to secure, and if we saw Anne after the code was announced and before the all-clear, we were to ask her what she was carrying or what she was doing in the hospital. That counted as an “arrest,” and ended the drill. But it was pointless to wait for her at the end of this grim corridor. Anne, the hospital’s infection-control specialist, safety director, and a veteran nurse, regularly avoided this hallway. She said it gave her the creeps.
I reached the end and stood, and crossed my arms. I avoided looking at the door opposite me; its small window inlaid with crosshatched wires. The room beyond it was black. I diverted my gaze to the floor, and to the scratches and divots from the paths of countless stretchers. Stretchers stored in the old hospital room in front of me were a creepier sight than I ever could have imagined. I first looked inside the room on my introductory tour as the hospital’s new Education Assistant, while a male nurse added another stretcher to the stockpile. I watched him wrangle the stretcher in line with the others, all stretchers stripped bare, and I vowed to avoid looking inside the room again in the future.
Diana had to know how Anne felt about this hallway, and how unlikely it would be for Anne to walk from the main hospital, through the parking lot, into our building, and down this hallway in her mock escape. No matter. Diana wanted her department team to be seen as the most-responsive team to the drill. To her, everything was a competition, and in this case the prize was her appearance as a strict and authoritative manager.
Before working for Diana, I didn’t know how to define a Type-A personality, and everyone I asked offered me a different definition. Some said Type-A people were inflexible, while others said they were detail-oriented. While both traits sounded a little like Diana, I sought an official, agreed-upon definition. I liked the idea of putting Diana into a category, so I could find an explanation for her stressful behavior.
Type-A people are overly competitive, impatient, and aggressive, according to the Merriam-Webster definition. In other words, like Diana, Type-A people feel they must win at everything, have a low tolerance for delays or idleness, and are not known for their warmth. So, when I suggested that I create an education department newsletter (a two-page document), Diana stood at my shoulder as I designed it, and then critiqued it as though it was a government press release concerning top-secret information. When my time entries strayed from the mark by 5 or 10 minutes, she sat me down for a talk with my timesheet between us. Regularly, if things were not going the way she liked during a typical workday, Diana belittled me. She also liked to tell me what to do in a harsh tone in front of our co-workers.
I looked up from the hallway floor as I heard Diana’s heels approaching. “Did you hear the all-clear? Someone in Labor and Delivery caught Anne almost right away.” I walked towards Diana, eager to be out of the dark, as she continued. She looked wistful. “That was a fast one… too bad. Anyway, I got caught up talking to someone on my way back… and you have a lot to do so… come on, let’s go.” She ushered me toward my office and back to my work with a queen-like wave of dismissal.
I stayed in the job because there were things I liked about working in a hospital. It was a perk to have my own bathroom in my office – even if my office also featured a call-button cord still attached to the wall, and even if the only thing that separated my space from Diana’s was a flimsy room-divider. (She could hear my every move.) I also liked to walk around the hospital grounds and experience the undercurrent of urgency that filled every corridor.
I was also interested in learning about how nurses dealt with the gravitas of their job. From what I could tell, partaking in regular drills helped. But, the drills themselves presented their own challenges. For one disaster drill, I was asked if I wanted to volunteer to be a victim. I considered it until I heard the role involved a hose-down while naked. I opted for the timekeeper role. To my amazement, a male nurse volunteered for the victim role like it was no big deal. Over time, I saw that nurses had thick skin, a wicked sense of humor, and many stress-related health concerns.
Every so often, we’d hear a “code yellow” announced overhead, which meant a cardiac or similar patient emergency. When I first heard a code yellow, I held my breath and said a silent prayer. It was like a tap on the shoulder urging me to recognize that Diana and I, and our co-workers, were human, and mortal. This broader perspective made Diana’s Type-A behavior seem less severe, but also made it more saddening, as I considered it against the backdrop of our finite lives.
While a broader perspective helped, I still had to deal with my Type-A boss on a daily basis. To combat the stress, I developed these tactics to improve my working relationship with Diana and make my days run as smoothly as possible:
- I aimed to become better at anticipating Diana’s demands. I created daily and weekly checklists of her often-repeated requests. That way, when she made a familiar request, I could say right away that yes, I was already working on that.
- B-vitamins. On the days that I took a B-vitamin supplement, I weathered Diana’s demands a bit better. In a broader sense, my discomfort encouraged me to take my health seriously, and consider how I could improve it through diet and exercise.
- A weekly yoga class at a local junior college became an island of sanity and restoration. Yoga may not be for you, but I encourage you to find a healthy stress-reliever, ideally in the form of exercise.
Months in, I didn’t actively look for a new job, but I made decisions in my personal life which steered me in a new direction. I was about to move to Las Vegas and embark on another big career change. I handed my two-weeks’ notice to Diana with a smile, and considered our scheduled exit-interview a quaint formality. I was therefore unprepared when, in our exit-interview, Diana asked me if there was anything that could be improved about her management style.
Diana’s mouth ticked as she read the question from the exit-interview form provided by the hospital, and her eyes darted back and forth as she lifted her gaze to mine. I opened my mouth, and then closed it. Many unspoken truths bubbled to the surface of my lips. Then I saw something about Diana that I hadn’t noticed before – she knew how bad she could be, and felt she couldn’t help it.
In a blink, I rethought our interactions. Like me, perhaps Diana did the best she could, and used the methods that made the most sense, not to others, but to her. Who Diana was got her to where she was, as a highly-accomplished and experienced director in the competitive field of nursing. Under her influence, I volunteered for the hospital’s diversity committee and also gained a service-award. Would speaking my mind cure Diana of her flaws? Confessing how I felt may make me feel better in the moment, but did expressing my opinion of her really matter in the long run?
I cleared my throat and said that when the next Education Assistant began, he or she would benefit from clearly-defined expectations, and the knowledge that the role could be stressful and demanding at times. Diana exhaled, and smiled. She wrote down my response, then looked me in the eyes and said thank you, and that she wished me all the best.