I went to the dentist on Friday morning to have a cavity filled. I knew I was in for trouble when the waiting room had fox news playing. I mean, really? People actually watch that?
The dentist was friendly, but did a better job of numbing my lip than the inside of my mouth. So, when he put that needle in, it hurt like crazy. I winced, he apologized, and I sat there quietly while we waited for it to kick in. Once he was ready, he told me to let them know if I felt anything since the shot should have taken care of it. Now brimming over with confidence, I agreed and they set to work.
At one point, the dentist asked his assistant for a “2 by 2” and I would have told them to go ahead since there was already a 2 by 4 in my mouth by the feel of it. Except that I couldn’t speak because they had all that gear in there. Too bad, too. That would have been funny. But not worth stopping what they were doing just to make a joke that I might have had to explain to them.
The actually filling didn’t take too long and I was on my slightly woozy way to work.
When I got there, one of my first tasks was an unpleasant one. I had to write up my student assistant. We’re really laid back in the office, but the day before yesterday I had assigned him a task and found him asleep at his desk. Not just, “whoops, my head fell down and I went sleepy-time”. No, this was leaned back, feet up, and full-on nap mode. All he lacked was a snuggie.
This was the second time he’s done this, so yesterday I found the form, filled it out and set some new rules. If I find him asleep again, he goes home for the day. Asleep on the clock again and we’ll terminate him.
This actually seemed pretty lax to me – I mean, it should be obvious that one should stay awake at work – but he got a little pissy about it. But not at me. He was upset that he was being held to a higher standard than one of our full time colleagues – even going so far as to fill out his own complaint form about that person. He gave that to me and I hung onto it – I’ll ask him on Monday if he still wants me to take it forward. It’s not going to do a bit of good and only going to make him look whiny on the heels of his own write up. We stayed busy the rest of the afternoon and I think we’re cool. I hated doing it – I like working with him – but it’s not doing him any favors to look the other way now and have him go out into the “real-world” with unrealistic expectations.