Sixty Three

The Cleaner

No matter where you work we all have one of these. One of the pinnacles of OCD behavior, cleaning. In our business it's not a bad thing in fact it's encouraged. There is no fault in it, washing hands is a good thing. Keeping sterile and clean fields uncontaminated is fantastic. The person or persons I am talking about is the cleaner who wipes down everything at the beginning of the shift.

Again not a bad thing. Its just in my dumbass ER tech perspective it's a waste of time to clean the computer, desk area and phones once. These things are just gonna get contaminated again and again so in reality you must clean them again and again. It's not like magic you clean something once in an ER and it stays clean. In the rush to take care of patients often folks clean these common office once and that's it. Just like the paper towel under the doughnut and covering your coffee lid with yet another paper towel is going to keep what ever wild funk from getting into your food and beverage much less keeping a hungry homeless guy from eating said doughnut or guzzling down your triple espresso iced mocha chai latte whatever coffee drink.

So I don't clean any computers, phones or desk tops unless they're visibly soiled. I can't tell you if this is from apathy or laziness. Probably a mixture of both. I wash my hands religiously and scrub equipment within an inch of it's life when necessary. Our decon room practically has a hot water fire hose in it. I've been accused of being nasty by a fellow ER tech but I take what he said with a grain of salt because well my nasty ass never got sick or infected from a patient (knocking wood here).

May I present to you "tech A" aka 'The Cleaner'

Tech A was a decent tech the did the job well or at least good enough his special talent though was keeping himself and anything within six feet of him clean on a level on par with the best of the OCD cleaner types. He was and still is a good guy even though he hated to be shushed, ya know "Shhh" like when you're trying to hear important info. He hated shushing and he would not get shushed if he kept his fucking mouth shut. That's besides the point.

Tech A would sit down to chart and his OCD cleaning would kick in. Mind you he is charting an IV which after logging in on this particular system takes like two maybe three clicks and you're done. A minute maybe two at the most. With Tech A it was a 10 minute ordeal of wiping down everything and charting wiping down everything again and then putting a sign on the computer saying that this was his computer for the shift and not to touch it.

We all have our quirks

Naturally he'd get miffed at someone (usually me) when they used "his" computer during the shift. He would get completely unhinged if a patient touched his computer during shift. Naturally being the jerk that I am known for being from time to time I would throw his sign away and have other people use his computer. I hand him a weighted empty canister of wipes if he felt the need to clean and pretend to lick the phone if he said he needed to use it. He told me I was nasty and I replied "Funny that's what your mom said."

He did not talk to me for a week after that one. Possibly because the truth hit too close to home.

He'd tell the other cleaners that they'd get sick because they were not cleaning good enough, he would tell me it was only a matter of time before I died of some horrific infection because I never cleaned our computers, phones or desk areas. I told him that since I did not clean as well as he did that my immune system was built up better than his and I could fight off infection better. He snorted at this and gave me a hard time, that is until he got C.Diff from a patient.

C.Diff is a real gut churning experience. Well at least from what Tech A said. He lost a considerable amount of weight and his cleaning habits doubled. I was willing to concede that any body can get c.diff all it takes is just some bad positioning and rotten luck and well...I'll spare you the rest. he came up to me and said that I was still wrong in his opinion. I told him fair enough and let it drop until he got pink eye/conjunctivitis.

He had to miss a bit more of work after that. When his infection cleaned up I again offered up my little lame opinion on the insane amount of cleaning he does. I told him that perhaps some of the industrial cleaning agents that we use maybe got into his eye and caused this recent infection. He was none too pleased with my thoughts.

I was pleased by his anal retentiveness. It was a near constant source of amusement for me.

In the end clean everything until it's damn near atomized if you like (or til the letters are worn off the keyboards) Me? I know how many times we use each others computers how the patients hack, cough and slobber all over the phones. So why bother? I wash my hands many many many times during the shift and always keep gloves in my pockets.

Me nasty?

Nah.