Elevator Etiquette, Formatting, and Constipation
17 05 2008So I’ve got a few things to just get off of my chest - some things to report as it were. I’ve been trying to absorb as much of medical school as it will allow (which is an all-together different post) and that has proven to be a struggle because of a few minor distractions.
First off, I am sick of wordpress not offering proper formatting options. I’ve been trying to just insert a damned carriage return and a tab in my paragraphs, formatting them like ANY OTHER DOCUMENT, but it just won’t work. Can some willing, random wordpress blog surfer please leave me a comment that tells me how to achieve this simple task? I also wish wordpress had a WYSIWYG type of interface - I’d love to drag, drop, and position a picture into a certain place on my blog. Such is the price of HTML ignorance I suppose.
Next, I’m quite annoyed by the lack of elevator etiquette here in NYC. Manhattan wouldn’t be the great city it is without elevators, and unfortunately it seems like some people are trying to undermine it’s status by screwing with people who live in buildings that “require” elevators. Now I’m not necessarily complaining. This building could be a walk-up. No, actually, I am complaining, but it’s more because I feel entitled to the convenience of an elevator. If you live in a building with an elevator, the elevator should come quickly, shouldn’t stop frequently, and should take you to your destination frequently. Which the elevator in my building would do if it weren’t for the people who work and visit my building.
Let me explain. I live in what seems to be the only administrative building that the entire medical school owns. The bottom four floors are offices and the top sixteen? floors are dorm rooms. People coming to conduct business often take the elevator up a floor or two. This scenario plays out at least once a week.
Me: Hey, what floor?
Random Person: Could you press two?
Me: Two?
Random Person: Yeah two
[Awkward silence because a lazy fat ass is in the elevator]
I’m tired of people co-opting 2 minutes of my time (time that I am paying thousands of dollars per year to use studying apparently) by taking an elevator up one floor. It’s not okay, it is in fact quite rude. You know what’s worse though? Taking the elevator down a floor
Now it makes sense that if someone has a physical disability that limits their mobility, they have all of the license they want to take the elevator up or down one floor. This post doesn’t apply to folks who are wheelchair bound, walking with crutches, pregnant, morbidly obese, or who have arthritis. It does however apply to those who are plenty healthy and just don’t care about our time. Don’t take the elevator unless you have to go AT LEAST four floors, and you need to do it quickly. Go the route that takes less time, because when you do that, you make it faster for everybody.
You see, I don’t take the elevator unless I need to get to my room in a hurry, or down to the ground floor in a hurry. So it’s aggravating when I see someone taking the elevator from floor 3 to floor 2. It’s not okay. Let me say that in unequivocal terms: It is not acceptable - it makes me want to misdiagnose you with something requiring painful biopsies. I’m just joking about the misdiagnosis/biopsies part. I’m not joking about how unacceptable it is. I could accept it if offices were on floors 10-15. But they aren’t. So don’t act as if they are. Some people live here. Please respect that. I don’t play my music as loudly as possible at 2:30pm, even though I technically could. I respect the fact that you work there. Respect my home, please.
Finally, constipation is awful. I sympathize with your struggle if you are having trouble dropping the kids off at the pool. What many people don’t understand is that you are hungry, and you have to go really bad at the same time and it only tends to compound both problems. In addition to the indecision, you are in pain - your abdomen both full and irritated takes to cramping often to “solve” the problem. If only it just decided to move the contents of the bowels along everything would be just fine, wouldn’t it now. Almost universally, someone tells a constipated person to eat something that “gets things moving”. Almost universally this fails to work, and does in fact compound the constipation. Eating when you are constipated is like drinking alcohol when you’ve taken sedatives, to wake up - it doesn’t work, it makes the situation worse. So don’t eat a ton of food - nuts, cheese, dried fruit - it’s only going to slow your progress. Be patient, breathe deeply, relax, stretch. Move around vigorously. Stop taking muscle relaxants and other CNS depressants. Stay near a toilet. It will work out.
I just had to get that off of my chest
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