Insults

I've been insulted with the most colorful of language at work through the years, and it seems that patients are somehow globally involved in a network of one-upsmanship where I think I've heard the most creative insult possible and then somehow even that gets topped.

With that in mind, I really appreciate my patient the other night bringing it back to basics.

I got called a bitch, albeit indirectly, as she was talking to someone via speakerphone the entire time I was attempting to do a workup on this early twenties frequent flyer. When I immediately dropped all my supplies on the bedside table and removed my gloves in preparation to leave, she then addresses me directly with an "I don't like your attitude, bitch."

I shrugged and left the room, with a bye wave on my way out. I took back all the pain medication I  had with me, too, which royally pissed her off. I guess she thought I was going to give her norco after verbal abuse? The logic seems suspect to me, but at any rate she was helpfully escorted off the property about an hour later after attempting to pull the "I can talk shit to your face and make threatening gestures but still expect everything done for me" bit on two different nurses.

Gotta say though, after all the years of increasingly elaborate insults, it's quite refreshing to get back to my roots as a simple, straightforward bitch.