Three syllables are more professional than two.

So, I work as a lowly patient transporter at a local hospital, right? No, shut up, that was a rhetorical question, of course I do. Alright, I’m not gonna make a habit out of talking smack about my workplace ‘cos I do actually have bills that need paying. But this bit had me giggling to myself for the better part of at least fifteen minutes, so I figured I’d share.

Yeah, not fronting, I guess I’m easily amused, whatever.

I was grabbing a stretcher for somebody going somewhere on the seventh floor, don’t remember the specifics, not important, patient confidentiality, yadda yadda, but the doors into the main unit were locked. The staff had stuck a laminated sheet on the doors with some tape that announced “DO NOT OPEN DOORS, PATIENT IS AN ELOPEMENT RISK”. The bottom’s signed by the floor’s nursing supervisor.

Elopement, huh, that’s a new one.

I head on through (because I’ve got a fancy keycard to get through the scanners on the doors like in a level straight out of DOOM) and I ask the folks at the nurses’ station “what’s ‘elopement’? Is that another fancy euphemism for ‘escape precautions’?”

One of the nurses tells me “yes, that’s what it is, please keep the doors shut”.

At this point I recall something and I ask her “hey, you remember up on the eighth floor they used to have—”
She flashes me a tight smile. “We are the eighth floor down here. We like to pretend we’re not, but this is very much the eighth floor.”

I leave, wondering if this woman was the nursing supervisor and I had insulted the choice of vocabulary she’d employed on the notice outside the door.

Up on the eighth floor, (which isn’t actually on the seventh floor, that would be silly) where the psych ward is, they used to have a plaque by the doors that read “ESCAPE PRECAUTIONS” in white on red. Somewhere along the line I guess they decided via committee that no, that’s too blunt, the word ‘escape’ carries negative implications, like we’re keeping the poor psychiatric patients imprisoned or something. So they went and changed the plaque to “FLIGHT PRECAUTIONS” like they’d trapped a flock of doves in the ward that they were afraid would escape into the rest of the hospital and shit all over the freshly-waxed floors.

And now I guess the seventh floor got the same idea and decided to bust out the old thesaurus to find a phrase that was just ambiguous and obscure enough (outside the medical field) that it wouldn’t offend anybody or send the wrong message or something. How are people gonna complain if they don’t know the definition of the word?

Cripes, is this a hospital or a law firm?

Comments

[Pyro The Reader]

Yeeesh, damn tumblr seems to have infected the real world to! "The word escape triggers me!"

Gimme a break...

[Luna Aeterna Solutae]

"More specifically, elopement is often used to refer to a marriage conducted in sudden and secretive fashion, usually involving a hurried flight away from one's place of residence together with one's beloved with the intention of getting married." Seems he likes to run away with people to get married.