I was making my deliveries tonight and I stopped to talk to Carmen, who is the nurse supervisor at one of the homes on my route. She was telling me how she tries to keep mistakes down by 'idiot-proofing' the forms they use, and the nurses' carts, and so on, to make it more difficult for the nurses to give the wrong medications, or the wrong dose, or to find the medications they are looking for for each patient. Some of the stuff she has to do to keep her nurses straight - and remember, these are professional folks, who should be able to read and follow instructions - is almost comical. She was giving example after example of some of the stuff she's seen, and she ended up by saying she has done everything she can to make the system 'idiot-proof', and some folks are still making mistakes. That got me to thinking, and I told her there isn't any such thing as 'idiot-proof', because if someone is determined to find a way to screw something up, they will, no matter what precautions you take, or how many times you tell them or show them the right way to do it, or whatever.
Of course there are good nurses out there, and thankfully most of them can read and follow directions. Even then, everyone makes mistakes from time to time, but this isn't about that.
Anyway, I pretty much live by the rule that 99.9 percent of the people I come across each day are absolute morons. Since I drive for a living, it turns out this isn't such a bad rule to live by; get out and spend six to eight hours a day on the road, five days a week, and I'll tell you, if you don't expect everyone else on the road to be a total idiot, it won't be long before they'll go out of their way to prove it to you.
So, tonight I come home and turn on the news. CSX, Norfolk Southern, and Amtrak, the big rail carriers around here, have had this big safety thing going on for months now, trying to educate people about not trying to run the rail crossings when the crossbars are down and the lights are flashing and bells are ringing, et cetera. However, some braindead motorist apparently didn't get the message, and tried to beat a train at a crossing on the Northside. Well, he may have beat the one he was racing to the crossing, but the one coming the other way that he probably didn't see got him, then the other one got him anyway, and by the time it was all over, Speedy Gonzales and his passenger were dead and their car looked like confetti. I'm hoping there is enough tissue left to be able to discern whether alcohol was involved.
Ah, well, live and learn. Or not.
