IF there is anything more irritating than gross inefficiency in simple management, it is causing botheration to people by your mismanagement. I had a resident once who was dumb. Well, God makes them in all types. But this one was irritating too. She would try to reach me in my office in my working hours, and if I had just gone somewhere (like the loo), she would presume I had gone home and ring up my residence When this happened twice in two conswcutive weeks (which was too often, in my opinion) my wife got a little upset. She wanted to know where I had gone and for what purpose, when I had told her I was working. Finally I ot the said resident to ring up my wife, and explain to her that she had found me in my office 5 minutes after she called my residence both the times. You may wonder why my wife would not trust me then. It was 15 years ago, I was young, and hence perhaps in my wife's opinion ‘susceptable’ if not ‘strayable’ :-D. Anyway, that resident passed out and this trouble stopped. Now, 15 years later, at 2:30 p.m. today, when I was operating on a patient., a head of one of the departments in our college rang up my residence and asked for me, saying I was not found anywhere in the hospital. If she had rung up my office, one of the 4 persons working there would have told her I was in the operation theater. But we have two types of senior doctors - grand and not grand. She was grand. The grand type doctors get the telephone operator to find someone they want in the campus, or get one of their subordinates to do the job. When that person comes on the line, the grand persons will come on line in their own sweet time. If the telephone operator or the subordinate does not know where to look, he/she does not find the desired person. That same thing happened today. Fortunately my wife has realized by now that I am not ‘strayable’, that I actually work and enjoy it, and she also knew the nature and abilities of this particular head of department from my narration of various incidents in the hospital. It is already 3.5 hours past the time I go off duty. This particular person had some very important work with me 27.5 hours ago, for which she rang up my residence when she shouldn’t have, and now that I have been home last night, in the institute all day today, and home after that, she hasn’t bothered to ring and ask for whatever she wanted. She happens to be the same head of department who had kept my technician for nearly 2 years while she had been ‘borrowed’ for just 15 days. I had to struggle and have the technician back with me for half a day every day so that our work could be done. She is the same one who wanted to have another arrangement of the same type a year after I had finally got my technician back. Those of you who have read my previous posts will know this.
