Tag Archives: occupational

Feet First from the O.R.

When transporting a patient on a gurney out of an Operating Room, you must have them exit the room feet first. Never head first, because that means they’re dead.

Informant’s description of the practice verbatim:

“I was called overhead in my surgery center where I work as a Registered Nurse, to please come in and help in the moving of the patient from the O.R. table into the recovery room, which is where I work. And so I walked in and I hadn’t been there very long and I went to move the patient from the table of the O.R. to the gurney for transportation and as I went to pull the patient out it was natural for me to have the patient come out of the O.R. room door head first. And I was immediately pulled, they pulled back on the gurney they turned it around and said, “Oh no, no, no. You’ve gotta make them come out feet first.” And I said “What are you talking about?” and they said “It’s just what we do we never allow a patient to come out head first because when you’re coming head first out of the O.R. it means that you’re dead” and so I don’t know where that comes from and I don’t know if everyone uses that but the people in that O.R., in those operating room suites believe it.

I don’t believe it and I respect it so I wouldn’t do it any other way because they all believe it so I’m not going to change that. I would never dream of changing that… And they are very adamant about it. Really adamant about it. They’re like “OH NONONO” (laughs) I’m like okay, “Sorry!”

When you’re feet first your like about to step on the ground, so you would like. I dunno, so if you were to walk, you would step out, so if you were coming head first you were falling? I dunno but if you were to come feet first I guess you’re walking on your feet so then you’re not dead, you’re alive.”

My informant’s guess as to why feet first is necessary and head first means the patient’s dead is what I would think as well. I think that bodies at morgues are pulled out of temporary storage head first. Bodies in caskets are carried head first into churches and funeral cars. Maybe this practice has something relation to not handling post-surgery-bodies (which in a way resemble the dead) like the dead. A lot of folk belief exists among health professionals, but the O.R. is a particularly important place because every procedure, every surgery is dangerous and gravely serious, whether it’s for a boob job or something life-threatening. My informant has been an R.N. for thirty-odd years, and has been married to a surgeon for the same length of time, this was her first time hearing this rule.

Theater Occupational Superstition: Macbeth (Version I)

Interview Extraction

Informant:”Now the interesting thing about a lot of old stories is- and this is actually something we mentioned in class, how there are often two or three explanations that might not even relate to one another for many of the old stories or traditions.  The Macbeth legend that I know, there are two- no, three variations of the Macbeth legend.  One is the story that the incantations used are actual witch’s incantations so therefore if you believe in witchcraft you do not want to evoke them.  The second one on Macbeth is that, Macbeth being an old ‘war horse’ and an audience favorite, was frequently the play that would replace a show that wasn’t doing well.  So if you heard someone talking about Macbeth, you didn’t like it because it meant that the play you are doing might be closing early, and be replaced by a revival of Macbeth.  I kind of like that legend the best.”

Analysis:

The Macbeth superstition is among the most common superstitions that people working in theater follow.  The legend of Macbeth is that it is bad luck to say ‘Macbeth’ in the theater.  To prevent unlucky things from happening such as the set falling over, people are encouraged to say ‘The Scottish Play’.  If you do make the mistake of saying ‘Macbeth’, you have to cut the curse by performing some kind of protection ritual.  This ritual changes based on who you talk to due to the fact that it is such widespread legend and many people have different ideas about the curse.  The first time I heard about the legend was in Boston when I broke the rule of not saying ‘Macbeth’ in the theater, and the people I was with made me run around the theater three times to cure the curse.  The next time I heard about ‘The Scottish Play’ legend was in Los Angeles, where the cure for the curse was to spin around three times and spit over your shoulder.  It is hard to say if the cure changes based on your location because people in theater often travel for work, so the ideas on the legend would be mixed.  There are many different origin stories behind the legend of Macbeth, and the stories my informant mentions are only some possibilities.

I am familiar with the legend that Shakespeare might have used real witch’s incantations in his play, but I am not sure if this is true.  It depends on your beliefs about witchcraft.  I think the reason why this particular legend is so popular is because witchcraft and magic hold such a high place of fascination in our imaginations, and believing in them is fun.  People are attracted to theater because it is about the magic of storytelling.  Therefore when people in theater participate in these kind of belief systems, they are doing so because it is an extension of working in an occupation that is full of play.  Theater is like magic in the fantastical sense, we rely on illusions to invoke a spectacular idea in the imaginations of the audience.

I was not familiar with the idea that perhaps Macbeth has transformed into a superstition based on the idea that it is a show that frequently replaces unsuccessful productions.  It is very possible that this legend is the true reason behind why the play has become part of theater lore.  This is because Macbeth is a very popular production and you can always find it being performed during a production season, so I can easily see it replacing a show that didn’t prove to be popular.  If this is true, then Macbeth probably evolved into a superstition of bad luck because it has it’s origins in bad luck.

My informant was born in 1949, Connecticut.  He works as a costume designer in the entertainment industry occasionally, and serves as the head of the USC costume shop in addition to being a faculty member for the USC School of Dramatic Arts.  He has more than 40 years of experience in the theater.

Sailor Story

“My grandpa’s best friend, who is a sailor, always tells this story about a seagull. There’s this couple or this sailor out on the water and it’s a beautiful day and they’re sailing along. And the swell starts to pick up and it’s so rocky that his fake teeth fall into the water. And he can’t get it. And I guess they go back to the harbor, to the bay, and tie off the boat, and a seagull flies back over them and has the biggest smile you’ve ever seen. And it’s the man’s teeth.”

 

The informant told me that her grandpa’s best friend is a sailor with a really corny sense of humor and she said she is pretty sure that he has fake teeth. She said that her grandpa also has fake teeth. Thus, the two of them really like retelling this story because it contains elements that they can relate to and identify with. However, the story seems to have a deeper meaning. Sailors can never be certain of how the sea will treat them and sailors can develop a rocky relationship with the sea. Sometimes it’s smooth sailing and other time’s things don’t go your way. In the story, the day starts out beautiful and the water is smooth, but then something changes and the water is suddenly rocky. The story seems to be saying that regardless of how the waters are, you need to maintain a good sense of humor about it. After all, the sailor is lucky to survive the rough conditions. Sure, he loses his teeth, but he makes it out alive, and despite the unfortunate fact that he is now toothless, he can get a good chuckle from seeing the seagull with his teeth.

Lawyer Joke

“If you wanted to have all of the answers before you got there, you should have gone to medical school.”

 

This occupational joke, often told by lawyers, is disparaging of doctors. It’s funny because usually one would think that doctors have a more difficult job than lawyers because they are dealing with life and death situations, but the joke implies that doctors learn everything they need to know at school. Supposedly, all of the diseases and conditions doctors will encounter are in their medical textbooks. While this is not entirely true, it is clearly a belief held by many lawyers who tell this joke. Those lawyers believe that their jobs are more difficult because they can often deal with situations that have never happened before or have never been documented before. Even if their cases are really just a variation of previous cases, they seem to believe that each situation is unique, whereas, in their opinion, an illness is always the same.

The informant is fond of this joke because she is a lawyer. I have heard her tell this joke multiple times, usually when she is talking about a difficult work-related situation. She seems to tell this joke to remind herself that having a difficult job comes with the territory and that not everything is so cut-and-dry.

Occupational FOAF Stories

When the informant worked in a tech support job at the University of Southern California, she heard the two following occupational FOAF stories about ridiculous problems customers had called in to friends of her fellow workers:

The most common story the informant heard was that of the worker who complains, “I broke my cup holder,” not knowing that the so-called “cup holder” is in fact the CD drive on his CPU. The other oft-retold IT question she heard was, “Where’s the ‘any’ key.” This question relates to a common program prompt: “When a program says, ‘Press any key to continue, uh, some individuals—they may not have a full grasp of the English language or of a computer—are looking for an actual key on the keyboard that says, ‘Any key,’ as opposed to just pressing any key on the keyboard.”

The informant considered these two stories to be pure invention until she later encountered them herself as an IT manager: “At first I thought that it was, you know, just kind of a joking thing—ha, that’s funny, who, who would ever actually ask that?—but I did encounter it twice . . . somebody put a cup in the CD drive and the CD drive is not built to hold cups with liquid in it. And it broke.” She recalls her response to the first time she got the “cup holder” question: “I tried to be very—I’m sure I was—maybe chuckled a little bit? But I try to be very professional in my response, saying that’s not a cup holder and that the person had broken their computer and would need to get it repaired.” As for the “any key” question, she now calls it “something that is commonly encountered . . . I’m not kidding.”

Like her former co-workers, the informant now brings out these stories to share with other tech support workers: “I would tell it—I’m sure I would do it in a way if we were doing, uh, pretty much like battle stories from a war . . . but from the front lines of tech support.”

Since the computer problems in these stories actually happen, it is likely that the stories themselves have a polygenetic source—multiple users who have probably never seen anyone else use the CD drive as a cup holder do so of their own accord. Folklore about the personal computer, of course, has a terminus post quem of its invention; tech support for personal computers is a relatively new concept and thus the occupational folklore associated with its practitioners must of necessity also be rather new. However, these two stories do seem to be widespread, appearing in user manuals, technical textbooks, and even fiction books, as a passage from a short story by Carson W. Bryan demonstrates (71).

Source: Bryan, Carson W. Let’s Find Out. New York: Xulon Press, 2010.