I use to work in a hospital. Emergency room registration—name, insurance, next of kin. People bleeding, moaning, cursing the world while I sat at a desk, punching keys. There were regulars in the department, the lifers who knew the drill, but sometimes they’d pull in someone from another pavilion, vacation relief/sick relief, whatever.
That’s how I ended up working with Tiffany.
Not a friend. Not an enemy. Just… there. The kind of person you don’t think about once you clock out. But she had a way of looking at you, like you were the problem.
That night, the ER was slammed—sirens, stretchers, bodies on gurneys, the usual chaos. I hustled, not because I cared, but because I figured the faster I worked, the sooner I could screw around. But Tiffany kept glaring at me, that stink-eye like I was doing something wrong.
Finally, I asked, “What?”
She smirked. “The harder you work, the more work they gon’ give you.”
In most places, she wasn’t wrong. The corporate world loves a sucker. But the ER wasn’t that kind of gig. It was feast or famine—you kept up or you got out of the way. When the bodies stopped rolling in, you caught your breath.
Tiffany didn’t see it that way. She was one of those people who did the bare minimum, just enough to stay employed. If the quota was six patients an hour, she’d do five. Always five. Never more. Never less. Just enough to keep her ass in a chair.
People like that, they’ll drag you down without you even realizing it. The kind that complain about the system but never do a damn thing to change their own situation.
Years later they will be in the same place. You do not want to be beside them.
And if you ever hire one, fire them fast—before their disease spreads.
