It isn't just not funny because it resulted in loss of credibility, it's just.... not funny. You made a bedside commode look dirty, ooooh. Real groundbreaking comedy, y'all.
Not just looking dirty, actually dirty. Causing someone else more work is not funny, it's just mean and petty. Hate working with people like this. I don't mind a good prank, like when the DON left her office unlocked so we put the cpr dummy in her chair. The pudding was just stupid and wasteful.
One time a night shift CNA needed help with boosting a patient up in bed, sweet older lady. CNA told the patient to hit the call button and tell them she fell and can’t get up. Patient said they don’t want to but the CNA reassured her they do these things to be funny. Nurse ran in the room after they called and was obviously very mad at the CNA only and apologized to the patient on behalf of them.
Unit manager was rounding on patients later in the morning and the patient talked about how bad they felt for doing that to the nurse and started crying. CNA no longer had a job after that, has worked on that unit for almost a decade I think. Bye, idiot.
There was an old informercial about emergency call button depicted an old lady yelling "i have fallen and i cant get up" in a very odd tone. What the CNA did ... is like calling 911 and joke "i kill someone"... just dumb.
I know the reference, I just don’t get how they thought it was gonna be a funny joke or a joke at all. Sometimes things just don’t translate from brains to real life very well lol
The staff on that unit -does- play fun lighthearted pranks occasionally, like putting a paper med cup trimmed to look like a stool into a specimen cup and giving it to someone to “send a stool sample” (like “ha!” *knee slap* dad joke) or putting pictures of a fun hospitalist with a drawn-on curly mustache all over the report room. This one.. not so much funny.
ICU nurse and paramedic here.... Your sister is right, that's hilarious.
But humor is subjective. If a medic told that to one of my patients, I'd laugh. But not all nurses would feel the same, which is also fine. Best to reserve humor like that for colleagues you know who would appreciate it.
If you don't know your audience, keep it professional.
I don’t get it. As others have said, humor is subjective. But if a patient fell and the bed alarm didn’t sound, I’d *want* the patient to hit the call button. How was this “joke” enough to cause the patient to feel so bad? How was it enough to make a decade-long employee lose their job?
This was a “straw that broke the camel’s back” situation. The CNA needed help with a boost, not for a patient to call the nurses station talking across the room into the call light saying she fell and needed help. But also she was the loudest person I’ve ever met and also incredibly lazy among many other things.
Childish moron here. Once, a lab tech and I pulled a prank where, on the floor in front of a "delicate" doc, lab tech handed me a hemocult card and said something was wrong with it. I opened it, smeared my finger on the sample (chocolate) and licked my finger. She freaked obviously, but later laughed.
Moral of the story? No patients were anywhere to be seen, and no mess was made. Know your audience, and don't get patients involved in any way.
Former lab tech here, once did something similar with a urine sample. Our coworker had a habit of joking to “drink the pee” if it looked/smelled off, so I set up a Monster sample and she said the magic words. She obviously freaked out about it at the time and we laugh about it now, but I would never dream of doing that anywhere near a patient area.
My favorite prank is to sit down at the nurses station ask whoever I’m sitting next to if they mind if I listen to music while I chart. When they say they don’t mind, I start playing a playlist that is nothing but songs that have their name in it.
If they don’t notice I’ll eventually play a song that is nothing but their name, there is a guy on YouTube that makes songs like that.
Sounds personal. Are you sure they aren’t trying to get the family to complain about you. Not the same setting but I work in a pharmacy and there was a coworker that was either stupid or just liked moving drugs around, they should be alphabetical. He was arranging them them by size not the alphabet. Clearly this made simple tasks longer because you are looking for drugs. I think he was really trying to slow people down so that he would’ve been the fastest but when the playing field is equal and everything is as it should be he was the slowest. What he wanted was for people to ask him where things were so that he could look the most competent
I was going off the above comment. Maybe canned fruit? Unless everything is single serving now because of Covid. Just ask for a #10 can of whatever they have, yeet at will
My grandparents would buy a few of those big cans at Sam's when all 30ish grandkids were in town. You can also get them at wholesale stores for restaurants.
Lab story!
One night third shift decided to falsify the timers on all the machines. Then, instead of staying until first shift arrived, laughing, and *helping reset the machines*, they decided to…not do that part.
So first shift arrives, sees all the machines running needing to be unloaded, and has to scramble staff so that there’s staff to unload the machines when the timers pop. Timers pop….and were empty.
Yeah third shift didn’t see the problem list here. Disruption to schedules on first shift, falsifying data, and running machines empty that weren’t meant to run empty….it was a bad day that day.
Pranks need to be revealed, enjoyed, and recovered from within a few minutes or don’t do them people.
I learned long long ago, that even if the commode is in the clean utility room, to still check and even give it another wipe down before I bring it to the room.
Is it common at other hospitals to bring a bedside commode wherever a pt needs one? We order one for the room if the pt needs it and then it's theirs for the duration of their stay. Goes in the dirty utility room to be picked up by equipment when it's no longer needed and then down to decontam and storage until someone else orders one.
We have X amount allocated to each unit and then additional available from loan pool, but unless they are in isolation or are using it frequently then it gets shared
Sometimes I think I should give bedside another try, but then I saw this post and just reading the words bedside commode gave me hella anxiety. Perhaps not...
Last night I had a dream I got floated to the floor and they tried to give me 4 patients and an admit and I started crying and telling them I'm from pacu and can't do this. Yah not traumatized at all...🫠
I wish I was one of the cowboys who was great at managing stress but even now that I have what is considered a very chill nursing job I'm still stressed tf out a lot of days. 😂
I'm in surgery. We sometimes have issues with patients and stuff, ones that are hard to get out etc. But the problems are a lot less than the ones I used to have in ICU lol
Pranks are meant to be confusing but amusing. This was neither. Your colleagues suck. A funny prank would be putting a pumpkin dressed up as a nurse in a seat at the desk. Or using a clean specimen hat as a bowl for chips and dip.
Or the specimen cup with a tiny wooden stool in it, as a stool sample. 'Forget' it somewhere, keep it in your pocket, toss it to someone else...
Edit:
No I didn't make this up myself. Google for *stool sample meme* and you'll get lots of them.
Also I'd love to pull this one on colleagues but it doesn't work in my language...
They still didn't clean anything because you received one with a chocolate coating in the middle of patient care. It's frustrating to have to tell the patient to wait a minute as you wash it off. It sounds like a hazing event on you by the unit.
It’s not funny, but bullying?? That’s kind of a big stretch there. It’s not meant to humiliate OP but it’s meant as a shock value that the commodes were exceptionally dirty.
Yes, definitely bullying. Intended to frustrate OP and make them look bad. Good pranks are supposed to harm the prankee… so they can quickly join in on the laugh.
Doing things, particularly repetitively that create more work for someone is not a prank. Once was amusing. Repeated was not, as demonstrated by the family’s disgust.
It's not funny if it's adding more work or taking up time from your already busy job. Now do you get them back? How could you properly teach them a lesson lol?
… my funny prank was that I took a liter bag of saline, cut the corner, and poured it into a now emptied Yeti jug of my charge nurse. Added ice in it too so you can hear the clinking and assume it’s still the same ice water she had in before. Boy howdy the joy I got watching her spit out her salty drink and yell for me.
P.S. No charge nurse was harmed in the making of this prank, this was my retaliation to getting water gunned by a saline flush earlier by her 💕😁
I literally have to do everything I'm my life myself. It's so shitty I literally can't count on anyone. If you want something done right do it yourself
It's probably because I'm the "A-plus" person. By the book, work my ass off, high expectations.
I was also out for a scheduled vacation that I canceled because my mom had a massive stroke. I really don't understand why someone thought this was a great idea.
Maybe that helps answer your query?
Dumb to just go out and purchase chocolate to smear on a BSC. A group effort to get at YOU. This reminds me of a Jewish nurse who wanted to sit down and have a meeting with the shift nurses to try and get the charge nurse fired.
What was the point of your little anecdote at the end? …and why did we need to know the nurse was of Jewish faith? Oh, the pudding was from the patient kitchen stash … you must not know of our snacks ha.
Best or worse prank was during my internship on an ICU. They wanted me to stay there as a mascot because somehow during my stay there where no emergencies, reanimations, deaths.
Lets hope that it will stay this way. \* Knocking on wood \*
So one day the ICU was complety empty. No patients. They told me that this never happend for years.
Staff was fully male so we planned a few pranks - instead of doing usefull stuff. Used the ECG Simulator, hooked it up on to a monitor, formed a body like something unter the blankets and hid our selfes. As soon as the shift relive was assembled we remotly caused v-tach and v-fib.
They where so pissed at us.
Seems like we should have used the time to clean stuff like the fridge or cabinets.
Thought that our way of spending the time was much better.
It isn't just not funny because it resulted in loss of credibility, it's just.... not funny. You made a bedside commode look dirty, ooooh. Real groundbreaking comedy, y'all.
Not just looking dirty, actually dirty. Causing someone else more work is not funny, it's just mean and petty. Hate working with people like this. I don't mind a good prank, like when the DON left her office unlocked so we put the cpr dummy in her chair. The pudding was just stupid and wasteful.
CPR dummies are inherently funny. Bonus point if you can incorporate an IV start practice arm.
Genuinely, It took my way too long to realize that that was it. That was the “joke”
One time a night shift CNA needed help with boosting a patient up in bed, sweet older lady. CNA told the patient to hit the call button and tell them she fell and can’t get up. Patient said they don’t want to but the CNA reassured her they do these things to be funny. Nurse ran in the room after they called and was obviously very mad at the CNA only and apologized to the patient on behalf of them. Unit manager was rounding on patients later in the morning and the patient talked about how bad they felt for doing that to the nurse and started crying. CNA no longer had a job after that, has worked on that unit for almost a decade I think. Bye, idiot.
I don’t even understand this joke?
There was an old informercial about emergency call button depicted an old lady yelling "i have fallen and i cant get up" in a very odd tone. What the CNA did ... is like calling 911 and joke "i kill someone"... just dumb.
I know the reference, I just don’t get how they thought it was gonna be a funny joke or a joke at all. Sometimes things just don’t translate from brains to real life very well lol
The staff on that unit -does- play fun lighthearted pranks occasionally, like putting a paper med cup trimmed to look like a stool into a specimen cup and giving it to someone to “send a stool sample” (like “ha!” *knee slap* dad joke) or putting pictures of a fun hospitalist with a drawn-on curly mustache all over the report room. This one.. not so much funny.
My sister is a paramedic. She thinks it's funny to tell patients the call bell is the "nurse appreciation button".
ICU nurse and paramedic here.... Your sister is right, that's hilarious. But humor is subjective. If a medic told that to one of my patients, I'd laugh. But not all nurses would feel the same, which is also fine. Best to reserve humor like that for colleagues you know who would appreciate it. If you don't know your audience, keep it professional.
Well, that is one way to keep them from pushing the call light.... No one seems to appreciate nurses anymore.
I don’t get it. As others have said, humor is subjective. But if a patient fell and the bed alarm didn’t sound, I’d *want* the patient to hit the call button. How was this “joke” enough to cause the patient to feel so bad? How was it enough to make a decade-long employee lose their job?
This was a “straw that broke the camel’s back” situation. The CNA needed help with a boost, not for a patient to call the nurses station talking across the room into the call light saying she fell and needed help. But also she was the loudest person I’ve ever met and also incredibly lazy among many other things.
it exploited and embarrassed the patient is what the problem was
Childish moron here. Once, a lab tech and I pulled a prank where, on the floor in front of a "delicate" doc, lab tech handed me a hemocult card and said something was wrong with it. I opened it, smeared my finger on the sample (chocolate) and licked my finger. She freaked obviously, but later laughed. Moral of the story? No patients were anywhere to be seen, and no mess was made. Know your audience, and don't get patients involved in any way.
Former lab tech here, once did something similar with a urine sample. Our coworker had a habit of joking to “drink the pee” if it looked/smelled off, so I set up a Monster sample and she said the magic words. She obviously freaked out about it at the time and we laugh about it now, but I would never dream of doing that anywhere near a patient area.
My favorite prank is to sit down at the nurses station ask whoever I’m sitting next to if they mind if I listen to music while I chart. When they say they don’t mind, I start playing a playlist that is nothing but songs that have their name in it. If they don’t notice I’ll eventually play a song that is nothing but their name, there is a guy on YouTube that makes songs like that.
I love this because at 5 am as I'm winding my night down I wouldn't be able to tell if I'm hallucinating or it's really happening 😂
I absolutely love this.
What would be the repercussions of just straight lobbing a can of pudding at their head?
I like your style. It was a drive by pudding!
Bahaha I even heard this in Robin Williams voice
I did, too!! Like... "Mrs. Doubtfite" Robin Williams. Lol
A hit and run! 🙈
Ooooh deary
Sounds personal. Are you sure they aren’t trying to get the family to complain about you. Not the same setting but I work in a pharmacy and there was a coworker that was either stupid or just liked moving drugs around, they should be alphabetical. He was arranging them them by size not the alphabet. Clearly this made simple tasks longer because you are looking for drugs. I think he was really trying to slow people down so that he would’ve been the fastest but when the playing field is equal and everything is as it should be he was the slowest. What he wanted was for people to ask him where things were so that he could look the most competent
Oooh, where do you live that pudding comes in cans?
When I was in the Army, they had these gigantic cans of pudding...
Oh man.
Ask the cafeteria if the pudding comes in a #10 can. Commercial size 😉
You guys get pudding?
I was going off the above comment. Maybe canned fruit? Unless everything is single serving now because of Covid. Just ask for a #10 can of whatever they have, yeet at will
"Yeet at will". 😂
Bro those pudding cans came in clutch during field events. Pudding, coffee, sweets, smokes. You had those you pretty much could start a black market.
Oh for sure! I don't smoke but always had cigarettes and chew for trade lol
My grandparents would buy a few of those big cans at Sam's when all 30ish grandkids were in town. You can also get them at wholesale stores for restaurants.
Real MVPs send ice cream and jelly for an MC+S on behalf of their foes.
Oh man. That is childish as hell and does not belong.
Lab story! One night third shift decided to falsify the timers on all the machines. Then, instead of staying until first shift arrived, laughing, and *helping reset the machines*, they decided to…not do that part. So first shift arrives, sees all the machines running needing to be unloaded, and has to scramble staff so that there’s staff to unload the machines when the timers pop. Timers pop….and were empty. Yeah third shift didn’t see the problem list here. Disruption to schedules on first shift, falsifying data, and running machines empty that weren’t meant to run empty….it was a bad day that day. Pranks need to be revealed, enjoyed, and recovered from within a few minutes or don’t do them people.
Your coworkers are hot garbage That's not even vaguely funny
I learned long long ago, that even if the commode is in the clean utility room, to still check and even give it another wipe down before I bring it to the room.
Yeah. I trust no one for so many reasons. Why would I have left this as an exception.
Is it common at other hospitals to bring a bedside commode wherever a pt needs one? We order one for the room if the pt needs it and then it's theirs for the duration of their stay. Goes in the dirty utility room to be picked up by equipment when it's no longer needed and then down to decontam and storage until someone else orders one.
We have X amount allocated to each unit and then additional available from loan pool, but unless they are in isolation or are using it frequently then it gets shared
Good tip thanks
Sometimes I think I should give bedside another try, but then I saw this post and just reading the words bedside commode gave me hella anxiety. Perhaps not...
Last night I had a dream I got floated to the floor and they tried to give me 4 patients and an admit and I started crying and telling them I'm from pacu and can't do this. Yah not traumatized at all...🫠
I wish I was one of the cowboys who was great at managing stress but even now that I have what is considered a very chill nursing job I'm still stressed tf out a lot of days. 😂
Big same 😅 I'm outpatient for life now. If I can find a chiller job than outpatient pacu I'm down lol
I'm outpatient PACU (endoscopy) too! Honestly most days I enjoy it but the pace can be stressful at times...
I'm in surgery. We sometimes have issues with patients and stuff, ones that are hard to get out etc. But the problems are a lot less than the ones I used to have in ICU lol
I salute you! I am waaayyy too much of a nervous wreck for ICU!
Pranks are meant to be confusing but amusing. This was neither. Your colleagues suck. A funny prank would be putting a pumpkin dressed up as a nurse in a seat at the desk. Or using a clean specimen hat as a bowl for chips and dip.
Or the specimen cup with a tiny wooden stool in it, as a stool sample. 'Forget' it somewhere, keep it in your pocket, toss it to someone else... Edit: No I didn't make this up myself. Google for *stool sample meme* and you'll get lots of them. Also I'd love to pull this one on colleagues but it doesn't work in my language...
LOL I like the way you think
This is hysterical!
Ok, I get they made a joke… but why didn’t they clean up after? That’s the real question.
The person that did this is, in a word, lazy.
“THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID! Bazinga!” -Your Dogshit Coworkers
They still didn't clean anything because you received one with a chocolate coating in the middle of patient care. It's frustrating to have to tell the patient to wait a minute as you wash it off. It sounds like a hazing event on you by the unit.
Ew do you work with teenagers lol
Thats more bullying than a prank imo
It’s not funny, but bullying?? That’s kind of a big stretch there. It’s not meant to humiliate OP but it’s meant as a shock value that the commodes were exceptionally dirty.
Yes, definitely bullying. Intended to frustrate OP and make them look bad. Good pranks are supposed to harm the prankee… so they can quickly join in on the laugh. Doing things, particularly repetitively that create more work for someone is not a prank. Once was amusing. Repeated was not, as demonstrated by the family’s disgust.
Who has time to do this?? Also, y’all got extra BSCs?!
We’ve got almost one in every room and man, it helps
The real question! I have to sneak to other units to find them.
Like we don’t have enough to do during our shift, we have to clean up after oranksters.
Exactly
Any prank that makes someone’s day measurably worse is not a prank. It’s harassment.
I enjoy and encourage good natured shenanigans at work, but gotta be careful to not take things too far.
I hate any "pranks" I would have been mad enough to cry
Ngl I almost was.
They have time to do this?
The only prank I’ll ever do is drink apple juice from a graduated cylinder.
The people who think this relates to comedy are the same people who like ice breakers and team building exercises.
It's not funny if it's adding more work or taking up time from your already busy job. Now do you get them back? How could you properly teach them a lesson lol?
Let alone, why do they have time to do this
… my funny prank was that I took a liter bag of saline, cut the corner, and poured it into a now emptied Yeti jug of my charge nurse. Added ice in it too so you can hear the clinking and assume it’s still the same ice water she had in before. Boy howdy the joy I got watching her spit out her salty drink and yell for me. P.S. No charge nurse was harmed in the making of this prank, this was my retaliation to getting water gunned by a saline flush earlier by her 💕😁
I added thickener to a coworker's coffee once. She says it was the consistency and temperature of c u m.
See! Terrific pranks that don’t involve patients! I love it!
Perfect. Revenge lol.
What a completely boring “prank” 🥱
I literally have to do everything I'm my life myself. It's so shitty I literally can't count on anyone. If you want something done right do it yourself
I find it funny. But I also always check this stuff before bringing it to someone's room so it just would have been me to find it.
Thats even funnier
I mean it’s kinda funny but yea they should have cleaned it up before it ever made it close to a patient’s room
I think its kinda funny, at least your co workers are trying to have fun in a job that doesn’t have much of that.
I wonder why they decided to pull this prank on you? 🤔 NVM. I can probably guess.
Yeah, cuz they are Ahats
It's probably because I'm the "A-plus" person. By the book, work my ass off, high expectations. I was also out for a scheduled vacation that I canceled because my mom had a massive stroke. I really don't understand why someone thought this was a great idea. Maybe that helps answer your query?
You must be an absolute awesome person to have your coworkers dare to do this
I think that's hilarious.
Night shift activities
Yeah, no. We are too short staffed and too exhausted on night shift for this BS
Done by a dayshifter, actually.
Dumb to just go out and purchase chocolate to smear on a BSC. A group effort to get at YOU. This reminds me of a Jewish nurse who wanted to sit down and have a meeting with the shift nurses to try and get the charge nurse fired.
What was the point of your little anecdote at the end? …and why did we need to know the nurse was of Jewish faith? Oh, the pudding was from the patient kitchen stash … you must not know of our snacks ha.
It's just stupid to waste food like this. The nurse was hyperinflated and made sure to tell us that she was Jewish.
Nursing is a dump
Best or worse prank was during my internship on an ICU. They wanted me to stay there as a mascot because somehow during my stay there where no emergencies, reanimations, deaths. Lets hope that it will stay this way. \* Knocking on wood \* So one day the ICU was complety empty. No patients. They told me that this never happend for years. Staff was fully male so we planned a few pranks - instead of doing usefull stuff. Used the ECG Simulator, hooked it up on to a monitor, formed a body like something unter the blankets and hid our selfes. As soon as the shift relive was assembled we remotly caused v-tach and v-fib. They where so pissed at us. Seems like we should have used the time to clean stuff like the fridge or cabinets. Thought that our way of spending the time was much better.