In my boredom at work I decided to start writing a story of sorts...since truth is usually stranger than fiction (especially if you work at a plastic surgery office) here's the truth about my office and the people I deal with. Honest to god, I couldn't make this stuff up...Let me know what you think.

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“So, can she go to work the day after her surgery?”
I nearly sprayed coffee all over my computer screen when the caller asked that.
“Actually sir, if she has a chin tuck, rhinoplasty, abdominoplasty and liposuction, I don’t think she’ll want to go anywhere right away. Certainly not to work,” I replied with as much control as I could muster.

What I really wanted to say was,
“Are you completely nuts? If she has the fat sucked out of her hips, her nose surgically broken and fixed, the slack in her chin lopped off and a patch of tissue the size of a dinner plate taken off her stomach she will not be going anywhere. In fact, she’ll look like a train-wreck and it’s unlikely she’ll leave the house for a few weeks much less go back to work the next day.”
I finished up the call after answering about five hundred more ridiculous questions (which included whether this guy’s girlfriend would have to “disrobe” for surgery and if she could keep her shoes on) without either laughing or calling the guy a complete moron. Those stupid plastic surgery reality shows have made my job hell. Now everyone thinks they’ll be instantly beautiful after plastic surgery. They don’t see the bruising, infections or dried blood, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Yes, I work in a plastic surgery office. No, it is not what I dreamed of doing “when I grew up” when I was a little girl. It helps pay the bills but it can be a spirit-crushing, soul-sucking job. And those are just the good days. Don’t get me started on the bad ones. I spend the day answering the phone which may seem like a cushy job but it’s really boring as hell. I get to deal with the patients who realize at 4:00 p.m. on a Friday that they’ll run out of narcotics over the weekend. Or the people that want to know why the nurse hasn’t returned their call even though they only left their message twenty minutes earlier. Or the people that need to see a surgeon because they punched a wall (we get more of those calls than you’d think). Or the people that ask idiotic questions like Return-to-Work guy who I just got off the phone with.
Basically, I have a hard time controlling myself from spewing out what I really think when I get calls like that. There are only two things that stop me from telling the Botox Babes, Cry-Babies and Wall-Punchers how stupid they are: 1) I need this job no matter how much it sucks because I need the money and 2) As bad as it can be, I know other jobs like this could be a lot worse.