Part of what I enjoy about what I do is adapting to a new place a few times a year. The work, by and large, is just the same stuff over and over, expressed after the fashion of the moment. There are only so many variations on the "type numbers in, do things to them, show what happened" business needs that I'm usually asked to meet, but the fact that I'm doing it somewhere new keeps it fresh.

Here's America's secret: it's not just your workplace that's psychotic and delusional, it's every workplace. I feel I can say this with some authority, as I'm well on my way to seeing them all. Like the man said, though: I used to be disgusted, but now I try to be amused.

Finding the quirks in the collective unconscious of an organization is part of the fascination of my work. Wherever you go, there are always the things you just don't do. The things that have always been screwed up. The odd little things that People Have Always Done There that always seem to trace back to avoiding a repeat of some trauma in the history of the place. The most entertaining things, though, are the things people take for granted.

Take my current place of work - it's a hospital, or rather the technical support for an agglomeration of hospitals. Despite the fact that I'm just doing the usual geek work in the usual geek cubicle farm, there is an aura of hospitalness that suffuses the place. I notice it mostly in the signage.

Hospitals themselves are disorienting places. People trying to navigate a hospital for the first time are, almost by definition, not at their best, and hospitals, again almost by definition, use the space within their walls mysteriously. You can get lost in a heartbeat...

One of the things I've noticed over the past few decades is that there are more and more signs on hospital walls to help the wanderer navigate, and to keep them from literally killing themselves or others. I think the signage coverage percentage has gone up as health care's percentage of the gross national product has gone up; I'd love to have good time-series numbers on that. We may as a nation be unconsciously investing our growth capital in hospital signs... but I digress.

The point is, there are signs, and hospitals have 'em by the cartload, and since the sign people have quietly taken over hospital administration, you get signs if a hospital just owns the building you're in. (That's my situation right now - I sit each day in one of the little administrative outbuildings to a very good hospital.)

While all these directional signs are good for the stressed and distracted visitor, it has a subtle effect on the psyche of people who walk around in hospitals for a living. They take for granted having signs around them at all times, telling them clearly what is around the corner. They grow to take them as a comfort, something unnoticed when present and unsettling when absent.

I speak to people working at hospitals differently than I would those at a small business. Small business people are much more likely to be making up the plan of the day on the fly, to be referring to nothing but their gut when deciding which way to turn. Hospital people need to hear things said in a more prescriptive way - you can't just give them a hot tip to run with. The structure of their support systems is different, there are different bases one must touch in order to contribute to them... and you see different absurdities along the way.

If you're not used to having a comforting sign with you at all times, having hospital-grade signage wherever you go can be absurd to the point of being insulting. This is particularly true when you're not actually in a hospital, and you have no real chance of killing yourself or anyone else if you don't receive moment-by-moment guidance.

Take this sign for an example:


Yes, folks, that's the inside of an actual men's room stall in my building, and the sign really does read:

Please be respectful of others and keep this area clean.
For extra assistance, please contact Environmental Services...

This one sort of irritated me the first time I saw it, especially as I had little choice but to look at it. I have to my name two college degrees, a resume of professional accomplishments as long as my... well, as long as your arm, plus survival of a nontrivial selection process to get brought into the place. Still, somebody still felt obligated to fire up the ol' inkjet to tell me to not make a mess when I went poo.

What historical trauma made that necessary in someone's mind? One shudders to speculate...

I'm so glad that I've learned to think past being disgusted, and to find ways to be amused by these things.

I walked out of there grinning, and resolved that if I ever wanted to get a little extra assistance in a men's room stall, I would just bring the girl in with me rather than waiting until I got there to call. Even if "Environmental Services" really did turn out to be the best euphemism ever.