My wife and I make okay money in a middle class area, but, due to a combination of good luck, and contrived to circumstances, we recently got to watch a college football game in the stadium’s super executive corporate sponsor level suite. It was awesome. Open bar, amazing catered food, and people networking all around me who are clearly in the c-suite of their respective companies. I had a list of crazy things I was going to say if someone asked me what I did, but it never came up.
I was tier one help desk, overnight, in a children’s hospital.
I had a doctor call me, who expressly made it clear he didn’t want a run around, while manually palpating a child’s heart to keep it in rhythm and thus, the child alive.
I told him there are back ups upon back ups that can be implemented, and I am happy to talk about his computer problem when the patient is SAFE. Not a little, “we got this,” safe, but SAFE.
Tier one help desk, overnight, no support, and I had to tell a person who turned out to be a board member that he could go fuck himself on his computer problem until the child patient was safe.
My first job was customer service, and I’ve been in IT for a dozen years. Its still customer service. You just have to realize who the customer is - in the case of a children’s hospital, it is always the child.
That’s wild. Was there even a good reason for him to call you? Like, was the IT thingie he needed for one of the machines they were using? And was there any followup to you telling the board member / doc that he should be focusing on other things?
I worked in intensive care for a short period - the amount of discussions about breakfast and what to order for lunch during reanimations was hilarious. There even was gossiping about docs and personnel while fighting death.
Professionals.
There’s a hard line drawn between those who can disassociate in emergency situations and function and those who can’t. I only use it for first aid and safety situations but I’ll never begrudge medical professionals for chatting while doing compressions unless the chatting starts hindering the compressions.