Please silence your cellphone.
I’m sitting quietly in a hospital nook, exhibiting location-appropriate behaviour, waiting for a friend to emerge from a routine test requiring mild sedation after which they cannot drive for 24 hours. I’m scanning the walls looking for interesting bits. My results so far? Not much, truthfully, but at least this sign gives me something to do.
It’s a reasonable request — not that that matters, really. Their house, their rules, yeah? Demonstrating my technological savvy, in about a dozen quick steps I silence all things that beep or ring or buzz or chime on my cellphone. But do I stop there? I do not: I scan on. Maybe there is more required of me, as a quiet and bored waiter. A girl can dream.
This is a No-Scents Zone.
Avoid wearing or using scented products.
I frown slightly. At this post-shower stage of my day, what am I supposed to do with this instruction? I glance around. Is there a public shower in which I might remove any scented products? No.
Hm.
Is it a sign only for the routine-test takers? Maybe, but wouldn’t this be better addressed in the general instructions emailed out to all routine-test takers, as it is for mammograms? Posting it on the door into the unit is late-to-need, I’m thinking.
Abandon scents,
all ye who enter here.
Is it a sign only for staff? Maybe, but wouldn’t it be better communicated through a hospital-wide instruction to all staff? A specification of their standard working conditions?
Is it a sign only for waiters on their second (or more) waiting trip? Maybe, but this sort of lowers the bar, no?
Yes, it turns out that we can stand some scent,
but for goodness sake don’t do it again.
Hm.
There was no hospital staff member who had the time or, I’m sure, the interest to discuss this with me, so it will have to remain one of life’s little mysteries. But it got me thinking about the timing/placement of signs and instructions. In general I think we do pretty well.
No U-turns
These signs appear at the intersection as you face it, not to your left to catch your eye only after you make a U-turn.
We don’t tolerate abuse of staff.
In public-facing workplaces, these signs stand on the desk of the first person you see, not on the inside of the front door, to be seen only as you leave.
Pack it out.
These signs adorn trailheads, not the last 5 metres of the trail. And so on.
Let me be clear. I get that scent can be a problem. I can’t walk into most candle shops or into many soap shops and many people are more sensitive-to-scent than I am. But if you have a special requirement — any requirement, really — then tell me about it. In a noticeable way, so that I can see or hear it in a cluttered world. In plain language, so that I can understand it even when I’m distracted or working in something other than my first language. And in time, so that I can accommodate it.
And the reverse holds true for the communication of any of my requirements or preferences. I need to consider whether what I want is the equivalent of a silent cellphone, or a scented-product-free body, and plan accordingly.
Ha!
I suppose the next step for the host agency is to provide for scent masking – some sort of suit you can jump into to contain your offending scents in the same way that a freely offered mask tries to contain your germs. Actually, that approach could find further application across our society.
My concern is the possible misspelling of one of your directives:
“Abandon scents, all ye who enter here.”
Should it maybe read:
“Abandon *sense*, all ye who enter here.”
Vince – Yeah, I guess full-body masks can’t be far off. Now that’s a happy thought for a Sunday morning, although I take your point about its usefulness in other environments. Like on buses. As someone says, nothing is all good or all bad.
I still don’t understand why the entire population is supposed to abandon perfumes for the sake of — whom? If there were a science-based reason, I would be happier to conform. Medical staff can use smells in diagnosis. I have been at one or more bedsides daily for the past eight months. Deodorants for patients are encouraged. Unavoidable smells are sometimes commented on personally, not medically. I use my nose to determine the level of care my family member is receiving. In fact, I have quietly made it my business to improve on the level of care he is getting in some ways and I would go beyond that to intervene in other ways if I had the authority. For example, I have knowledge from professional care workers that unpasteurized Manuka honey is a better treatment for pressure wounds than the standard chemicals being used currently. Three months and counting, these wounds are located to risk sepsis. He is on two antibiotics again for a urinary tract infection and what have all the antibiotics done to his immune system and organs?
I wonder if scents fall into the same category as peanut allergies: it is easier to ban all instances than to make particular exceptions. Or to determine the cause of the allergy in the first instance and address it. Meanwhile, I continue to enjoy wearing perfume when I can get away with it. I appreciate the taste and enthusiasm in scent expressions when I get a whiff of them.
Laurna – Interesting points. Ideally, everyone would use scented products reasonably, but I think it’s easier to use blanket edicts than to appeal to good sense (no pun intended).
It’s not just scents encouraged for patients… When the holocaust camps were liberated, the women were given lipsticks. We women know why.
Barbara – Indeed.
Perhaps there could be rolling screen of prohibitions and encouragements. Would be something to look at while we wait. And wait. And …
Judith – Oddly, at the Heart Institute I did see rolling screens of various messages in two official languages. They were always in transit areas, not waiting areas. Go figure.
I talk to people — even wrote a whole essay on it. Encounters in a Waiting Room. Wonderful stories. I’d ask couples how they met and they would look at each other and smile, then one (or both) would tell me about it. Only one person in two weeks didn’t want to chat — they all welcomed me. We had a good time. But maybe it’s an American thing (along with my Can. Cit. (1971)) — not fearing to talk to strangers.
Barbara – I think it’s a cultural difference (Canada/USA). I find it easier to talk to strangers in the USA, but if I initiate in Canada, the reaction is generally OK. My parents noted the same thing travelling in England and staying in small hotels. No one would speak to them first, but if they piped up, people were perfectly pleasant.
I guess I look like I’ll just wear then down, so they might as well join me in a conversation. I have that friendly doggy look to me. I also had a clipboard — the held John’ cryptic crosswords while he went in for radiation — and looked “official” ? Told some people I was applying for the hospital position of Official Distractor in Waiting Rooms. Ha!
Barbara – 🙂 That would be a good volunteer position for many places, actually: Official Distractor.
…. add to above. Asked them to rate me 1-5 … 5 being the most irritatingly distracting… they got the joke. Laughter ensued. 😀
Barbara – 🙂
Isabel
When I phone my doctor’s office, I have to listen to about 4 minutes of stuff, mostly having to do with there will be no tolerance for abuse of the doctor, the nurse, the secretary, the cleaning person, other patients in the room, the uncomfortable chairs in the waiting room, the place where you pay to exit, the parking lot gate, and any stray dogs thst happen to be wandering by.
Then you’re put on hold.
And sometimes, you get cut off before a live person answers, making it necessary to call again and listen to the same rigamarole all over again.
Would it be too much to ask that there be a way to press a number and bypass that announcement? Believe me…I’ve asked!
Tom
Tom – I feel your pain; that does sound excessive. I’m trying to remember when the “Don’t abuse our staff” signs/messages first started appearing. It would be a courtesy to regular patients to offer a secret code for jumping past that bit.