Another weekend, I found them sitting on the floor playing a game of cards. The supervisor had trouble being strict with them. She felt like a mother figure, and she often said, “These are my kids.”
I could only shake my head. “That is not how your relationship should be,” I explained. “You are their supervisor, and you need to make sure they do their work.”
One day, an employee came to my office to tell me he could not work Monday nights because it was football night on television. I couldn’t believe my ears. At the same time, I realized that he was a college student, and since I had been a college student once, I tried to be helpful, talking to him as an equal. Yet, when it came down to it, I told him, “While you are at work, do a good job. This job is providing you the means to carry on your college studies and to achieve your dreams. The football game is not going to do it.” He left my office, not happy, but realizing it made sense.
It was a challenge to get these college students to improve their work ethic at Providence Hospital. One day, Mr. Gilreath invited a consultant to help design the office space layout, and while giving him a tour, Mr. Gilreath brought the consultant to the SPD Department. He pointed out the bare concrete floors in the reprocessing area and explained that he wanted to create a more aesthetic feel to the area by installing a covering that would give the floor more traction, since it often got wet. All of a sudden, someone threw a glass toward them while their backs were turned. The glass crashed against the wall. It was an act of rebellion, as the employees were unhappy with some of the changes Mr. Gilreath was implementing.
Alarmed, Mr. Gilreath demanded to know who threw the glass. No employee came forward because they all were protecting each other. After the tour, the consultant expressed amazement at how the employees behaved and how chaotic the department functions were. Needless to say, once it was determined who threw the glass, that employee was fired.
After I had been assistant administrator for four or five months and had made significant improvements in reprocessing, Mr. Gilreath asked the consultant to take another look at the floor. This time he encountered no incident with the reprocessing employees, and after the tour, the consultant commented to Mr. Gilreath, “I don’t know what Kris has done, but today those chimpanzees behaved like adults.”
I felt strongly about creating a good image in the reprocessing area of the SPD department. As assistant administrator, it especially reflected on me. I kept telling the employees, “Just because you are working with soiled items, it doesn’t mean it should look dirty or smell soiled, and it doesn’t mean that your job is not important.” Over time, the employees began to cooperate, as they realized I was genuinely interested in them.
At the same time, while making my rounds, I observed that the reprocessing employees were washing the vacuum containers, referred to as “vacutainers,” that the pathology lab used to draw blood specimens. I was sure that vacutainers could not be used again, since they did not have their tabs anymore and were only a single-use item. Yet it took the employees hours to wash the vacutainers by hand so they could send them back to the pathology lab.
One day, I asked an employee, “Hey, why are you washing these?”
“This is what we have always done ever since the hospital opened,” the employee replied.
The reprocessing supervisor said the same thing.
At the end of the day, I mentioned this incident to Mr. Gilreath. He just laughed. “Kris, let me handle that,” he said.
Immediately, he went to the pathology lab and spoke to the lab manager in charge of operations. “What do you do with these vacutainers when they are sent back to you?” Mr. Gilreath asked.
“Oh, we just throw them away,” she said.
Mr. Gilreath could not believe it. The reprocessing employees were spending so much time washing these containers, and the lab employees had never taken the time to inform the reprocessing supervisor that they only threw them away.
“What a discovery you are making every day!” Mr. Gilreath told me.
In 1973, Raj and I bought a house in Anderson Township southeast of Cincinnati, an area with a good school district, since Sub-hash would be starting preschool soon. Located on Sunderland Avenue, it was a four-bedroom, ranch style home on a peaceful cul-de-sac.
One day in early June 1973, Raj woke up with a sinus headache and a stuffy nose. After feeding Subhash, she decided to go out on the deck to see if the sunshine would make her feel better. As usual, she closed the sliding door behind her so Subhash would stay inside. After a few seconds, Subhash came to the door and pushed the latch down. Hearing the click, Raj turned around and saw Subhash grinning at her, his face pushed up against the glass.
“No, Subhash!” Raj called out, rushing to the door and kneeling down to Subhash’s level. “Unlock the door, Subhash. Please! Push the latch back!”
He did not understand her, and with her fingers, Raj mimed touching the latch and pushing it up. Subhash only smiled, thinking, Mommy is playing with me. Raj made another attempt to communicate with him, but Subhash only laughed and rapped his hands on the glass.
Determined to find a way to get inside, Raj went to the deck railing, hoisted herself over, and jumped fourteen feet to the ground. Barefoot and in her pajamas, she walked to our next door neighbor’s house and rang the bell. Belinda came to the door and looked at Raj in surprise.
“I’m sorry for being in my pajamas,” Raj began, “but I am locked out of my house, and my one-and-a-half-year-old son is inside.”
“Oh, dear. Come in, come in,” Belinda said. “I will call the
