This Is What I Have To Put Up With

I am one of two people in my organization trained to do anesthesia machine maintenance. There are 26 hospitals in our 3 state region. Every 4 months we do scheduled maintenance on all of the machines. All of this means that there is an awful lot of traveling involved. Basically, 3 times a year I and another tech spend about a month on the road. We alternate weeks so that we're each gone for a week at a time, as opposed to a whole month.

The logistics of traveling to each site means that we need to be portable enough to load things easily in and out of a vehicle. The method that works well is to have 3 hard case tool boxes (they look like small suitcases), one each for test equipment, hand tools, and spare parts, loaded on a foldable rolling cart. I have become the keeper of the anesthesia tool kit. We're tight on space, so we have to be careful when packing things up. It's a bit like playing Tetris to get everything to fit, but if you put it all back neatly, you can easily access everything you need on a regular basis.

I share this tool kit with another tech. I do not know what he does when he's on site, but everytime the anesthesia kit comes back, it's a complete disaster area. I just picture him throwing things around the operating room like the Swedish Chef making a meal.

I talked with the tech the other day about putting things back neatly, especially the hand tools. The tools in question happen to be my own personal tools, and I get a little pissy when they walk away. Now, I asked nicely; I didn't chew him out or anything. I understand that it's late when he's done and he wants to go home, but asked him to please put everything back neatly, including any manuals he might take with him.

So, he says he'll put everything back in it's place when he's done and I send him off to do a repair. The next day, I walk into my office to find this.

Methinks he's messing with me. What you don't see in this picture is that the cart is also in the middle of my office, as opposed to the 3 feet to the right where it fits neatly out of the way against the wall by the cabinet.