This morning I got my blood taken by Sandy, a phlebologist at my general practioner's office.
"How long have you been a blood lady," I asked as she snapped a rubber band around my upper arm.
She said she'd been a phlebologist for nine years, but only two years at this doctor's office. You must like it then, I said.
"Yeah, I like it. It's not the worst job I've ever had."
"What was the worst job you've ever had," I asked.
"UDF," she said without hesitation. "I worked there when I was 19, at a UDF in Loveland, where I grew up, and I hated it. I didn't even quit. I just walked out one day and said, 'BYE!'"
She said "bye" with such conviction and loathing that I laughed. "That bad, huh?"
"Oh, I thought it would be great. 'Everybody loves ice-cream! UDF will be fun! Ice-cream!' But no. I'm not very big. I'm about 5'2" and that ice-cream is hard. And it's hard to get it out of there. I'd be leaning into the case, my legs dangling in the air, pushing and pulling."
She leaned onto the desk/chair combo I was sitting at and kicked one leg up behind her to illustrate.
"I hated it," she went on. "Then a little kid would throw his ice-cream on the floor and the parents would just laugh and be like, 'Oh! Hahaha! Can I get another one?' Or they'd complain their shake was too runny."
She wound up and pretended to throw a runny shake.
As Sandy went back to my arm and pulled the needle out, I laughed and told her the frozen dessert business sounded brutal. "I'll start being even nicer to UDF employees," I said.
"They make you think it will be fun. At the training, at UDF U, that's what they call it, UDF University, you practice making UDF size dips and shakes and everything seems fun. Ha! The joke was on me."
So the next time you're enjoying a UDF Frosty Malt, think of Sandy. Because somewhere between that sweet shake and the clerk who made it is something so awful Sandy chose to handle biohazzard instead.
3 comments:
When I think of UDF, I think of the super sweet UDF clerk at Glenmore who looked like Loretta Lynn after about 300,000 too many cigarettes and who could always make me smile when I was having the worst day just by calling me "sweetie" or "honey."
...or I think of another clerk there who, when she heard I lost my precious 30th birthday Tiffany's bracelet outside UDF about two minutes earlier and then came back to find it gone, was like, "Yeah, you'll never get that back."
Hmm. I'll choose to remember Loretta. Or Sandy.
I once had a UDF clerk tell me that their ATM was chained to a truck and dragged out after another clerk was tied up and locked in the back.
Then she gave me the stink eye. I really think she thought I had a hand in it just because I asked where the ATM went.
I once had someone take my blood who was kind of a freak about it. Like she really liked taking blood and made me feel totally uncomfortable.
I wish SHE was workin' at UDF instead of extracting my precious blood...
Post a Comment