Imagine this.
You are at work. In the factory, selling cars in a dealer showroom, the retail setting at the mall or maybe waiting tables at the diner.
One of your customers is angry, belligerent and drunk. She grows more angry and begins to tell you that when she leaves she will involve her family who will find you and hurt or kill you and possibly your family and children.
You believe this person to be credible and have a concern that she is capable of acting on these statements.
If you contacted the Police there is a very good chance that she would be arrested. If this was your spouse or partner there is almost a 100% certainty that she would be arrested on a domestic violence charge.
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has increased the penalty for actions like these in regard to healthcare workers and it would be a felony.
However, life has somehow become so twisted that actions like this toward nurses and other medical providers have become accepted as just part of the job.
Last night I dealt with this person. I did so for HOURS and in a courteous manner that consumed every bit of professionalism I had.
Trust me, when someone threatens my family my instinct is not to remain calm. She was not drunk enough to have lost control of her thoughts. These were intentional, purposeful threats that done anywhere else in society would have landed her in prison.
I wanted to scream at her and tell her that she didn't scare me (she didn't nor did the "300 pound brother who can bench 500 pounds"), that my Italian ancestry, military training and Glock 23 are probably enough to defeat any threat she dispatched against me. But I didnt. All I wanted was for her to be treated the same as if she had made these threats against a cashier at WaWa.
But she wasnt. Because I am a healthcare worker. And my life is somehow not as valuable as most other workers in Lancaster County.
That is what pissed me off. That is what left me walking from the hospital disgusted and angry.
That is wrong. Really wrong.
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