Right now the nuisance in clinic is not a bat or a batter but a battery. I have a hospital issued laptop from last April. I had a day of orientation and one day that they walked me through the electronic medical record. I absorbed about ten percent of what they said. One day is silly, it should be broken up over the orientation, over three days or more, but places do not do that. Anyhow, Friday afternoon I was done and supposed to see patients on Monday, with support.
I wandered back from the IT office to the HR office. “Um, I’m supposed to have a laptop. Is it already at the clinic?” HR didn’t know. They called the clinic. Nope, IT was supposed to issue me one. We went to IT together. IT was in the middle of a massive update. No one had remembered that I needed a laptop. They “found” one and set up my program. This all took another hour.
Months later we were on the phone with IT and I had to say the name of the laptop. “Oh,” said the IT person. “THAT’S where my laptop went.” I was issued an IT one, not a provider one. I don’t care, do I?
Except, the battery is old. I guess the laptop is “old” too, but it works. So far. However, the battery won’t last even through a morning now. I put in a ticket to IT about a month ago and a battery is on order “because that’s an old one, we don’t have those in stock”. I plug it in to the desk top in the office, but we run two or three exam rooms and it’s awkward and a nuisance to plug in and unplug in each room. I leave the cord in one room and cross my fingers.
Yesterday someone from IT shows up right before my last patient and takes the back off my laptop. Except the battery he’s brought doesn’t fit. He has to put it all back together. I laugh, because it’s kind of ridiculous. He does leave me a second charging cord, so now I have ones for two rooms. The risk is that I will forget and walk away with it plugged in and drop it. Of course, then I might be issued a “new” laptop.
That is the present silly mildly annoying nuisance at work.
For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: nuisance.
The picture is from the Saturday parade, a tree on a distant roof.
KO Rural Mad As Hell Blog 
Before the acquisition of my local company by a German giant in market research, the IT dept of my local company was just okay. Apart from creating tickets for issues and needs, we had to remind them in person about it.
After the acquisition, it’s just way above the line, at least as per the normal trends in a third world country. I needed a replacement charger for my laptop, I created a ticket in the morning and within 2 hours, I got it!
Wow! Awesome! It’s been three weeks at least, or more.
Being issued a laptop is a scary thing. We initially had our own desks and desktop computers. The hospital decided it was more economical to have “touchdown workstations” so we (all staff who have to document anything) could play musical chairs and try to find a place to sit to document.
They relented and gave therapists a shared office. We were told we couldn’t have our own desks – they would all be shared. We ended that the first day. We each got our own private 27 inches of space.
Then they moved to laptops. My fear was that we would be expected to document during a session – not the easiest thing to do when your work is hands-on – “okay, just stand there and don’t move or fall while I write up a few notes here” – not to mention the number of patients we had in isolation. How long would a laptop last being wiped down every half hour?
Luckily I retired before that happened.
I used to scribble notes when people talked and can often type close to the rate they are talking. Often I show them the lab values on the laptop so they can see the trend. I don’t see many people looking at their online “portal” here. I currently am playing musical desks — there are three different ones I have to move to depending if it’s the day ortho is there, or the ARNP who is there two days a week.
I wrote a lengthy comment but WordPress said I wasn’t logged in (I was) and trashed it. I was laughing as I read this (sorry) because I spent 42 years in IT, 31 running a department like you had to deal with,. Your post brought back many memories.
I laughed out loud when I read. “Oh…so that’s where my laptop went.” You can be certain, that guy got a new one. I hope you get a new one, or at least a new battery.
In my department, “Repairs/Replacement” were in a separate budget account, so an accidental fall from the counter – you know because of that stupid power cord – might be the answer.
Well, the first laptop I had when we started with an EMR had a touch screen. I did not even drop it but my touch screen eventually died because I hated the program so much. IT was impressed by how bad it had gotten by the time I called them. On the next laptop I lost the stupid plastic stick so I used feathers for the touchscreen. This entertained patients quite a bit and they would bring me feathers. I had a collection for different moods. One person said, “Mixing old and new technology, I see.” The feathers had good balance, a precise point and did not leave ink on the screen.