Medical scrubs at the hospital (so not cute scrubs you can buy online for office wear) come in two varieties: surgical scrubs and nursing scrubs. Surgical scrubs are unisex, equipped with one front chest pocket on the left, and right-sided butt pockets. They are reversible, therefore, they come with matching mirror inside pockets--right inside breast and left inside butt. They are pretty plain and tuck right in into your string tied pant. Nursing scrubs attempt to be cute with a v-neck and shorter sleeves; they have two front pockets low (like coats) and cannot be tucked in. And not to be offense to be nursing colleagues, but nursing scrubs are useless. They make you look like a penguin, the pockets are completely stupid as nothing can be put there--it either falls out, or prevents one from sitting down without taking all the shit out, or prevents one from reaching in. There is no place for your ID badge unless you're wearing a lanyard, which, let's be honest, no one does, or unless you stick it directly in your cleavage, where it is constantly at risk of coming in contact with a bodily fluid of some sort. And most importantly, it is untuckable!!
So scrubs come out of scrub machines: these scrub dispensers, which kind of resemble vending machines (the ramen and pop-tart vending machine, not candy and chip ones). you swipe your car, press "C" for collect, or "D" for deposit and it tells oyu to open a certain door containing your scrubs based on a pre-programmed sizing. sounds fool-proof. Except...
Labor and Delivery has a physician locker room. Two actually-male and female. Since these are physician locker rooms, they are supposed to be stocked with surgeon scrubs. Except, some idiot in linen decided that since it is a 'female' locker room, the scrub machines are to be stocked with nursing scrubs. And this has been going on for over a year. Over time, as this challenge has been ongoing, the scrub machine was persistently and steadily being covered with angry messages about incorrect stocking. Pleas and threats regarding stocking surgeon scrubs only have been accumulating on the little "please call the number for the linen department with any concerns". pleas and threats to stock the machine with 'man' scrub only have similarly been left unanswered. for while, i was getting my way of getting normal scrubs by going directly into the male locker room and using their machine. then, one day, either due to excessive complaining, or sheer complete confusion, all the scrub machine cards ahve been replaced with new clean ones, and the male scrub machine was being stocked with nursing scrubs as well. the linen department, confused out of its mind, just started stocking ridiculous scrubs everywhere, disregarding its own sexist practices.
the scrubs are ridiculously inconvenient, and as a colleague of mine raged on the phone with the linen department "preclude us from doing our job".
this seems like a trivial thing, but it's not. and it's especially fascinating as to why this continues to be a confusing stocking point. unless there is a prevalent thought of sexism, as if a woman works in the hospital, she must be a nurse, and therefore, must want to wear nursing scrubs. the fight rages on! until then, i will continue to be irate at all of linen department, demanding my normal useful scrubs back!
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