Spoiler alter. I’m gonna complain about religious people.

 

*****

 

I never fret about getting the shifts I want at the hospital.  The shifts I desire are always Sunday morning shifts. Mainly because I view this as a time when I would otherwise be sleeping.  It’s hidden time, freely available hours that won’t take away from another part of my life.  I’ve never had a hard time getting this shift. In fact, when the ICU volunteer team passed around the shift sign up sheet, I let everyone else get anxiously grab at the sheet. I waited until the end before I even took a look at it, and sure enough, every single Sunday morning shift was still open.  I work with a lot of Catholics. Either that, or all the other atheists like to work during the middle of the week.

So back track a few weeks to about the midway point of my rotation in the medsurg department.  I walk in to work, and notice that I don’t recognize a lot of the nurses and CNAs. People seem unfamiliar.  I normally work with the same basic group of staff, but today was different.  In the break room, I asked a nurse that I recognized who all the new people were.  He said, “Oh, those are just the people that were on call to come in if someone called out sick.” Then he added, “It’s Easter Sunday.” 

So Catholics. You’re welcome. You’re welcome, that the godless covered for you while you lied your way out of helping sick people so that you could go love on Jesus.  You’re welcome that somehow patients got their morphine, bandages were changed, hygiene was maintained so you could go get mouth herpes out of your nasty communal wine.  You’re welcome that some of us have chosen not to believe in God, so that you can go believe in God.  What the hell would have happened if we were ALL Christians. Isn’t that what you claim to want.  But then who would take care of the SICK PEOPLE while we are all at church??

I talked to the secretary, who I’d never seen before. She was hoping she wouldn’t have been called in on Easter, because to her it was Armenian Genocide day. But she came in, to cover for the Catholic who called out.

I’m not here getting mad at people who call out sick when they aren’t.  I’ve done it before, and have been on my way to Vegas.  The mad comes in because Christians like to claim they are better than the rest of us. That they lie less, that they have the “fruits of the Spirit,” that they are more moral, that they help the sick more.  That’s the problem. For the same reason it’s a problem when priests complain that their sexual abuse stats aren’t any worse than the rest of the world’s sexual abuse statistics.  Well, they SHOULD be much better stats if you’re claiming to be more moral than the rest of us. I AM evil sometimes. But so are the Christians.

Call out sick. I don’t give a fuck.  We’ll gladly cover for you when you lie about being sick, just like you will gladly cover for me when I lie about being sick.  But you HAVE to stop pretending that being a Christian gives you the right to be snooty about your supposed predisposition to morality.