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Hahahahaha...

Years ago, I had a female patient who didn’t want to lay down on the exam table because the sheets we put on it were not new sheets, that someone had lain on them before. I was more patient in those days, and I explained that the sheets were laundered before we used them, etc. but she got angrier and angrier that I would get new sheets.

So I went and got a different set of laundered sheets and put them on, but she insisted stridently that she needed brand new sheets that had never been used.

When I told her I didn’t have access to any sheets except laundered ones, she became very abusive and demanded to see my boss, so I pulled over a chair for her to sit in, and went to find my boss. I was the one they used to give the difficult patients to, and it became a kind of badge-of-honor for me that I could handle with equanimity even the most abusive patients.

I explained the issue to my boss, and told her the patient wanted to talk to her. So my boss walked in, and introduced herself to the patient, asking her what the issue was.

She said I had been rude and unreasonable to her, and wouldn’t get brand new, never used sheets. My boss repeated what I had said, but the intransigent woman insisted, so my boss said she would do what she could to get some new sheets.

My boss asked the woman if she could get her a magazine to read while she waited, and the woman said “Oh, no. Only if it is new, because people have touched those magazines before! (as she pointed at the waiting room)

My boss blinked and said “Well, someone sat in that chair you are sitting in...”

And the woman leaped out of the chair as if she had been sitting on a hot stove!

Heh, in thinking of it now, I cannot remember how we proceeded, but I think my boss simply went and got a fresh set of laundered sheets, made sure they were nice and crisply folded, and had every intention of saying “Okay. I found some brand new sheets!”