Thursday, March 21, 2013

Nice Guys

My husband is the quintessential nice guy. The guy that people go to because they know they will get good advice. The guy that people ask for help because they know he won't think they are weak for not doing it themselves. They guy that people feel comfortable talking with when they are going through difficult times. He is that guy.

He is also the guy that will never say 'no' unless there is a legitimate reason. That reason would have to be pretty serious, like someone is dying serious, for him to refuse help.

During residency I got pretty tired of his willingness to help people. And by people, I mean other residents. I know that I don't have the full background stories, but it seemed to me like some residents knew they could ask him to cover for them and he would. And then when it was time that my nice guy needed something they were otherwise occupied and couldn't reciprocate.

Things like that bother me, not him.

Thankfully, in fellowship we haven't run into situations like that. Maybe he is no longer the nice guy at work. But I doubt he has changed much.

The way this last nice guy moment turned out wasn't so bad.

He was scheduled to be on call Wednesday night, but called me on Tuesday afternoon to say that he switched call with someone because they needed to do something (I am sure it was important). No big deal. It was already 4:00 and I didn't plan on him being home anyway.

As luck would have it, for being on call he managed to get home by 6:45 pm, take our son to his 7:00 pm activity, and picked up milk at the grocery store. He was home by 8:30 pm and as far as I know did not get a single page all night. Finally, a good nights sleep.

Wednesday he did work all day and most of the evening. Anyone who has spent time on call knows that things move in cycles. If one night is super slow, the next is usually busy. So to me it seems like he got lucky and got a slow night and the guy he switched with got his crazy night.

Maybe nice guys don't always finish last.

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6 comments:

  1. My guy does this too. He's constantly doing things for other residents & not getting anything in return. He also joins every administrative committee possible, and is always one of the like 4 people who shows up for dinner with students coming in for residency interviews. I can totally relate to being annoyed.

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  2. Same here. As he moved up in residency years, I expected the "favors" to be less. But not so much. Now out of training, we're sort of low man now in the group so it has started over. In this case, I feel he has to earn his place in the practice, so I am ok with the occasional switch or covering. The other guys I'm sure went through the same process. It's just part of the medical ladder. Sounds really horrible, but I've had a few talks with him about this. I don't want him looking like a doormat, besides that it messes around with the somewhat schedule he does have. I've learned to write his call schedule in pencil now!

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  3. Caleb is not one to be the nice guy... so far he only does schedule changes when it benefits him. I don't know how well this technique is going to work in the future. We shall see.

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  4. My hubby is the nice guy too. Other residents are always calling him to cover for them. Sometimes I wonder if they even bother going to anyone else. Thankfully now that we have a new baby they have kind of backed off a bit. :o)

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  5. Glad he nice guy move worked out! Have a great weekend!

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  6. Oh my gosh that sounds like my husband. I'm sure when he's in rotations we will have that problem a lot.

    Just nominated you for the Liebster Award. Here's more about it!

    http://marriedtomed.blogspot.com/2013/03/liebster-award-nomination.html

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