Oh, thank merciful heavens, I'm off call at last.

[Aristus]

No more 3am calls for a while…

And I can have a stiff drink if I want…

[magicarpet]

1. Cheers,....

[MLAA]

2. How did your appointment go with the person whom you thought just wanted a

vaccination waiver?

[Aristus]

3. I ducked it. Sort of.

I was in my office charting a visit when the scheduler came in and handed me the waiver request form.

I told him “Nope. Not a chance.”

He went out to tell the guy and that was that.

[MLAA]

5. Good!

[Botany]

4. I suggest a Stormy Daniels

3 oz O.J., 3 oz Ginger Beer, 1 oz jack daniel's (or equivalent sour mash whiskey), & 1 oz Meyers rum (or a dark rum),
over ice ... squeeze of lime and a splash of grenadine

[Aristus]

7. I thought the Stormy Daniels was a chicken dish.

Two breasts and lots of spice.

Anyway, I’ve got all the ingredients except the grenadine. Guess I’m off to the grocery store…

[Botany]

8. I have made it sans grenadine and that is good too

Sometimes you have got to tough it out.

[Aristus]

9. Sure. Because nothing says 'tough' like going without the grenadine.

[Botany]

24. Kind of like being a doctor and you have a patient in front of you and time is critical you just ...

.... do what you think is your best call at the time.

[a kennedy]

6. Yippie, and here's to that good news for you.....

[Wolf Frankula]

10. Have you ever had this?

But I don't think they make it anymore.



Wolf

[Aristus]

11. I'm not sure I would want to drink something made by people who admired Reagan

enough to distill a spirit in his honor.

I have enough guilt already drinking red state stuff like bourbon. (Fortunately, Washington State has its own bourbon label; it reduces the guilt a little, and tastes wonderful.)

[Wolf Frankula]

12. That's an old back cover from Mad Magazine

I wouldn't say they admired Reagan. They also had this great line, "The Rats are destroying Disneyland. We've got to make Governor Reagan act. Hollywood couldn't, how can we?"

Wolf

[Aristus]

13. Shame on me. I loved MAD Magazine.

I’ve still got my entire collection out in the garage somewhere.

[Laffy Kat]

26. I loved it, too.

I tried to get my boys interested in Mad because they have always loved political and pop humor, but they really never seemed interested. Growing up, my sister and I would absolutely howl.

[niyad]

15. I was going to ask if you had ever tried Leopold Brothers (Denver, although we are not

Completely blue-witness q-bert). But I just checked, and they are not yet distributed in Washington state. My local liquor store owner highly recommends them, and I trust her judgment.

[Aristus]

20. Not yet.

If they make it to the Evergreen State, I'll give it a try...

[niyad]

22. Or possibly see if one of your local shops could order it. Per their website, they do not

ship to individuals, at least not yet. The website is interesting.

[LiberalArkie]

16. I thought he was an ex-president who wanted to be a movie star.

[LiberalArkie]

14. I was on-call 24/365 for over 14 years. The telco took me off call and I immediately asked

one of the 30 years olds worked in the same department what is good to drink as I had been on-call most of my life for one company or another and never drank. Everyone recommended Jack Daniels. So I laid around the whole weekend drunk.

I understand company completely

[PutGramaOnThePhone]

17. I'm happy...

for you! I know how it is*. I’m an IT pro and still do on call at my relatively ripe age.

* If you are a medical professional, or public safety…or in any number of other professions, I don’t really know how it is

[Aristus]

21. Physician Assistant working in primary care.

I pull a week of out-patient call every six weeks or so.

Call used to start on Friday evenings after the clinics close. But they moved the start to Saturday mornings, I guess to give the incoming provider one more night to get swozzled.

[Skittles]

25. if I get a 3AM call on my off nights

it is usually someone panicking because they're on a maintenance call with a dozen people and they screwed up a password

back in the day you could get a password fixed quickly - now some of them go to, like, Malaysia and take quite some time....

[calimary]

18. Good! You deserve a break!

[DFW]

19. I've had a little too much of the middle of the night myself

On Thursday, I had to run down to Paris for the day. I got up at 4:20 so I could get the 5:14 train down to Düsseldorf, so I could get the 6:16 train down to Paris. It got there pretty much on time at 10:05. I had to wait in line, because the border guards were checking every single passenger for vax papers. Some idiot in front of me had both fake Covid docs AND a phony ID, so they took him off somewhere, and I had to wait 5 minutes, but finally got into town.

After seeing everyone I needed to see, since the 5:55 PM train back to Düsseldorf (arriving at 10 PM) was again not running, I had to go to Paris East to get the 5:10 train to Frankfurt, and change there to Düsseldorf. This was already a couple of hundred KM out of the way. But once at Paris Est, MY train was canceled, too, and I was rebooked on an even later train to Karlsruhe, even father to the south, and scheduled to go from there to Frankfurt airport, change there to Düsseldorf, and then get the local train to my town at half past midnight. BUT...Murphy was enforcing his law.

Halfway to Frankfurt, before Mannheim, we got word that someone had committed suicide by throwing themselves in front of a train between Mannheim and Frankfurt. We got there an hour late, and my train to Düsseldorf was long gone. My only chance was to continue on to Köln, and get the last local train to my town, leaving Köln at 00:34 and getting in at 1:45. Oops, the tracks just in fron of the Köln train station were blocked, and the train didn't arrive until 00:40. The German train system gave up and told us all to line up at the information stand. Great--I had to get up at 5:30 for an appointment in the Netherlands at 9:00 the next morning, and I couldn't start calling people in the middle of the night to cancel. So, I got into a taxi, told the driver where I needed to go, and was finally home at 2:00 AM. I still had to get up at 5:30 for Utrecht the next day. I don't mind 10 hour days, or even 13 hour days. I've been doing that for 45 years. But 21½ hour days, especially when they involve several long stretches on dark, cold train platforms, are just not fun any more. Let the next generation of James Bond wannabes do that from now on. If I can't get at least four hours of sleep, I'm a grouch.

[Bo Zarts]

23. "The Call" .. aka "Short Call Reserve" at the airline ..

Last edited Sat Sep 11, 2021, 03:36 PM - Edit history (3)

I have pulled reserve before, and I sometimes bid long-call reserve if I had a project going at home. I would just "pass all trips" to other long-call reserves below me on the seniority list, and they might kick them on down to the short-call reserve list.

I had a fellow pilot at my airline who, due to his juniority, was often on the short-call reserve list. Jack (not his real name) was based in Baltimore. On one occasion, he had been sitting at home for over a week on short-call reserve. No calls; no trips. It was Friday and it was his last day on duty before going into scheduled off days .. at midnight. He mistakenly thought that he had several pilots junior to him on the short-call list. And he mistakenly thought he could pass a trip if quick-called.

The weather was good (bad weather generated more need for reserve pilots), and it was 18:00 (6pm). Friends were over for drinks with Jack and his wife, at their nice home on the bay, between Baltimore and DC. He felt it was safe. So he popped a cold one. Ummmm. Tastes so good I'll have another.

His cell phone rings. Shit! It's crew scheduling. "Hey Jack, this is Sandy at crew sched .. how long will it take you to get to the airport for an out and back to Buffalo? The flight is inbound from Tampa and the captain has to get off, he's out of time for the month. You are the last one on the short-call list." Oh shit.

"Uh .. Sandy .. uh .. I, uh .."

Stop this movie right here. Jack had only to say one thing at this point. One thing. All Jack had to say to crew scheduling, without all the uhs and ahs .. one thing. All Jack had to say to Sandy was, "Sandy, show me sick." It would be a lie, but a career-saving lie.

But Jack decided, unwisely imo, to be truthful. "Uh, Sandy, ah .. I can't take the trip. I've had two beers."

OMG, what a shit-storm ensued. The flight was cancelled because there wasn't anyone left to fly. But the flight would have been cancelled if Jack had copped a sick call.

Jack was doing a rug-dance in the chief pilot's office on Monday. He was given three months off without pay, with further actions possible. Possibly FAA certificate actions.

Jack's transgressions went into the official record as "Drinking on duty." That was true; he had admitted it to Sandy on a taped call. That was not good in the short and long run. But Jack's "Sandy, show me sick." was a lie. In the short run, it would have cancelled the flight. In the long run, not a soul would have remembered an obscure sick call or one cancelled flight among many.