Today was a good Thursday.
I saw a litter of kittens that have clearly been well loved and taken care of. I had a bunch of appointments for diarrhea (diarrhea… it comes in waves) and they were all fine. I had to stay a little bit late because my last appointment was a dog having accidents who turned out to be diabetic. The owner was very nice, and she was also diabetic, so staying late didn’t really feel like a chore but something I was happy enough to do.
I had to apologize to one of the technicians because I learned I hurt her feelings. The clinic owner mentioned to me “as an FYI” that I’d made a joke last week and it wasn’t taken very well. To be honest, I could see why it didn’t go over.
I asked the tech if I could talk with her for a moment and said “Hey, sometimes I try to be funny and I accidentally hurt peoples’ feelings. I tend to do this with people who I like, feel comfortable with, and who are good at their job because I assume they know they are good. I heard earlier that I hurt your feelings when we worked together last time, and I’m really sorry.”
She said “It’s not a big deal. It was a stressful case and, at the time, you cracking jokes instead of helping was pretty frustrating.” Yeah,” I replied. “In hindsight I can see that. I’m sorry.” And that was the end of it. She smiled and gave me a quick nod, and then we were back to work.
In my experience, this is what it’s like to work most days in the clinic. Not the apology part, thankfully, but the general mix of mundane-good and mundane-bad encounters that make up a regular day.
Too often, we think about practice at its highs and lows. We describe our work to others and ourselves based on the greatest and worst moments of the year and decide if we are happy based on those excerpts.
I think we should be careful about this. If we want to know how we’re doing, we shouldn’t think about our big events. We should think about our average workdays.
Do you like your job on a regular Thursday (or whatever the most average clinic work day is in your case)? Not the Thursday when you’re having your annual evaluation or performing life saving surgery that gets celebrated on social media, but just your standard Thursday when most things were fine, some were good, and some were kinda frustrating.
How do you feel about those days? They make up the vast majority of your career. Maybe when you look at your average days, you’re happier than you think, or maybe you need a change. Regardless, I think there’s less value in asking yourself “what’s the worst/best thing that has happened to me here?” and more in asking yourself “Do I like being a veterinarian on Thursdays?”
