How to win an iPad for free!

I’ve recently become very bothered by our culture’s seeming need to reward bad behavior. It seems like it usually occurs without a conscious realization, but after the fact, you realize that something seems very wrong. Of course, if you don’t take the time to think about it, you might just go through life not realizing at all. Or you might find the irony of it all even humorous.

A few examples that easily come to my mind occur on a regular basis at my workplace. Patients are rewarded for bad behavior all the time. For example, if a patient arrives five minutes late for an appointment, they will most likely be called before the person who has the next scheduled time but arrived 20 minutes early. The main reason is because different types of appointments may last longer, so we try to ready patients for physicians in the correct order. I don’t know if this is how all offices work, but this is how we do it. The logic of why we do this makes sense, but it doesn’t really seem fair to the person who shows up on time or early.

The other example I can think of at work are patients (or parents) who are mean. Patients who yell or complain usually get their way because they’re louder and because I’m in a service industry and “the customer is always right”. Of course that rule has a bend in healthcare, because if a nurse is advocating for the patient, and you’re in the way of that…the nurse is right. Hands down. If you don’t know, a large part of pediatric nursing is dealing with the parents. They become easily offended, they expect extra special treatment, they ask to speak to your manager if you don’t review their entire chart and memorize the health history of their children. And what is the response to these irrational, overbearing, and overall mean people? We apologetically approach them with a promise to provide better care for them and that we know they deserve the best. I digress…

The rewarding of bad behavior is all over television too. I won’t even get myself started on the shows “16 and Pregnant” and “Teen Mom”. But back in the dark ages when I was a teenager (this was only 10 years ago but seems like a lifetime because of the drastic change in culture), it was frowned upon to be the pregnant cheerleader. That opinion seems so far gone now. I would not think it too far-fetched that somewhere a 15 year old is trying to get pregnant just to be on these shows. I know many people who love these shows, so I might be stepping on toes, but I just kinda see it as bad behavior being rewarded. Where’s the show about the teen who makes straight A’s, never succumbed to peer pressure and tried drugs in high school and got a scholarship to college? I’ll admit that wouldn’t be all that exciting…but still.

Another example: Yesterday morning, Justin and I ate breakfast while watching the news that covered some incredibly troubling stories. At first glance, they might seem humorous to a viewer, and the reporter covering them chuckled as she read the stories. The first story involved a pair of women who began camping out in front of a Best Buy a whole week before Thanksgiving. The camera guy pans across their tent in the parking lot and zooms in on the bottom of one of the ladies shoes, which are propped up on a cooler as she sits in a folding chair. Other shoppers, looking entertained /confused, are walking into the store to buy what they need. These women have put their lives on hold for an entire week to camp out in front of the local Best Buy…really? What could they possibly need so badly? How much money could they earn at a job in the week that they’re spending sitting around not contributing to society? Would it be enough money to cover the cost of paying the extra money instead of being first in line for Black Friday sales? Don’t the people at the beginning of the line get trampled by the crowd anyways?

The worst part about this story is that the manager of the Best Buy dubbed them “the First Black Friday Shoppers” (as if that’s a title to be proud of)…and gave each of them an iPad! WHAT!! Part of me just feels like this is SO wrong! This lazy, non-contributing, pointless behavior has been rewarded with an iPad. Who is paying for these people to support themselves on worthless, wasted days like this…please don’t tell me that’s where my taxes go. I can just see how this rewarding of bad behavior is going to encourage other idiots to follow suit and make themselves useless.

The second story is worse…because I know for a fact that yours and my taxes are paying for this man’s existence. Evidently there is a prisoner out there somewhere, who is suing his prison because he’s being tortured by other prisoners. Guess what they’re doing to him? They’re forcing him to watch the same movies over and over again because the state won’t pay for the prison to have cable TV stations. The man has already tried to sue the prison five other times unsuccessfully. So far, this man has not been rewarded in any way I suppose because he hasn’t won any of his lawsuits, but he’s certainly not being punished for his stupidity. He’s also being treated well enough in prison that this is the biggest complaint that he can come up with. I know a lot of law abiding citizens who have worse lives than you do brother…

So to wrap up, I wish there was something I could do to decrease this cultural phenomenon of rewarding bad behavior. But I really hate conflict, and I don’t like ruffling feathers, so I don’t see myself sending people home when they show up late for their appointment, or refusing to provide care to a child whose parent is a ranting idiot. However, I will try to not watch 16 and Pregnant…I can’t make any promises though.