On Guard

How do you know when you can trust someone? How do you test someone's trustworthiness? If you don't trust someone, can you still be nice to them?

I've got so many questions and situations to ponder. Someone new started at work. I've found out that this person talks about the rest of the office behind our backs. Some days this person is so nice and some days this person is a complete bitch. It's confusing. The collective office has pretty much rendered the verdict that this person is crazy. It's so frightening how sweet they can be when they try. I am under that impression that it's fake, but they pull it off well. I keep my guard and don't get close to this person. I have gotten close to Katherine, Swann and Susan, but I would have to say that Katherine is the only person that I really trust.

I've been working with the medicals student for about two months now. It's going fairly well. I proctored the end of clerkship exam for my students (Neurology), Family Medicine, and Psychiatry. It went pretty well, until I got back to the office and realized that the person who handed out my exams (I was reading the prompts, while she passed out my exams) didn't hand them out in sequence. All the exams are numbered and they should be handed out 1,2,3,4 and so on. This time, she handed them out 1,2,4,7,8 and exams 5 and 6 weren't used. It wasn't a huge deal, but it's just frustrating. I'm trying to do everything perfectly so Dr. Goldstein will respect me and, more importantly, trust me to get the job done. I don't think the person handed them out in the wrong order, but I can't be sure.

I guess the situation with the exams taught me an important lesson. If you want something done correctly, you have to do it yourself. For the situation with the new person in the office, I'm not sure what I am supposed to learn. Is it good for me to be nice to their face when everyone in the office is constantly talking about their bad attitude? How do you know who you can up to? It's so tiring having to constantly be on guard.

Oh well, I've got 3 more days and the a few days off for Christmas.