11.15.2005

My Little Booth of Doom

I think the hearing booth is going to be the death of me. And everyone else who enters into it.

We have one hearing booth. Just one. And its disfunctional. The handswitch doesn't work unless you press it just so (which means a lot of coaching of the people who enter the hearing booth), not to mention that they placed the location for the hearing tests at the worst conceivable location in the hospital.

Right outside the window is the Medavac landing pad, as well as Ground Ambulence. The hallway outside the door is one of the busies hallways in the Hospital. Its nestled between the office of the First Sergeant and the Company Commander.

You are constantly having to creap out into the hallway and whisper a 'SHHH!!!" to people passing.

And back to the switch. Yeah, it all leads to that switch. You have to press it just right, it should cancel out the series of three tones, and if it doesn't, your not pressing it right. If it speeds through the frequencies before you can adequately be tested on them, you're not pressing it right. If Mr. Monotone comes over the speaker to tell you that 'you are pressing the hand switch when no tone is present' and there is most definitely a tone, you're not pressing it right. If it gets louder and louder despite the fact that you are pressing the button, you're not pressing it right.

Sure, this will undoubtedly lead to bouts of frustration as people will want to press the response switch harder or swing it against the wall, but alas, this makes it WORSE! Instead, you have to take a deep breath, relax, and at the next tone, press it again.

After fifteen minutes of this insanity, I can allow people out of my 'booth of doom' to inform them that their 'torture is complete', while I finaggle with a printer that can only be fed one sheet of paper at a time.

This machine goes down soon for calibration. Oh how I can't wait.

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