I've got a career in a straight-laced (strait-laced?) profession in healthcare. The day-to-day seriousness gets to all of us sometimes, and humor is absolutely necessary. It doesn't mean that we don't care -- it means that we have to have some comic relief from the reality of the fact that we could kill you if we make a mistake. I follow a Facebook page called "Excuse me! This is a PHARMACY not a fast food restaurant!" Today, there was a photo posted of a prescription sent to a pharmacy by a doctor's office that said:

"DRUNotes: if generic is used, then remind patient it is because the pharmacist is as cheap and ignorant as the insurance morons."

There are SO many things I can say about this post, but my comment was that the doctor could have written for the patient to get brand name only and the patient would have gotten brand. Generic available? We substitute unless the doctor or patient tell us otherwise. My exact comment? "Or they could write "dispense as written." It's a thing, you know. smile emoticon" Of course, the smile emoticon actually looked like a smiley face.

As of 3 & 1/2 hours after posting the snarky comment, I have 222 likes (and counting!). I'm not a social media hound, by any means, but I like to keep people laughing about real life. As Emily Sailers (of Indigo Girls fame) said in an interview once (about the song Least Complicated, which is basically a song about putting your real self out there, I think), "You have to laugh at yourself, because you'd cry your eyes out if you didn't." As I look back, that one quote has defined the dynamic I keep in my workplace. We have FUN and laugh a lot. Not because our work isn't serious and important, but precisely because it IS. We need humor to get us through the day, what with the constant barrage of phone calls and e-scripts and weird questions (today's question: what kind of ephedrine is in the Bronk-Aid and Primatene tablets) and needy patients. We need levity to balance the gravity.

As for a career in a strait-laced profession, maybe there's a future for me in comedy.