Things I Have Learned While Working At The Health Department

-- If the security guard won’t let you in the county courthouse with your expensive camera phone, you should walk back to your car and lock it in your trunk instead of hiding it in one of the garbage cans at the Health Department next door. On the other hand, you have probably provided the homeless guy who lurks in the basement with some badly needed cash. God bless you, brother.

-- When the nurse at the intake desk tells you that you can’t get an H1N1 shot because you aren’t under 24, don’t have an underlying medical condition, and aren't the primary caregiver for an infant under six months, coming back thirty minutes later and getting in another line with a different nurse isn’t going to do you any good.

-- Walking up to the vital records desk and asking if you can bury someone in your back yard is quick way to meet some new friends.

-- Please do not block the handicapped entrance while you are berating a staff member at the free clinic for not having a handicapped entrance.

-- There is a clean, well-lit, roomy unisex single-stall bathroom right next to the women’s restroom on the third floor. Use it. Do not bring your three little boys into the women’s restroom with you so that while you are otherwise engaged, one of them can discover that the latch holding the door shut on the last booth against the far wall is defective. It was news to me, too.