Public Transit Hissy Fit

After any shift (especially night shifts), I throw on a jacket over my scrubs* and hurry home to my shower, kitchen and lavender-vanilla scented bed (I love Downy). While I’m rushing home, I like to decompress by getting lost in my own world while surrounding myself with a giant bubble of silence. So imagine my irritation on a sunny morning I’m completely zonked out of my mind, I’m approached by a seemingly normal looking guy who looks directly at me and then loudly asks, “Excuse me miss, are you a nurse or a doctor?” Having just gone through a break-less shift liberally peppered with loud obnoxious alarms and patients screeching every two minutes, I ignored him and started to pray that he was addressing the other scrub-clad people on the train. Nope. He was talking to me. Once again, he very loudly asked me,

“Are you a doctor? A nurse?”

This time, I took a perfunctory look around the train to a) make sure that there wasn’t some dire catastrophe about to unfold and b) catch another scrubbie’s gaze and maybe get rescued from the asshattery of the buffoon standing in front me. Once again, my hopes were crushed.
I reasoned that he’d eventually tire himself out and since he did not look to be in any distress (clearly his ABCs were intact), I could go on ignoring him for another couple of minutes before getting home. Yet again, his unrelenting questioning did not cease.

“Miss, I need to ask you a few questions! Are you a nurse or a doctor? Where do you work miss? I NEED to ask you some questions!”

This was pushing it too far! I can normally get away with my standard “No speakie English” line and have public transit folk leave me alone but this guy was clearly not going to buy that. As the train hurtled towards my stop, his questioning became louder and more persistent. He then inched towards me (in the off chance that I did not hear him the first several times) and very loudly repeated himself again, this time trying to reassure himself that I was a nurse. Unable to contain my rage at having my decompression time and post shift latte sipping interrupted so rudely and without any justifiable reason, I snapped. Oh boy did I ever snap. While he was firing off the next round of questions, I screamed,

“Just leave me the f**k alone! I don’t wanna f***ing talk you jackass!”

Normally, I would have tried to cover my crimson face in a newspaper and quickly get off at the next stop to avoid strangers’ stares, but that morning, I felt a wormy self-righteousness in screaming back at this guy and keeping my seat. He was of course stunned and quickly sinked back into his seat. I’m sure I did not do the image of nursing any favours with my little outburst, but did it ever feel good. When I told my coworkers about this, some of them were high-fiving me for telling him off while others were aghast at how I handled at the situation. The latter group felt that I should have politely but firmly told him to seek medical attention from his family doctor or at a hospital.

So what should I have done? Should I accept the congratulatory high-fives or should I have handled the situation with more grace and dignity while keeping my ‘nurse’ face on?

*Changing out of them is not always an option because I would much rather catch the train on time than hang around work for another hour especially on weekend mornings. I am not safe to drive after a night shift.