Do you have to touch the naked chests of strange men? Do you have to ask personal questions or do other stuff that might make some people uncomfortable?

-- Anonymous, October 24, 2000

Answers

Consider yourself lucky.

In the military, I twice had to monitor the random drug testing, which involved making sure I saw the individuals peeing into the cup.

Yeah, some guys couldn't go, and then you had others that would keep leaning or twisting away, and of course then you just follow them in motion in order to keep your eye on the object in hand.

(My t wave is flattened)

-- Anonymous, October 24, 2000

When I was in the military, I had to have my body fat measured on regular basis because of of where I fell on a height/weight chart. This involved taking off my shirt and letting someone tape measure various slices of my torso. I always hated it.

Jim

-- Anonymous, October 24, 2000

Hey Jenn, You HAVE to use a female. I don't know how many times I have seen a male used for this type of demonstration just because it would be un-PC to show breasts. The real losers will be the students when it comes time to do it on a female they will not know where to place the electrodes. I reccomend a large woman as they are the most difficult to get a good position on. Please, do it for the children.

-- Anonymous, October 24, 2000

While I worked in security at a nuclear plant, we routinely did pat- down searches. Now, you'd expect the pat-downs in prison would be worse; but in prison the inmates expect it, and any complaining will fall on deaf ears. But when you're dealing with the general public, they don't really think it's the neatest thing. The searches were both random, and for failing either a metal or explosive detector (courtesy of federal regulation guidelines,thank you). When you have literally thousands of people going in and out every day, you're going to come across a small, but vocal minority that just aren't smart enough to be civil about it (as if WE enjoyed it), and cause problems for themselves. Since there were always witnesses and CCTV, it was pretty stupid for employees to complain and make a scene... but that wouldn't stop some characters from going overboard, being a jerk, and getting themselves fired. It would be especially interesting to watch the reactions of other loudmouths just after someone WAS fired. You would see them being quieter than usual, but it was obvious they were biting their tongue as their hostility seethed within. It was probably more embarrassing to do the searching, but people were given the option to be searched in private. I never felt the embarrassment that some people had upon GETTING searched; but it took a while until I was confident in DOING the search without a single trace of embarrassment. It's not something our culture is cool about....placing your hands all over a stranger ('cause the government doesn't trust you). But I guess it's a necessary evil because of the potential consequences (Los Alamos). Still an interesting personal/psychological dynamic. You gotta be paying attention...for sure.

-- Anonymous, October 24, 2000

A skilled person could do an EKG on a woman (even a heavy one) without exposing more than a bathing suit area of skin. (even less than that, if you only expose and re-cover areas as you work giving the semblance of modesty)

OTOH, since this is a demonstration for learning purposes, full exposure would be much better for everyone.

Maybe Jen will get some guy with some large obscene chest tattoo. (well, I doubt it, but that would be amusing -- great practical joke to play on the instructor)

-- Anonymous, October 24, 2000

Unfortunately, for this lab, I have to do a prechordial EKG, which requires placing six electrodes on the chest around the level of the fourth and fifth ribs, which are right near the nipples for most people. For this reason, I doubt that I'll be getting any female volunteers.

-- Anonymous, October 24, 2000

Volenteers? In San Francico? You could get a legless dwarf in the city and you don't think any women would do it? C'mon! Just offer a student extra credit and there will be more nippliage than a legless dwarf would know what to do with. If you don't use a woman, your students will be the ones who lose out.

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2000

My students are training to become pharmacists and physical therapists, not physicians. The purpose of this lab is to familiarize students with the principles on which the EKG is based, not to train them to perform EKGs themselves. If a female volunteers to do it, I certainly wouldn't have a problem with it, but I think it's unlikely that any of the women in the class would want to expose themselves to the people who they go to school with every day.

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2000

You might not have to do much hands on if you ask up front for two volunteers explaining one will do the EKG and the other to be the patient. Shouldn't be to difficult to help them locate landmarks and would be more interactive.

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2000

We're under orders to do the electrode placement ourselves, with the rationale that it will be less embarrassing for the volunteers to be touched by an authority figure (that would be me) than by their peers.

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2000

Under orders? Damn-Nazi-Politically-Correct-Gestapo-Lawyer-Fearing Administrators. The military was so much more liberal.

-- Anonymous, October 25, 2000

To return to the original question, a good friend of mine ended up getting a temp job with the Census Bureau. His job was to get people to fill out the long form, either while he was there, or on the phone.

A couple times he got sent the names of people he knew, then had to ask them a million questions about everything.

-- Anonymous, October 26, 2000

My story is not so much about the actions, but saying words which are sexually tainted; the project that I am involved in is currently trying to create mice with certain genotypes, so we have to set up certain crossings to obtain them: yeah you can't put more than two females with a male in the same cage, as this will stress him out too much that he can't mate...oh this ataxic mouse(uncoordinated mouse due to neural abnormalities) has weak limbs so maybe that's why she couldn't engage in sexual activity successfully...how old can a virgin mouse still be used to mate? ...To others in the lab who are not involved in the project will find these snatches of conversation 'sketchy'..and you'll find them smirking as we are 'seriously' discussing our mice...I would want to avoid any sexually related topics, but here I have to use the actual terms such that my boss can make a sense of what 's going on with our mice...

-- Anonymous, October 31, 2000