Sometimes, People Can Be Hard to Deal With

And other times, I am thankful humanity is still intact.

AI-Generated Image: Two Black women, one with locs and the other with braids, a White woman, and one Black man, and one White man standing near each other, looking down and somewhat into the camera. The sky is cloudy and ominous, almost apocalyptic.

MAGA followers are a cult, there is no reasoning with them.

In my position, I encounter diverse individuals from various walks of life. This is the one thing I truly love about my job. I’ll get the shit-show starters, the peacegivers, the easily threatened, the nonchalant, the outright downtrodden Debbies who want to make your life miserable in the five minutes you spend with them, racists, and the overly religious. Anything’s game when you are registering patients for radiology imaging scans and invasive procedures.

This past week, on Wednesday, June 04, 2025, I checked in an elderly woman who had been accompanied by her equally elderly husband, and she had an estimated amount of $103.60 due at the time of service. She scoffed and looked directly at me and said, “What is happening to healthcare? Why is it so high?” Now, me being the calm, cool, and collected individual I am, said ever-so-sweetly, “Ma’am, the cost of healthcare has always been high; it’s just higher now, unfortunately.”

Her rebuttal to this caused me to tilt my head at an angle that I am sure seemed uncomfortable to others looking at me, but I was gauging her body language when she completed the next sentence. She said, “Trump needs to do something about this.”

OH?! I smirked and shook my head. Her husband finally spoke and said, “Well baby, he’s trying to, but the damn Democrats keep putting up roadblocks and he just can’t get nothing done.” REALLY?! Ah, the joys of patient registration and hearing nonsense when nonsense should be allowed in small doses, and it’s not. I am sure my mouth flew open, and I furrowed my eyebrows in a sort of Mr. Bean reaction. I bid them a “good day,” and checked in the next patient.

Unless you’re cozily living under a rock, you’d know Trump has done nothing to alleviate the skyrocketing cost of insurance premiums or their effectiveness as it pertains to our elderly, retired, and older consumers. If anything, he has made it worse since his re-entry to the highest seat in the land in January of this year.

President Donald Trump repeatedly said he would not touch the programs millions of seniors and people with disabilities count on – those he vows to "love and cherish" like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. 1 Over the past 100 days, we have seen the exact opposite. From slashing health care services for millions of Americans to weakening educational supports for students with disabilities, President Trump’s administrative actions are directly harming older adults and people with disabilities.

Under the Trump administration, decades of hard-fought gains in health services, education, public health, and retirement and social security will be lost.

A few days before the patient above, a peculiar-looking elderly man had been coming out of one of our waiting areas as I was leaving the other across the hall, entering it, and he proudly displayed his MAGA hat on his head. It matched his walking stick perfectly. He had a sort of joyfully defiant scowl on his face, and I said, “Good morning!” He did not respond. Because he was elderly (I’d say early to mid-70s), I repeated myself. Still, the joyfully defiant scowl on his face remained, and no words were uttered.

I said to God, “These are your people. Fix them.” And I went to do what I needed to do at that moment.

When you have to deal with the public, you never know what/who you’re going to get, but MAGA followers are by far the worst. And I am not simply talking about folks who casually vote Republican no matter who is on the ballot, no… I am speaking about people who are extremely connected to all things MAGA and will not give up whenever you show them the wrongness and structurally dysfunctional operations of our current administration.

You can’t dissuade them or point out the nonsensical happenings developed by their Great Leader and Orange Invader, Donald J. Trump. There is nothing you can do to make them see the rightness in life vs. the wrongness of the one they worship instead of God. Try as you might, you will get nowhere fast, and if you allow them to, they will drag every inch of sanity you have left from your brain, flog it until it’s unrecognizable, and then stomp on it.

I’d had enough of their antics battling my previous Operations Manager (who should have never been hired, by the way. She bullshitted her way into the company) and Human Resources, and I am fully equipped to dance on the same floor with them, but some days I truly feel like…

I’ll pass.

But humanity is still intact, and a few other patients reminded me of this.

I registered a co-worker’s mom from my previous tenure at this site. I did not remind her who I was. The last time she saw me, I had a pixie-style haircut, and I have just below shoulder-length locs now. I’m also four years older, but I look about the same. She had one exam scheduled for the early morning and another for the late afternoon. Noticing this, I reached out to the Tech for the afternoon appointment and explained the situation to him, and asked if it would be okay for them to work her in after her morning appointment so she would not have to come back in the afternoon.

Given the fact that she lived thirty minutes away, a second trip to the same place for a service that could be rendered while she had been there seemed to be a no-brainer. Of course, the Tech agreed. She had both scans done. Upon leaving, she stopped by the front desk to thank me profusely and said so softly yet undoubtedly sound, “I appreciate you. I appreciate you so much.”

A simple thing on my part and the Tech’s too, led to her reaching out to both my supervisor and the Center Manager to let them know about her experience. She also informed them that hiring both of us was a wise decision, and she commended the center for having such great employees. The Center Manager came to me and read the email she sent and looked at me with a knowing in her eyes and said, “Yup. This is where you’re supposed to be,” and I agreed.

AI-Generated Image: An elderly Black man with a bald head, walking up to an appointment desk with a smile on his face.

Another patient, of Caribbean descent, also elderly, walked past our sign with absolutely no intent of waiting to be called up, stopped at my desk, and smiled. I smiled as well. I then said, “Well… Good afternoon, sir! What is your name and date of birth, please?” And he said, “Oh! I know I am in good hands now. I just know it.”

And from that moment forward, we had a TIME while I registered him. I could tell he was a charmer back in his heyday and probably still is whenever necessary.

His wife walked up shortly after and sat down in the chair in front of my desk. To her, I said, “Hello, ma’am. I hope you are well today.” And she looked at me and smiled, and before she could say anything, the patient said once again—in his wife’s direction, “I’m in good hands, my love.” And he had been. I made sure of it.

A handsome elderly Black man (there’s a theme here, have you noticed it?) walked in a bit confused and stopped at my desk. He needed to register his brother, who was older and hearing impaired. His brother, the patient, also had not been used to taking care of himself or dealing with visits such as this particular appointment.

I assisted both of them as professionally as I could, and walked them through all the necessary paperwork, too. At one point, the younger brother sighed, looked at his brother, and said, “Come on now, bro. You good? Sign right there in that box!” I could tell he was frustrated, and his patience was skating on thin ice. But, this is the part of my job I love the most. I casually stepped in, pointed exactly where his brother needed to sign, and gently said, “You’ll sign this document for me right here.” He looked up to me, and looked back down at the e-signature pad, and laced it with his John Hancock.

After about ten minutes, I directed both of them to where they would go to wait for the Tech to call the patient back. The younger brother lagged and turned back to me, smiled, put his hand up on my counter, and said, “Thank you so much for your patience with us.” To which I replied, “It’s my pleasure, sir. You both have a great day.”

Humanity is still intact. It steps in when we least expect it. And there are so many people whom we may not immediately recognize as contributors to the beauty of what living is, walking around, ready to remind us.

It is such a satisfying feeling to know this—to experience it daily.

For the days that I have to break down and shake my head at the horrendous goings-on in the United States, others lift me up, dust me off, and step in right on cue as blessings from God. And those are the days I hold onto just a little longer. They are my peace when darkness sits down beside me as company.

They save me from myself. And in the medical field, one needs a whole hell of a lot of saving.