"You're wearing the shirt for the band you are going to see? Don't be that guy!"

Blogging is quickly becoming my favorite "downtime at work" pasttime. And to avoid the Internet police, I usually write up my blog on Microsoft Word and paste it into the blog. Although, I am not sure if the agency really looks at internet use outside of normal business hours. I mean, it's 9:40pm, for goodness sakes. They gotta figure we have SOME downtime on this shift.

So I was perusing the internet briefly to find out information about the Acacia Strain, a metal band whose new album I am interested in purchasing at some point. I am doing this primarily because I am trying to calm down after the case I just dealt with at the Lynchburg General ER (I will get to that in a moment). Apparently, the Acacia Strain is not allowed to play anymore gigs at the House of Blues in Orlando, Florida. The reason for this is because there was a brawl during the concert, but not during Acacia's set. However, the proprietors of the club identified that several brawl participants had Acacia Strain shirts on.

I have two problems with this. First, why punish the Acacia Strain when the brawl didn't even occur during their set. Second, why were the Acacia Strain fans blatantly engaging in the most cardinal sin of concertgoing, that being "Don't ever wear a t-shirt for the band you are going to see!". So now I'm thinking that House of Blues, Orlando has banned the Acacia Strain because of their dorky, Acacia Strain shirt-wearing fans, not because of some brawl. It is a well known fact that when you go to a metal concert, you wear a shirt from a band that is not performing at that concert. If you don't have any metal shirts, then you wear a camoflage t-shirt, black jeans and white high tops like this idiot Roman and I saw at an Obituary concert once. The dude looked like Cha-Chi, and he started hitting on the wife of Obituary's bassist Frank Watkins, who promptly stared Cha-Chi down and gave him the throat slash gesture.

So back to that ECO case I worked at the ER. I like to believe that there are no bad cases in crisis work, and by bad I mean "wastes of my time". 99.9% of the case I see are at least rooted in some valid concerns by family, friends or other CSB staff. However, tonight's case was a waste of time and resources. I can't go into all the details due to confidentiality of course. But suffice it to say, the case had me scratching my head as to how the Magistrate in Appomattox County even decided there was enough evidence to issue an ECO. The client and his wife have a marriage that has long since been dead. I think the wife made up a whole bunch of stuff to get the client ECO'd and subsequently evaluated by mental health. And this gentleman I was evaluating was completely flabbergasted about what happened. The more information I obtained from him, as well as his daughter, the more I realized that his wife had gotten an ECO under false pretenses. I felt sorry for the man after that, but moreover, I was pretty livid inside.

The reason I was so angry was because this woman wasted a lot of time and resources with her little escapade. First, she wasted the magistrate's time. Then, she wasted time and resources of the Appomattox Sheriff's Department, who had to use one of their few on-duty deputies to transport the client to the ER for assessment. Third, she wasted time and resources of the ER staff, by taking up an ER bay with an "ECO for spite" case. Finally, she wasted my time because I still had to do all of the same paperwork I would do for a legitimate case.

Needless to say, I have had to process this incident in my head. I feel better now, but my drive back to the office consisted of me ruminating over it in my head. I can rest easy tonight and contemplate going to an Acacia Strain concert at some point in time. Unfortunately, it won't be on Mickey Mouse's turf.