A Square Peg

Sugar Loaf Health Care Center, like all such institutions, deals with Staff and Administrators as well as a myriad of health and mental problems in its Residents. One of the biggest problems with personnel is keeping the good ones while turning over the lesser ones. And, if you have a weak Administration or Personnel Director, the strong can be slighted and eventually go their professional ways. Such was the case with Veronica, an incredibly talented young lady who also happened to be an artist to her very core.

Veronica's family had always been upright: full of teachers, social workers, public officials, and an occasional nurse. Generation after generation had provided upholders of the help-others ethic. Because of this, and Veronica's inherent individual qualities, we were all pleased when the young artist was hired. We were especially happy when we found that she had the uncanny ability to mesmerize an audience with her golden voice while accompanying herself on a custom-made zither, the European stringed instrument she lay flat on her lap. Veronica was also an accomplished painter and ceramist, and if that wasn't enough, she was a born organizer and teacher. Sugar Loaf truly was very lucky to have landed such a talented, enterprising, effective young lady.

It didn't take long for everyone to realize that in addition to her many talents, Veronica was also very spontaneous. She approached teaching the same way she arted: from inspiration. Whenever she felt like creating

she dove in head-first. This was fine because the attention span of most of the Residents was so short that, unable to follow a project for long, they welcomed jumping from one activity to another even midstream. But her flexibility was not appreciated by the Administrators who tended to be the very definition of conservative and time-oriented

The trouble began when Veronica showed up at work at unscheduled times and left as unofficially. I couldn't have cared less when the girl came and left because she did such wonderful things while she was here, but I was low on the administrative pole at that time so I couldn't influence the top echelon. Well, we all know that when a new person enters a system: she's watched, observed, monitored, evaluated, and reevaluated most painstakingly at first. After that, if she seems to fit into the system and hold her own, the guard dogs let up and everything falls into a comfortable routine. But in the beginning everything MUST FIT. We also know that first impressions carry a lot of weight and valid or not, one often carries with her throughout her stay the reputation that those impressions create. In this sense, Veronica was the right person at the right place at the wrong time.

Punching in and signing out carries with it the curse of the clock. If you don't come in on time you must stay late in order to please the system, because the time-demon cannot tolerate shortcomings or longcomings either. In Veronica's case, punching clocks was the exact opposite of her artistic character, so if she came early or left late, she either had to pretend she took more time at lunch. Or if she came late no matter when she left, she would have to have one of her friends sign her out after she'd left. In truth, Veronica always balanced her hours out: she never truly cheated. But over and over she was obliged to violate the exactness of the system because it violated her, and when the Administration found out, it was the

beginning of her end. I take my hat off to this incredible talent that she lasted as long as she did.

Veronica should also be heralded for her great personal integrity, for she never lessened her high standards. Often when an individual is forced to operated counter to their natural disposition their attitude is affected. They think that since the system doesn't care about them, why should they dignify it by being dedicated? So they begin to slack off. They're not as ebullient, not as caring as their true natures belie. In short, they become vegetables: dull, non-caring, and there just for the pay. But not so with dear Veronica. No matter how that tortuous clock rubbed her and the Administration grew increasingly suspicious, she jumped around like a champagne bubble from day one until she collapsed.

I watched the young lady and hoped beyond hope that I could find a position for her where her talent and a facility functioned comfortably. I regret to say that I failed. And the horrible irony was that one month after she left, Sugar Loaf realized that punching a clock wasn't working so they dropped it and went back to salary. I've thought about that a lot: was it something out of the woman's karmic past that dictated her plight? Was she half angel, whose job it was to set the facility on the right track ? More plausibly, was she just an out-and-out victim of Administrative experimental thinking?

Whatever the reasons, I heard that Veronica got married, had a swarm of children, and operated a home school for artists. A perfect ending, because through it she was able to dictate her own hours and pay. Her husband, a highly successful doctor who was also artistically inclined, was supremely joyful with his wife and supported her in every way. A far cry from her stay at Sugar Loaf.

A great deal more could be said about ineffective systems that Health

Care centers and other institutions experiment with and use, but this is not the place for them. Here I want to expose you to exceptional people, whether they are mentally diseased Residents or talented personnel. And God knows that Veronica was an extraordinary person. How unfortunate that the beautiful are sometimes messed over by less talented Administrators who think the system is more important than the individual.