There Will Be Blood...

Daylight savings time (DST) is unequivocally one of the stupidest concepts ever devised by the brilliant imbeciles running the United States government.

Enacted in 1918 with the Standard Time Act, we quickly realized we fucked up and voted to repeal the Act in 1919. The added wrinkle in our brain would soon revert to its soft, silky smooth, nonsynaptic state when the Volstead Act established the 18th Amendment, which prohibited the sale or manufacture of alcoholic drinks, gave rise to the organized crime gangs of the 20s and 30s, and resulted in the intentional poisoning of tens of thousands of thirsty derpy citizens by the U.S. government. But hey, at least mourners could all agree on what time the funeral service took place.

As if World War II wasn't awful enough, the bi-annual practice of confusing the hell out of our pets by altering their usual nom nom kibble time was reinstated nationally from 1942-1945. Because American politicians have always secretly hated their constituents, in 1966, the Uniform Time Act attempted to establish the official dates for DST to begin and end, but bizarrely made the policy optional for each state.

However, the dates weren't firmly set until 2007, when we "spring forward" on the second Sunday in March and "fall back" on the first Sunday in November (except for Hawaii and Arizona because their state governments have much wrinklier brains than those of the other 48).

Although fiddle-farting around with our clocks so we get an extra hour of sunlight in the summer months seems like a nice idea, losing an hour of sleep at 1:59am on a Sunday has very real (and dangerous) consequences.

According to a 2023 study by the Transportation Research Record (Molina et al):

"The medical community cautions that later exposure to sunlight under year-round DST could contribute to problems such as sleep deprivation, depression, cancer, jetlag, cardiovascular conditions, reduced longevity and overall health.

"The study was implemented using 37 years of Florida state crash data from 1983 to 2019. This was the first study to use such a large data set to study the relationship between DST and safety.

"Overall, a higher frequency of fatal crashes was observed in the spring following the shift to DST.

"The average number of multiple-vehicle crashes was higher both after the switch to DST in the spring, and the switch back to DST in the fall—particularly from Sunday to Wednesday. A similar pattern was observed for injury-related crashes. There was a higher average number of fatal crashes following the beginning of DST in the spring, specifically from Sunday to Friday."

Now I hear you saying, "Earl, I didn't come here for a U.S. history lesson or to learn about car crashes in March. I came here for the dentist-tea and another wild ride of temp hygiene dental insanity! GET TO THE STORY!"

Before I begin this harrowing tale, I must issue a content warning:

This story occurred and was written on the Monday immediately following the start of daylight savings time. As you have likely surmised from the aforementioned historical and scientific context, my day started off very, very badly. But in the grand scheme of things, my day was a rosey basket of chucklefucks because I'm here telling you about it very much alive and with all my bodily bits attached and in (relatively) working order. So brace yourselves. This is going to get... unpleasant.

I'm not a morning person—never have been since I have a living memory. Regardless of when I have to be at an office, I wake up at 5:20 to eat my breakfast and give myself enough time for my body to decide if it wants to revolt or not. Being overly stressed can twist my stomach into knots, leaving me doomscrolling in agony on my porcelain throne first thing in the morning. Or things can get really exciting, and my just barely hovering above death blood pressure can cause me to faint if I get up too fast. This has resulted in two concussions in the past year after falling into door frames and knees that stay a bizarre shade of grayish-green.

I recently found out my thyroid is functionally dead, which can cause "thyroid storms," sending my blood pressure somewhere around my ankles and not into my impressively wrinkly noodle. I might need to start wearing a helmet around my apartment to avoid becoming a vegetable. Yes, my friends know to call the local police to do a wellness check if they don't hear from me in 72 hours. I really don't want my dog to eat my face.

Anywhosies... I got ready for work without incident and hopped in my car to drive the 40 minutes to a new office I'd never temped at before. I live in the center of the state, where five large cities are all within 30-40 minutes of each other. I typically only work in four of them. One I avoid like the plague if I can help it.

Unfortunately, I couldn't help it, so my commute today is to this fifth city. It's the furthest one away, sprawling way out into bumfuck nowhere with lots of twisty two-lane roads leading to identical-looking shopping centers plunked in sparse residential areas. The traffic is this lead-footed, stick-shift loyalist, roaring bass-heavy music set to eleven, driving like she stole it kinda girlie's idea of hell on earth. And every job I've taken in this city has turned into an unpleasant clusterfuck. Hence, my general avoidance of its city limits.

But I was determined to shake all that off, put my perky human mask over my muted, —tism anointed mutant goblin face, and have a good day. They had also booked me for Friday, and the pay was great. Just get there, do your best work, don't make any patients grumpy, and take a deep brea—

Wait, why am I stopping? I was only six minutes away and was going to be right on time! Maybe it's just a traffic light? It's OK. I'm still crawling a few feet at a time on the two-lane road curving to the right towards a thickly wooded area that hugs in close to the asphalt. It starts to open back up again, the foliage widening out and exposing several feet of dirt and gravel on either side, completely packed with emergency vehicles with flashing lights.

What the hell is going on here? I'm still crawling along a bit, but then we're stopped. There's an intersection less than 100 feet in front of me, but the only reason I knew that was the endless line of cars turning and passing me in the opposite direction, as the jacked-up F-250 in front of me blocked my view of the traffic light. The truck apparently had enough and pulled hard to the left to drive back from where they came. According to my GPS, I didn't have that option, which was not showing me an alternate route to my destination.

With the pickup truck gone, I can now see a tiny general store on the right, facing toward the intersection at a 45° angle. Off the asphalt, ten feet of gravel butts into a line of trees holding a wire fence overgrown with honeysuckle and creeping thorns bordering an open field directly to my left.

There are three fire trucks, half a dozen volunteer firefighter pickup trucks, two ambulances, five marked cop cars, and two unmarked cop cars, all with lights dancing in full emergency mode with all of their drivers moving purposefully and methodically. An old guy with long, unkempt gray hair wearing a volunteer firefighter t-shirt walked up the road towards his pickup truck, which was even with my car but in the gravel going the opposite direction. He hangs his head down and slowly removes his hard hat. His face is as gray as his hair. He looks like he just came from war—but his side lost.

No longer distracted by the flashing lights and realizing I would be here for a bit, I put on my parking brake to relax my clutch leg. I took out my phone and messaged the office about my situation. I even sent a picture of the fire trucks and the murder of flashing black vehicles just to cover my ass with the temp agency.

I'm still trying to see what all the fuss is about. Leaning to my right, I can just see the front of the general store, which has a haphazard gravel parking lot that sits 1.5 feet below the level of the road, forming an odd, sharply angled ditch that connects to both the road I'm currently sitting on and the perpendicular road ahead. A black unmarked police SUV is parked in the gravel lot facing away from the intersection towards the store.

A squarely shaped police officer with an equally square head, hair cropped high and tight, exposing a row of fat head wrinkles propped up by his stiff collar, walked up from where one of the fire trucks was parked under the traffic light blocking the intersection. He got in and moved the vehicle forward on the perpendicular road, and I instantly understood why that old firefighter looked broken.

A light blue generic four-door econobox sat in the acutely elevated ditch; the entire front was crushed to a third of its former length. The airbag dust was still floating in the air through the beams of early morning sunlight peaking through the trees. It would have been pretty if not for the dead body that had reenacted the movie Alien, bursting violently from the windshield head first with his mutilated torso folded over at the waist, his inner plumbing leaking vital crimson fluids down the side of the car into the grass.

Fucking hell.

I'm not squeamish. As a dental hygienist, I make people bleed every damn day. I enjoy gory, violent, beautifully grotesque movies. I have dermatillomania and regularly mutilate my skin as stress relief. I watch true crime documentaries for fun. I've skinned at least 150 cats for anatomy lab. I've seen a human cadaver. I even poked it. I've explored the dark web and seen gruesome, unedited videos of cartel murders, a streamer who blew his head off with a shotgun, and statistically unlikely—but very real—accidental deaths caught on camera. I've watched an open heart surgery, a live birth, a hip replacement, and a cornea transplant on TLC (when it was actually The Learning Channel) as an elementary school kid. I survived two murder attempts by my ex-husband.

But I was mentally prepared for most of that stuff. I wasn't expecting to witness a violent death at 7:40 in the morning. I didn't know how to feel. I had no choice but to pull a Scarlett O'Hara from Gone With The Wind: "I can't think about this now. I'll think about it tomorrow."

So I reached back to unzip my human mask, exposed the tiny mutant switch behind my right ear, and turned my feelings off. I immediately felt my face relax and the unease in my gut dissipate. I shuffled through my music until I found something aggressive with enough bass to feel the vibration in my chest. I turned it up to max, and my mind went numb.

I sat there for another 30 minutes and watched as the emergency workers removed that poor bastard from his vehicle. My music was too loud to hear myself think, so I was merely an observer without judgment or analysis. I was no longer a sentient being. I was just a camera uploading to the cloud for further processing at a later date.

The natural horror and visceral disgust experienced by most normal people when witnessing a human body bending in ways that can only be described as entirely fucked was rendered mute on the faces of the emergency workers gathered around the vehicular xenomorph birth made manifest. Their stoicism was icy blue steel, gigachad, iron-jaw level grit. Their coordination was the American Ballet Theatre performing Dance of the Cygnets from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. The gore was a Jackson Pollock meets Eli Roth's Hostel level bloodbath. My eyes watched. My inner monologue sat in stunned silence.

THIS IS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT from your friendly internet All-American Mutant and Sophisticated Goblin:

WEAR. YOUR. FUCKING. SEATBELT. ALWAYS. NO EXCEPTIONS.

Thank you for your attention.

They moved the fire trucks and a few of the cops out of the way so the ambulance could deliver its deceased cargo to the morgue. Police officers finally allowed me to inch forward and cross the intersection. I drove the six minutes to the office, parked, screamed until I ran out of breath, put my human mask back on, and rolled myself (trusty saddle chair in tow) towards the office.

I clumsily walked into a small, dimly lit but tidy and cozy waiting room, the smell of fresh paint and carpet glue still clinging to the air. On my right, behind the counter, sat two very young, very green-looking dental assistants seated at the front desk. The tall one couldn't have been older than 25; the petite one looked barely old enough to buy beer, her pretty baby face riddled with acne.

I introduced myself and gave a sincere apology with a very brief and sanitized reason for my lateness. It was too early to dump my traumatic experience onto complete strangers, and I needed to keep my mind on teeth, not on mangled corpses.

The petite assistant got up to show me to the break room, asking the usual questions about where I had to drive from and how long I'd been practicing. She was adorable, and I liked her immediately. The doctor came in a minute or so later and looked just as green as the assistants. He introduced himself and thanked me for coming, his voice weak, speaking barely above a whisper.

I'm easily five inches taller than he is, and I catch his face as I remove my heavy coat and put on my lab jacket. I typically wear a moisture-wicking plain white or black t-shirt under my jacket, so he briefly sees my huge (and beautiful) tattoos on both arms.

Some facial expressions, especially ones involving sarcasm, dry humor, concern, and sexual interest, confuse me. Disgust and disapproval are crystal clear. He immediately gave me the ick, and I had to smooth the scowl from my forehead with lightning speed. I've seen dentists like this a thousand times. Arrogant. Fake. Bottom of their class but still get to call themselves "doctor." I hate him instantly.

The assistant shows me to my op where a patient is already lying back in the chair, bloody 2x2s thrown on his napkin, blood wiped on his face, and more blood smeared on the suction arm. Why am I doing a prophy when the crime scene evidence surrounding me says he needs a 4346 gingivitis cleaning?

Um... ooookaayy... Breathe... Everything. Is. Fine. *rubs earlobes* Wwhhoooossaaahhhh...

I'm told the doctor "started his cleaning" and would "like me to take over." I introduce myself to the patient, apologize for all the chaos while I switch out their dental chair (with blood smeared on the backrest) for mine, wash my hands, put on my loupes and gloves, take in a huge audible breath, and assess the mess currently covering the tray sitting on the dental unit.

It looks like an exam kit sterilization pouch has been half opened, with another empty pouch lying on the tray. There's an ancient, scratched, dented Midwest slow-speed polishing handpiece that was obviously bought second-hand. I would bet today's paycheck that it wasn't oiled before this idiot dentist bought it off eBay, and hasn't been oiled or sterilized since this place opened. Going by the smell of fresh paint and the coating of construction dust I can see in the corners of the room and under the dental chair, this office hasn't been open very long, and this dentist was too cheap to pay for a post-construction cleaning crew to address such things.

Now, I am a very tidy dental hygienist. Before I grab my patient from the waiting room, I like to have everything open, organized, straightened, easily accessible, sterilization pouches or paper and prophy cup wrappers placed in the trash, instruments lined up nice and neat—

Hold up. Where are the instruments? There's a universal cavitron tip still in the wrapper, but where are the scalers? A bloody posterior scaler (204S) is hiding under a pouch, both ends covered in blood and plaque, and... that's it. Hmm...

I catch the petite assistant as she walks by and ask if she could grab me a set of hygiene instruments. She squeaked a reply and returned a minute later with another cavitron tip. Oh dear.

I apologized to the patient again, removed my gloves, and asked the assistant to show me where the hygiene instruments should be. She walks me down the hall to the sterilization area and opens a drawer, pointing to where the other cavitron tips are tossed in a plastic organizer.

She's a brand-new baby assistant, so I'm trying to be gentle with her as I attempt to hide my ever-growing irritation. I ask if there's a Montana Jack? A Nevi? Anything? She digs through the drawer and finds three anterior curettes, an H6H7 anterior scaler, and... that's it.

I felt my human mask slip. "You have got to be shitting me..." I said it out loud. I didn't bother apologizing for my profanity. I realized I didn't care. "How the fuck am I supposed to clean teeth without any instruments?? Why am I here??" I lowered my voice. "What is going on? What the hell is this guy's deal?"

She whispered back, explaining that she had only started three weeks ago and had just graduated from assisting school a few months prior. "It's always like this," she says, looking dejected and profoundly tired. Oh, you sweet, sweet baby girl... RUN!

The doctor slithers in behind us and asks me if anything is wrong. I was firm, direct, and was not fucking around with this nonsense. "Yes, in fact. Where are your hygiene instruments? If you have Montana Jacks or Nevis, I can make it work. Are you hiding them somewhere else?"

He looks at me dumbly. "Oh, I… uhh, I haven't gotten around to ordering them, huhhuh." I was still wearing my PPE mask, so he couldn't see the slack-jawed look of utter perplexity as to what could possibly be amusing to this incompetent doofus. "I have some of these, though." He held up the same curettes the assistant had shown me.

My heart sank. My human mask burned to dust as my rage consumed it. The goblin rose up, taking its place. I ripped my PPE mask off to confront him with the full wrath of my resting bitch face and to ensure that what I was about to say was heard with crystal clarity.

"How have you been seeing patients without scalers? Those are after-five anterior curettes. They're useless to me! You can't just use a cavitron! I have hearing loss and misophonia. And lots of patients find it really uncomfortable, so I only use the cavitron when I absolutely have to. Why am I here if you don't have instruments for me to use?? A cavitron won't remove everything. You need a scaler to remove deposits between tight contacts. Are you just leaving that shit behind??"

The derpling doctor stared at me with dark, vacant, unblinking eyeballs. I rolled my eyes, let out a loud huff, and left him standing in sterilization with the embarrassed and clearly flustered assistant.

I was livid. This place was disgusting. OSHA violations everywhere. This dentist was charging for incomplete prophys and couldn't be bothered to order basic hygiene instruments. For around $400, he could have eight Montana Jacks or the fancy Hu-Friedy Nevi-4s. This was pure laziness and a level of cockiness that was wholly unjustified for this dentist to possess.

This is a growing trend I've been seeing from new dental graduates. They get less than twelve hours of dental hygiene instruction, and come away from that limited training believing dental hygienists are overpaid, useless mouth maids because the almighty cavitron can solve all of their problems. In their hubris, arrogance, and insufferable corner-cutting to save money, they dismiss and disrespect my profession while delivering inadequate care (and committing insurance fraud), resulting in direct harm to their patients. It makes me want to march up to every dental school in the Southeast and ask them where the fuck they get the audacity to teach their dental students this asinine bullshit.

I walked back to my op, put my PPE back on, and apologized again to the patient. I told him that between me and him, he should find another dentist.

I cleaned the now crusty posterior scaler and did a cursory exam of my patient's mouth. His gums were lacerated, each interdental papilla snagged with their little point cut off from incorrect instrumentation. This doctor had royally fucked up this guy's gums and caused the bloody mess covering every surface. And. I. Was. Pissed.

I start where I always do on the distal of #2 and find a boulder back there that the doctor missed, even after all his digging around. I did the best I could with my one sad, posterior scaler, apologizing again to the patient for his cleaning being more uncomfy than I am typically known for because I didn't have the correct instruments.

I took my time while doing his cleaning because there was no way I was going to be cleaning anyone else's teeth that day. As I worked, I gave him thorough home care instructions, which he seemed genuinely interested in. I flossed and attempted to polish his large, perfectly straight, very white teeth with the second-hand slow-speed that refused to rotate when the hose made a slight bend or a moderate amount of pressure was used with the cheap, goopy prophy paste that splattered all over my lab jacket, further increasing my level of annoyance.

I rinsed his mouth and sat him up, offering to schedule his next cleaning in a hesitant tone, considering that I had just told him he should find another dentist. He said yes, so I turned back around to look him in the face. "If the hygienist still doesn't have instruments, the dentist is cleaning your teeth, or the office is still in this level of chaos when you come back in six months, then you need to walk out and find another practice, OK?" He nodded, thanked me for the cleaning and my honesty, and I scheduled his next appointment.

The doctor had already been in to mutilate my poor patient's gums, but I popped my head into his operatory to ask if he needed to see the patient again or if I could dismiss him. The doctor turned to me, looking frantic, and told me, "No!" while making a shooing gesture with the extraction instruments still in his hands. What a fucking lunatic...

My patient left, and I started cleaning up my operatory, which was looking like a vampire's wet dream. I gathered up all my trash and opened the door to the only garbage can-sized cabinet. A mountain of refuse spilled out onto the floor, the bag overflowing from the top. Whomever was in here last was a total psychopath and had stopped bothering to try and place the trash inside the bag, choosing to deliberately chuck their bloody 2x2s and used prophy cups inside, quickly closing the door like a toddler without object permanence, believing things disappear while playing a game of peek-a-boo.

"Oh, come ON!" I growled out loud, bending over to haul the heavily compacted garbage can. I heaved the bag out of the can, which weighed fifteen to twenty pounds and was packed solid, the metallic smell of old blood and mouth funk mixed with hints of chemically lemon-scented cavicide and grape-flavored prophy paste assaulting my nostrils.

Additionally, someone had left their expensive metal water bottle down here against common sense and OSHA regulations, a used prophy paste cup stuck to the side like a purple zit. I considered throwing it in the garbage, then decided that was a bit extreme and set it aside so I could thoroughly wipe it down with cavicide and place it back with a note for its owner to bleach and wash before using again. This was easily two or three weeks’ worth of garbage intentionally left in this state for reasons I can't begin to fathom.

I crouched down inside the cabinet to gather up the fallen debris and shoved it into the impressively indurated trash bag, hoping some fuckwit hadn't carelessly thrown a needle inside with the other garbage instead of the overly full sharps container I discovered under the pile of sterilization pouches and patient napkins (which I permanently capped and added to the rubbish). Thankfully, I did not, although my glove did rip on something in there, which elevated my disgust damn near the breaking point.

I took off the dirty gloves and walked down the hall to wash my hands. I came back, putting on another set of gloves, and opened the plastic dispenser of cavicide. I grabbed the cloth, expecting to pull out one sheet at a time. But these were cheap, off-brand wipes that weren't perforated correctly, ripping in skinny strips or tiny, useless hunks. Everything I touched in this office was evidence of this doctor's lack of care and stupid, counterproductive penny-pinching.

I tried to remove the slow-speed handpiece from the unit so I could oil it and the damn thing wouldn't budge, ripping another set of gloves in my attempt. I tried again and ripped another set of gloves. Nearly in tears, I gave up, put on yet another set of gloves, and disinfected the handpiece with my awkward wad of torn cavicide wipes.

The assistants both came in and I pointed to the trash bag. "This garbage hasn't been taken out in weeks. There was shit piled a foot high in that cabinet." I looked down, shaking my head, and suddenly felt exhausted. "Look, I'll help you guys as best I can today. I'll take x-rays, probe, go over treatment plans, get people rescheduled— But I am NOT cleaning anyone else's teeth without proper instruments in a filthy operatory. This place is an OSHA nightmare. I've been doing this for a long time and have seen hundreds of offices at this point. But this (I gestured at the bag of garbage and the office as a whole) is a new level of hell I've never experienced."

The assistants looked understandably morose and slowly nodded their heads, obviously uncomfortable by my assertiveness and frank disapproval at the state of their place of work. The doctor popped up behind them. "What's wrong?" It took all the restraint I had left not to start ripping this man a whole new asshole.

"I was just telling your assistants that I'll be happy to take x-rays, probe, present treatment plans, and reschedule patients, but I can't clean any more teeth today without instruments. If I can't do it right, I'm not doing it at all."

He looked like I had just slapped him, and the two assistants suddenly looked frightened. "Ok, well, if you can just stay until lunch, I'd really appreciate it."

"Oh, you're paying me for the whole day," I said, with a tad more snark than I had intended. Apparently, my little mental gatekeeper had ceased giving any fucks. "And again, I'll do as much as I can to help while I'm here, but I will not do half-assed cleanings without instruments. It's unethical..." I paused, looking him directly in the eyes (a significant feat for an autistic person, but I was done with his fuckery). "—And frankly, you should know better."

His face glitched for a few seconds before he finally said faintly and without one iota of self-confidence, "Well, then you can just leave."

I looked at the two assistants to see if they heard what I just heard. I couldn't decide if this man was terrified of me, had a medical condition that had shriveled his voice box to the size of a flea, or was raised to be a mealy-mouthed, passive-aggressive wimp incapable of admitting when he's fucked up. All three being true wasn't out of the realm of possibility.

He walked off for just a second before returning with an apparent afterthought: "I need you to fill out the 10-99 form before you go. I'll have it on the counter by the sink. Just put it on my desk when you're done." He turned and walked out.

To say I was stunned and confused would be an understatement. So he was OK with me not doing cleanings until lunch, but me staying for the whole day like I'm contracted to do, and being paid for that time means he wants me to leave... now? What in the actual fuck??

I cleaned the operatory as best I could, then walked back to fill out the 10-99. I finished and walked down the hall a little further to set it on his desk as he had asked. I was surprised to find him sitting there waiting for me. I held out the paper to give it to him, and he snatched it out of my hand. "Do we have a problem?" I asked, eyebrow raised, ready for a fight. "Did I say anything to you?" he replied with unconvincing hostility. "You didn't have to," I said cold as ice, turned on my heel, and walked to my op to gather my things.

I wiped down my chair, breaking another pair of cheap gloves in the process, and placed my loupes gently in their case. The doctor marched up and slammed a check on the hard case I had just closed and locked and practically ran back to his office like the scared little bitch he was. I picked up the check, which was shockingly written for the full amount I was owed. I gathered my things from the break room, apologized and thanked the assistants, and got back in my car.

I immediately deposited the check electronically into my bank account and contacted the temp agency as I sat there in the parking lot, explaining the situation in its entirety. The ridiculousness of the day finally hit me as I retold my story and realized it was only 9:30am.

I finished the conversation, tearing off my coat as a sudden rush of heat made beads of sweat appear on my face and chest. It was only in the 40s outside, but I felt like I was burning alive. I put my sunglasses on and lowered the windows, taking a huge drag from my vape, the cold air cooling my skin as the bright morning sun felt like a death ray. I had to get out of there.

I pressed “home” on my GPS and tore through the country roads, passing the fatal intersection now back to its boring, uneventful state like nothing had ever happened. I made it out of city traffic onto the outer loop, driving 85mph, music turned up even louder to muffle the sound of my sniffles as I cried. I vowed never to take jobs in that awful city ever again.

Some days you're the windshield; some days you're the bug. And I want my hour of sleep back, dammit. Maybe I'll write the government a strongly worded letter...

On second thought, the current administration would probably move the time back two hours just out of spite and incompetence.

Make American Daylight Really Damn Harmful: MAD RDH

*hums Circadian Rhythm by Silversun Pickups*