We had a great lunch. No supervisor/intern relationship hanging over it. Open communication. Friends.

He totally “gets” a bunch of my frustration from last fall about the micromanagment of the “other” group of clinical coordinators because he’s been working on a unit over there since the new year. Apparently, now that all the charting is on-line, some of the coordinators are “checking up” on “people” (probably not restricting themselves to the interns) and making thinly veiled comments about how little someone actually does. Mostly stemming from a fundamental disagreement about whether every single chaplaincy visit and visit attempt should be charted.
But that’s not why you should have lunch with your former supervisor.

One of the residents stopped by our table and said ‘hi’ and we laughed and joked around. He teased me about applying for residency (a.k.a. full time CPE work. Uh, nope!)

But that’s not why either.

You should have lunch with your CPE supervisor because he asks you “how’s your love life” and laughs along with the story about last night’s date. And then he’s surprised (again) that you are 45 and blurts out “you look so young! I always forget you’re older than me!”

And then he asks if he can “set you up with this friend of mine who works at the hospital. He’s a social worker on my unit (mental health) and one of the reasons I thought of you is his sense of humor. Also that he has not really given up on his job. He hasn’t become jaded or burned out like some of the other staff up there. And he’s a really good dad to his 2 kids (16 and 14; girl and boy). But he’s 52 so I didn’t know if that was too old.”

That is why you meet your old supervisors for lunch. Because you never know where the connections can come from and you have to stay open to the possibilities of the universe. Because you can’t make this stuff up. Nobody would think it was believeable.

So I gave him my number and said he could pass it on to his friend. But I also suggested that he and his wife and his friend and I all go out for dinner. Because that would be fun and less weird.

Wouldn’t it?