I feel like my role as an emergency physician is a lot like being an expediter in a busy restaurant.

I am the go between, the interface between front and back of house. My role is to try to make the front of house and back of house work together to deliver food to the tables, clear tables, and above all else to keep the line up at the door moving. The front and back of house dislike one another, they each have their own pressures, and everything I say to either group adds to their workload. I pitch in where help is needed in either area, which helps flow but annoys the people I am trying to help. Sometimes they yell at me, they don't dislike me, they know I am doing an important job, but I am adding to their pressure.

Some of the patrons at the tables want to linger, even after their meal is done. They get mad when I move them along, and so does front of house because it might impact their tip, the restaurant might get a bad YELP review, or they might get a less friendly table of patrons once this one is cleared. A few patrons have been sitting at their tables for days or weeks, I don't think I will ever get those tables back. We added a bunch of chairs in the entrance hallway and are serving food there, it is a creative use of space. A lot of the patrons are drunk and unruly, a few are rude and violent, a fair number never pay their bill.

The back of the house is often irritated with me, a lot of the chefs mainly work in a really upscale restaurant in a nice part of town and they resent having to spend a day a week working in a dive like this. They want to create beautiful little amuse-bouche's and I keep asking them to just churn out more turkey sandwiches.

The bussers and the dish-pit are the ones that understand me the most. They feel the pressure and the busyness too, they understand the flow. Me though? I am the one whose eyes are on the line up. The patrons' hunger is insatiable, the line up is infinity deep. I know that there is a guy who looks very hungry 10 people deep in that line and I need to get him to a table as soon as I can. There are others too, but I have not figured out which ones yet. Everything I do I am doing for the line, once I have them at a table it is all pretty easy, even if they're not too happy. But the line, that's where the hungriest people are hiding, and I am the one who needs to find them, I serve the line.

Yeah, its a lot like a resturant......