If you've been at your job for years, you've probably stopped noticing the little things about life in the OR that make you go Hmmm. After a while, it all blurs together, lost in the rut of the routine. But as a traveling nurse, every few months I'm assigned to a new OR, circulating, scrubbing and observing the delicious fun playing out in the background. My typical assignment lasts 13 weeks. Not much time, but long enough for me to notice.

• Why are surgical staffers like that? I've often heard hospital employees remark that OR people just seem less friendly than those in other departments. While we might appear robotic, methodical and in a hurry, we're not that cold. (Well, sometimes we need to wear 2 scrub jackets.) We're compassionate and care about our patients. (We just prefer them to be asleep, so we can get to work.) And if you want to see us express emotion, check back when a co-worker isn't pulling her weight, something electronic stops working or the surgeon is wearing his scrub pants like a plumber (crack alert in OR1!).
• Where do all the scrubs go? The black hole that claims the occasional missing sock must also have quite the collection of scrubs, because hospital laundries and linen service companies never seem to send enough to outfit the entire staff for the day. You'd better get to the locker room early if you want to be dressed for the OR. Given the holes and torn pockets you sometimes find in them, I'm thankful they're covered by gowns most of the time.
• How protective is that barrier? Standard precautions dictate the wearing of personal protective equipment to shield employees against patients' contaminants, and vice versa. In addition to donning gloves and a mask, we drape a yellow, filmy, gauzy gown over our scrubs. I often wonder what's in that miracle gauze. If I can see right through it, how protected am I? Also, how useful is it in the OR if we're also wearing it to transport patients, in the corridor outside, in sub-sterile, and everywhere else?

• Why hasn't this been invented? HD has made the trip from living rooms to the OR. Why can't the universal remote? Yes, a remote control for everything: OR table, towers, C-arm, fluid waste collector, cautery, everything turned on, off, up or down at the touch of a button from across the room. Maybe it could even let us move and steer equipment, like toys!
• Are cords tangling themselves on purpose? The jungle of cords that power surgical technologies are a roadblock and a hazard. Nothing in the OR, not equipment nor a circulator in a hurry, can clear them in a single bound. In the circulator's case, hopefully no one's watching when the floor breaks her fall. But while she's down there, she should take a moment to marvel at how quickly the cables she separated and wrangled just 15 minutes ago have snaked into a tangle again.
• What's height got to do with it? It's a consistent and comical tug-of-war: the OR table versus a surgeon's physical stature. I'm always trying to figure out why the shorter docs ask me to raise the table, then ask for 2 step stools.
• Do you know who you're dealing with? One time, in the middle of a case, a surgeon ordered me to "get someone in here who knows what they're doing." I went out and called, but no one came. So I stayed to finish the case. In the OR, a mask and bouffant hat hide a lot of identifying details, I guess, because he didn't notice it was me until we were done and I lowered my mask to introduce myself again.