I found this quote from a 2014 @Rose_Queen ::wavey:: post, but it bespeaks an older origin. Many familiar names if you go searching around using the bug search window. Be sure to check the box for “all terms” in your returns, or you’ll drown in unrelated stuff.
“The self-proclaimed crusty old bats are some of the posters I have learned the most from here at allnurses. And it may help to know the back story of the crusty old bat phrase- it came about after a newbie showed up, showing an attitude of extreme entitlement, and used it in a derogatory manner. Rather than get offended, us crusty old bats and future crusty old bats claimed the phrase and turnED it into an inside joke.”
Likewise, the term “old biter nurses” was a likely typo for “bitter,” but we embraced it in its absurdity and peripheral connection to NETY, “nurses eat their young.” Which we don’t, because somehow we survived our callow years of being corrected and now, older and wiser as the old ones before us were, are living proof of not having been eaten in the process and now seek only to make current newbies too tough to chew on.
This blast from the past is brought to you by …. well, you know.
