PurpAnd

I’ve recently had a potentially life-changing opening of the mind. An awakening, if you will. Last summer, I purchased a stack of books from in an effort to replenish my dwindling stash of unread material. The purchase included fiction novels, some non-fiction, and a book on spirituality, Radiant Mind: Awakening Unconditioned Awareness. I’ll leave a review for some other time, but I do have a little to say about it.

For some reason, I let this book sit on the shelf for four months before opening it. I had bought it off of a recommendation from a novel I had purchased a few months earlier from Amazon. (You know how Amazon has that ‘maybe you’ll like these’ section?) The week of Thanksgiving I grabbed it for my flights across country knowing that I would be in the air for nearly 12 hours.

The book was tough to get into as a lot of the talk was about ‘nothingness’ and the absence of need and rejection. Pretty intriguing stuff now that I am 2/3 of the way into it (you’ll have to take my word for it). But that isn’t really the point. The real interesting part for me is just the fact that I enjoy reading it. I can relate to it, or I am at least open to try to relate to it.

I am very much a logical thinker. Until now, there hasn’t been a whole lot of room in my head for things that were not based on evidence. I guess I am just at the point in my life where my path is to see where spirituality fits in for me. I may not be ready for it and I will soon enough realize it. Or, I may be very ready for it, which is why something told me I had to read this book.

Anyway, I just wanted to throw this out there as somewhat of a start of my exploration. I also wanted to see if anyone else has had a similar experience. To see if any of my readers are spiritual in the sense that they strive for a connection with the energy that surrounds us. (I’m such a spiritual virgin that I don’t even know what to call it). Feel free to comment.

Picked up from where Part 1 left off…

My most recent experience of repeating my mantra was with my HMO. My doctor had scheduled a CT scan. Okay fine, I can handle that. She told me I didn’t need a contrast prescription. Okay fine. I’ve been putting up with this pain because the surgeon they sent me to a couple of years ago poked me in the gut, told me I didn’t need surgery and the only reason I noticed it…was because I was in PAIN! (I SO wanted to ask him how many years of medical school it took him to come up with THAT brilliant piece of wisdom…but I didn’t.)

My cell phone rang, and it was Teddy, or Harold, or Paul, or William…whatever…from CT Scan. He proceeded to schedule my appointment. I have to drive to 25 miles, drink some contrast. “Whoa! Whoa! Hold the phone! That’s not what I was told. What are you talking about?” He continued on while I sat in my car on the side of the road, finger in one ear and cell phone plastered to the other. When I told him that my doctor had given me different instructions, he asked me who my doctor was. I dutifully told him as I certainly wanted this done CORRECTLY the FIRST time so I wouldn’t have to (hopefully) repeat it. Then, just as I turned my motor off (because I was using up way too much gas trying to help him explain in English what he was trying to tell me in some foreign language) I couldn’t believe what he asked me next. “Do you happen to have a phone number for your doctor?”

WHAT? EXCUSE ME…The doctor works for YOUR HMO…and you want ME to give you the phone number?

DO YOUR JOB!

If I have to help this Health Maintenance Organization employee find a phone number to one of THEIR doctors…then my fears about doctors and hospitals and procedures have surely been confirmed! I ask you, if they can’t find a simple phone number, how are they going to manage something a bit more challenging like doing a CT SCAN?

Perspiration now dripping down my forehead I asked Teddy, or Harold, or William what his name was again. He told me. Then I asked his LAST name…and he said, “CT Scan.”

Your LAST name is CT-Scan? …please tell me you are joking!

They say we get what we tolerate. The older I get, the less I tolerate. And the older I get, the more I speak out against injustice and things that just aren’t right like people who don’t DO THEIR JOB! Maybe that’s a good thing…maybe not. Maybe it’s time we all stopped tolerating poor service and insist that employees and government agencies, HMOS, and Legislators and yes…Presidents…actually DO THEIR JOB! Now wouldn’t that be something!

All I can say at this point, is when I’m shaking as I drive out to meet little William CT-Scan, I hope my registration from the DMV is actually valid. And I sure hope that I don’t have to pick up my prescriptions from Jessica after I bail out of my HMO. Someone please tell me she has toddled off to get a mani-pedi and she is no longer employed at that not so friendly pharmacy! Surely she wouldn’t hesitate to tell me to move out of the way because I won’t be in line with the walker. Nope! I’ll be the grump pounding my cane on the counter hissing the mantra “Sssssweeeeeeeetie…DO YOUR JOB!”

The following is a guest post from one of my readers. It’s a two-parter that discusses the lack of customer service in today’s world.

Do Your JOB!

This has become my new mantra! I can’t believe the number of people in our society who simply can’t or won’t DO THEIR JOB! For example, I stopped by my friendly pharmacy the other day to pick up some medication. Now one would think, that if one is trained to work in a pharmacy, one would know that perhaps, just perhaps… the reason customers are picking up specific medication from the pharmacy is because they may have some physical health challenge which requires some level of compassion on the part of the pharmacy employee.

Gee…Ya think?

Not the case here. Compassion 101 was apparently not covered in the employee training manual. Either that, or young Jessica was more interested in text messaging her boyfriend during her break than she was in doing her job. The wannabe employee actually told a sweet little old lady to “move out of the way.” Did the kid not notice this precious old soul was hanging on to the counter just to hold her self steady? Did she not notice the walker next to the woman? Did she not notice it took this older woman nearly three minutes to walk the four feet from the front of the very long line up to the counter in the first place?

Please dear young pharmacy employee…recognize the possibility that IF someone is picking up medication…they just might be feeling under the weather, or move a bit slower, or require an extra bit of TLC. And for goodness sake…don’t tell a feeble elderly woman to “move out of the way!”

My worst experience (and I’m probably not alone here) was in the DMV office. No surprise there, eh? The only congruency in that place was the crooked photograph of a top ranking federal official hanging on the wall over the work station of someone no doubt voted most incompetent employee of the year. The photograph of Soontobe Outofajob hung over the head of an employee lazily thumbing through a Christmas catalog while I stood at the window waiting to be served. Due to her continuing to shop while waiting on me, the employee failed to DO HER JOB! Of course I had to come back later to correct her error.

Something strange happened to me on that second trip into the DMV though. I felt oddly calm. It was a bit unnerving in fact. I could tell that Catalog Santa was a tad unnerved by my behavior as well, when I returned to her window a second time. By then, I had run into too many people who had stopped caring about customer service and had failed to DO THEIR JOB! Poor woman. She became the proverbial straw that broke THIS camel’s back.

This time…I didn’t speak. I hissed in an ever so calm voice that didn’t sound at all like me. I squinted my eyes as I said that if ssssssshe didn’t put down the catalog and stop sssssssshopping for her Christmas presents while she waited on me THISssssssss time, then I would surely GO Posssssstal on her!

Then, and only then, did she finally DO HER JOB!

Stay tuned for Part 2