Toiling sideways lately
The purpose of my toiling upwards blog is to keep track of many things in my life that I can use to become a better person: healthier, more spiritual, more productive and more satisfied. By “satisfied”, I mean just that. I want to be satisfied, not “happy”. “Happy” to me is an ultimate goal, one that I (nor anyone else I believe) will ever truly achieve. Because if one is “happy”, then one has achieved it all. “Satisfied”, to me, means “happy for now.” Happy is an end-state. But I digress.
Right now, I am dealing with a few issues that are making me unsatisfied. And all of these situations are unnecessarily difficult.
I try to be an organized person. I try to make sure that I am gaining consensus with my work, which often involves working with people from other departments to get the information I need to develop training materials. For the past two Mondays, one of these people have decided that they did not agree with my strategy, which had been signed off by the principal players. Last week, it was changing the training documentation review model. This week, it escalated to changing the training documents themselves. On both occasions, I checked with my superiors and have been told to stay the course that has been agreed to. But I don’t understand what has happened in the last two weeks that has caused this person to come gunning for my materials. It’s unfortunate, because I am under a deadline to get these materials published within the next two weeks. And since my superiors want me to stay the course, it’s unnecessarily difficult to deal with this situation under this deadline.
But work is just one issue. Things have been unnecessarily difficult in other areas as well. Last week, I went to the ATM on my way to work and the ATM decided to eat my card. It wasn’t a problem with my account…I had not gotten that far. I simply placed the ATM card into the machine, the “welcome” screen did not change, and the card could not be retrieved no matter what button I pushed. So, I look all around the ATM machine to see if there is some telephone number to call. Nope, nada. So, I pull out my phone (whatever did we do in the past without Internet-enabled cell phones?) and I pull up the bank’s website. I get a 404 error. Great. I’m feeling very confident now. So, I made an old-fashioned call to 411. I don’t think I’ve made a 411 call in at least 5 years. The bank is popular in the area, and the operator (a real person…can you imagine?) asks me which branch I want. Of course I really don’t know which one is the main branch, so I guess. As with all 50-50 choices in my life, I guessed the wrong one. Finally getting the correct number from the branch I incorrectly called, I call the main branch and I am forwarded to a gentleman who has heard “the ATM machine ate my card” story many times before. I explain to him the situation, he tells me I may not be able to get the card until the end of the day, and I will need to pick it up at the main branch. Fortunately, I did not really need the money at the time (I was planning to have lunch during Boston’s Restaurant Week, and I wanted to pay in cash). Also fortunate is the fact that the main branch is not far from my office. The thing that interested me about the conversation, however, is that I said to the gentleman, “I think you need to have someone look at the machine, because it’s obviously not working correctly, but the screen does not say that it’s broken and still has ‘welcome’ on it. I would hate to think that this may happen to someone else.” He sighed and said, “Thanks for the feedback” and hung up. I doubt that machine has been looked at. I feel bad for the next person who’s going to have his or her card eaten. I did get my card back at the end of the day (I had to run to the main branch before it closed), but I immediately called my bank and canceled the card, because you never know. So I’m currently without an ATM card. All in all, this ATM eating machine and lack of customer care (not for me, he was nice to me, but for other bank customers) made things unnecessarily difficult.
The day proceeded to get even odder after that. I had an appointment with my endocrinologist (aka “diabetes doctor”) last week. I told the doctor that my legs have been feeling “tired” lately. Not painful, just tired. The doctor wants me to have an ultrasound on my legs because she is concerned that I may be suffering from bad circulation. I’m quite convinced it is a lack of exercise on my part. But, she ordered the test anyway, and as I left my appointment her secretary was working on getting the test scheduled.
Apparently, the test requires approval from my primary care doctor, and the secretary put in a call to my primary doc, who is wonderful and immediately approved the test. Primary care doc office contacted the appropriate doctor office at the hospital to OK the test. The “ultrasound office” (you’ll see why I’m calling it that in a moment) called my home phone and left a number for me to call to schedule the appointment.
So here’s where it gets unnecessarily difficult and weird. When I returned ATM card-less to my office, I pulled out the phone number of the ultrasound office and called to schedule my appointment. Unfortunately, the call went to the voice mail system of the health care network, and not to the “ultrasound office.” You see, I have to call the office that because when the woman called and left me the message to call her, she did not identify who she was or from where she was calling. She simply said I needed to call her to schedule my test, and that my primary care doc had approved the test.
Do you have any idea how difficult it is to call your primary care doctor’s office and try to explain this situation? Well, it’s extremely difficult. My primary care doc’s secretary tried very hard to understand what I was saying, but I wasn’t getting anywhere. I felt like creating a flowchart and scheduling a WebEx session to try to walk her through it, but I’m not sure she would have gotten that, either. She finally told me she’d have my doc’s nurse call me. I said fine. It’s been three days since that conversation, and I still haven’t received a call. To schedule a test that I don’t think I really need is unnecessarily difficult.
I’m sure the rest of the week will be fine. Unless, of course, that hurricane decides to hit. Hubby is already talking about stocking up the basement with drinking water. He loves to plan.
Unnecessarily difficult. I suppose in order to toil upwards, I need to toil from side to side occasionally. At least that’s what I’ll keep telling myself.
Posted by phatch 
for 2011.
phatch
