Friend or Foe
Hello World,
Happy September! This really is Labor Day weekend, and we have the spirit of the stalwart Samuel L. Gompers to thank for a holiday on Monday, and long may she wave. So for everyone who has the day off to rest from their labors, relax and enjoy yourself, if only for the sake of the working class heroes who fought for our right to party like it's 1894. Or as they say in the IWW, the Wobblies wobble, but they don't fall down. Of course, that was in the days before Tequila became so readily available, and I'm not so sure that they'd still be saying that today. In any case, any excuse for a party is good enough for me, I don't mind saying, and I don't need to get hit over the head with the lumpenproletariat to be in the holiday mood. It's probably just as well, because at this point in my life, if I wobble, I usually do fall down.
Moving right along, of course Muslims the world over were glad to greet Ramadan on August 21 and which continues for 30 days until September 19, where you can party like it's 622, that is, as long as you don't have any fun, which seems to be frowned upon during Ramadan. I maintain that this kind of observance will never catch on in this country, until they start to include more entertainment value, like green beer, presents or fireworks at the very least. Meanwhile in other religious news, the major governing body for Lutherans in the country, the ELCA, held their church-wide assembly August 17-23 in Minneapolis, and passed the resolution from their Human Sexuality Task Force, which paves the way for the ordination of gay clergy. It was shortly after that on August 19 when a tornado ripped through downtown Minneapolis, knocking the steeple off the church where the assembly had been meeting just hours earlier. I figure you can just go ahead and supply your own punch-line here, because that story obviously speaks for itself and doesn't need any help from me.
Speaking of help, I would very much not like to thank the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, in my continuing efforts to renew the Highway Use Tax permit for the Storeroom truck at work. We use this rental truck to ferry our supplies from the Storeroom in Mount Vernon to all of our different facilities, and when the permit came up for renewal, we were contacted by our rental company saying that they could process the renewal for us, as long as they had the password on the renewal application form. Not having the form, I contacted the bean counters in Albany to get the information that I needed. Not so fast! Apparently I wasn't on their list of approved contacts for our business, so they couldn't give me the information, despite the fact that I am the person who has been sending in the quarterly reports and tax payments every quarter for the past 5 years. I made several phone calls and spoke to many different people, but they all said the same thing, that it had to be an officer of the corporation on their approved list. I finally asked them who from the hospital was on their approved list, and at that point, they sort of hemmed and hawed and admitted that they didn't actually have any information in their database about our hospital's management, but they knew it couldn't be me, because I was just the Purchasing secretary, and it had to be one of the officers. "But," I pointed out with what seemed to me to be unassailable logic, "If you don't know who our officers are in the first place, heck, anybody could call you and say that they're Joe Blow the CEO of the hospital, and you would have no way of knowing if that was right or not." (I didn't say that it could just as easily be the cleaning lady, and I would have asked her, except that no one ever comes and cleans in our building.) They refused to budge, and the most that I could get them to do was to resend the application form, and hope that it would somehow find its way to me the second time around, instead of vanishing among the different buildings and 1,600 employees, thanks to the mentally-challenged volunteers we have sorting our mail. Two weeks later, I still didn't get it, so I called and asked them to send another one, and maybe the third time would be the charm. I'm thinking at this rate, it would be easier to walk over to the main building and ask the cleaning lady to call them and say that she's Joe Blow the CEO of the hospital and be done with it, because everyone knows that I have a long-standing policy against using logic with irrational people.
In other work news, yesterday was the Environment of Care Safety Fair (their motto: "Be Prepared, Not Scared") upstairs in the Nursing Education department, which ran from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM, and all the employees were invited to attend. That is to say, I thought we were all invited to attend, until I didn't go, and that set in motion a chain of events that included phone calls, voice mail messages, email and sending people to the department in person, to make sure everyone went, since it was mandatory. Well, there's no sense in telling us that we're invited to attend, as if we have a choice in the matter, when what you mean is that we have to go because it's mandatory, and should have just said that in the first place, thanks so very much not. So when someone came over to retrieve me, I dropped what I was doing and walked all the way over to the Safety Fair in the other building, so I could be prepared and not scared. The main thrust of the event was to alert everyone that the emergency codes were changing next week, and give out the new codes and colors that would be in use at the hospital. Anyone who watches television is aware that Code Blue is for cardiac emergencies and Code Red is fire, but there are several others, such as Code Yellow for bomb threats, Code Orange for hazardous material spills and Code Black for severe weather. Our hospital is adopting the codes that are being standardized in New York State (there are no federally standardized codes) which should be less confusing in the long run. There were also presentations about fire safety, security precautions, emergency preparedness, hazardous materials, equipment safety and evacuation plans. It would be easy to tell you which one was the most popular, because emergency preparedness was giving out fun-size candy bars, and people were all over them like flies. The person who came over to get me assured me that it was fun and would take about 10-15 minutes. But I was there in a crowded and stuffy room for an hour, and not much enjoying it, I can tell you that. Even worse, it apparently managed to suck all of the brain cells out of my head, so that I actually knew less about safety when I left than when I had arrived, which I think would have been the exact opposite of their intention. I know this because they made us take a test before we could leave, and in spite of 20 years of taking courses on mandated information, I believe that I got every question wrong on the test, including my name and telephone extension. It was amazing to me that there were no questions about safety issues that I'm very familiar with, like how to use a fire extinguisher and where the emergency command center is located, but instead included questions that were confusing and arcane, even after working there for so long. Although I have said before, and I stand by this, that if people are depending on me to organize the evacuation of patients in an emergency, frankly, I don't care much for the poor patients' chances, and that's a fact. Oh well, as I said to Bill, at least now they'll know better than to call on me in an emergency, that's for sure.
Also at work, I got a call from a salesperson, the kind with the gift of gab that could talk the ears off a wooden Indian. (Now THERE'S an expression that's lost on young people today, and more's the pity, I'm sure.) I had explained to him that he needed to contact the person in charge of our department, whose office is at one of our other facilities, and I had given him the phone number, as well as the person's name, which happens to be a rather difficult one, even when you spell it for people, which I do often. He was profuse in his thanks, and also asked for the fax number, which I gave him. And then, not leaving well enough alone, he carried on glibly: "And so I suppose then that his email address would be something like 'rick [dot] desiderario @ ssmc [dot] com,' would that be right?" Well, as a matter of fact, no, our email addresses are nothing like that at the hospital. But it amazed me that someone would try to guess anyone's email address out of the blue like that, it would be like trying to guess someone's phone number from knowing their street address or birthday. Thank you for playing our game, please step out of the booth.
While we're on the subject of email, I had gotten an invitation from a cyber-friend to join them on FaceBook, the social networking site where friendly people go to meet and greet. I thought it would be interesting, and I found the sign-up process to be simple and seamlessly automated. When you tell it who you are, where you work and went to school, it goes out all by itself and rounds up people already on FaceBook that you may know, asking you if you want to add them to your list of Friends. I was so impressed, because sure enough, it really did find people that I know from email, people from my school and coworkers from the hospital, just like that. Now, it must be said that it also finds people that I would prefer to avoid, like the pastor who recently left our church to go to Lebanon (and not a moment too soon) and people selling used trinkets on eBay. One of the suggestions that FaceBook decided that I wanted as a Friend turned out to be someone from my hometown, who for all I know may have turned his life around and become a pillar of the community, but was such a juvenile delinquent when I was in school that his name was legend in our neighborhood. Parents would chastise their misbehaving children by asking: "Do you want to grow up like Sonny Stallone?" which was enough to put the fear of God into even the most recalcitrant youth, because there was nothing worse that we could imagine. We all figured that it was a foregone conclusion that Sonny would be in prison, or dead, by the time the rest of us were graduating or getting married and settling down, and there was no future for this sociopathic misfit. So you can imagine my surprise, and by that I mean chagrin, when FaceBook chose him as someone to offer me for my list of Friends, and it made me wonder just what kind of disreputable blackguards that FaceBook thinks I consort with, when this is their idea of a suitable Friend for me. Well, I've got news for FaceBook, because I am not so desperate for companionship that I need them to go out and drag in every wretch from the gutter to be my Friend, and if that's the best they can come up with, then they can just keep their suggestions to themselves. After all, I may not know my own name, or my extension, or how to evacuate patients, but by golly, I still have standards.
Elle
Happy September! This really is Labor Day weekend, and we have the spirit of the stalwart Samuel L. Gompers to thank for a holiday on Monday, and long may she wave. So for everyone who has the day off to rest from their labors, relax and enjoy yourself, if only for the sake of the working class heroes who fought for our right to party like it's 1894. Or as they say in the IWW, the Wobblies wobble, but they don't fall down. Of course, that was in the days before Tequila became so readily available, and I'm not so sure that they'd still be saying that today. In any case, any excuse for a party is good enough for me, I don't mind saying, and I don't need to get hit over the head with the lumpenproletariat to be in the holiday mood. It's probably just as well, because at this point in my life, if I wobble, I usually do fall down.
Moving right along, of course Muslims the world over were glad to greet Ramadan on August 21 and which continues for 30 days until September 19, where you can party like it's 622, that is, as long as you don't have any fun, which seems to be frowned upon during Ramadan. I maintain that this kind of observance will never catch on in this country, until they start to include more entertainment value, like green beer, presents or fireworks at the very least. Meanwhile in other religious news, the major governing body for Lutherans in the country, the ELCA, held their church-wide assembly August 17-23 in Minneapolis, and passed the resolution from their Human Sexuality Task Force, which paves the way for the ordination of gay clergy. It was shortly after that on August 19 when a tornado ripped through downtown Minneapolis, knocking the steeple off the church where the assembly had been meeting just hours earlier. I figure you can just go ahead and supply your own punch-line here, because that story obviously speaks for itself and doesn't need any help from me.
Speaking of help, I would very much not like to thank the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, in my continuing efforts to renew the Highway Use Tax permit for the Storeroom truck at work. We use this rental truck to ferry our supplies from the Storeroom in Mount Vernon to all of our different facilities, and when the permit came up for renewal, we were contacted by our rental company saying that they could process the renewal for us, as long as they had the password on the renewal application form. Not having the form, I contacted the bean counters in Albany to get the information that I needed. Not so fast! Apparently I wasn't on their list of approved contacts for our business, so they couldn't give me the information, despite the fact that I am the person who has been sending in the quarterly reports and tax payments every quarter for the past 5 years. I made several phone calls and spoke to many different people, but they all said the same thing, that it had to be an officer of the corporation on their approved list. I finally asked them who from the hospital was on their approved list, and at that point, they sort of hemmed and hawed and admitted that they didn't actually have any information in their database about our hospital's management, but they knew it couldn't be me, because I was just the Purchasing secretary, and it had to be one of the officers. "But," I pointed out with what seemed to me to be unassailable logic, "If you don't know who our officers are in the first place, heck, anybody could call you and say that they're Joe Blow the CEO of the hospital, and you would have no way of knowing if that was right or not." (I didn't say that it could just as easily be the cleaning lady, and I would have asked her, except that no one ever comes and cleans in our building.) They refused to budge, and the most that I could get them to do was to resend the application form, and hope that it would somehow find its way to me the second time around, instead of vanishing among the different buildings and 1,600 employees, thanks to the mentally-challenged volunteers we have sorting our mail. Two weeks later, I still didn't get it, so I called and asked them to send another one, and maybe the third time would be the charm. I'm thinking at this rate, it would be easier to walk over to the main building and ask the cleaning lady to call them and say that she's Joe Blow the CEO of the hospital and be done with it, because everyone knows that I have a long-standing policy against using logic with irrational people.
In other work news, yesterday was the Environment of Care Safety Fair (their motto: "Be Prepared, Not Scared") upstairs in the Nursing Education department, which ran from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM, and all the employees were invited to attend. That is to say, I thought we were all invited to attend, until I didn't go, and that set in motion a chain of events that included phone calls, voice mail messages, email and sending people to the department in person, to make sure everyone went, since it was mandatory. Well, there's no sense in telling us that we're invited to attend, as if we have a choice in the matter, when what you mean is that we have to go because it's mandatory, and should have just said that in the first place, thanks so very much not. So when someone came over to retrieve me, I dropped what I was doing and walked all the way over to the Safety Fair in the other building, so I could be prepared and not scared. The main thrust of the event was to alert everyone that the emergency codes were changing next week, and give out the new codes and colors that would be in use at the hospital. Anyone who watches television is aware that Code Blue is for cardiac emergencies and Code Red is fire, but there are several others, such as Code Yellow for bomb threats, Code Orange for hazardous material spills and Code Black for severe weather. Our hospital is adopting the codes that are being standardized in New York State (there are no federally standardized codes) which should be less confusing in the long run. There were also presentations about fire safety, security precautions, emergency preparedness, hazardous materials, equipment safety and evacuation plans. It would be easy to tell you which one was the most popular, because emergency preparedness was giving out fun-size candy bars, and people were all over them like flies. The person who came over to get me assured me that it was fun and would take about 10-15 minutes. But I was there in a crowded and stuffy room for an hour, and not much enjoying it, I can tell you that. Even worse, it apparently managed to suck all of the brain cells out of my head, so that I actually knew less about safety when I left than when I had arrived, which I think would have been the exact opposite of their intention. I know this because they made us take a test before we could leave, and in spite of 20 years of taking courses on mandated information, I believe that I got every question wrong on the test, including my name and telephone extension. It was amazing to me that there were no questions about safety issues that I'm very familiar with, like how to use a fire extinguisher and where the emergency command center is located, but instead included questions that were confusing and arcane, even after working there for so long. Although I have said before, and I stand by this, that if people are depending on me to organize the evacuation of patients in an emergency, frankly, I don't care much for the poor patients' chances, and that's a fact. Oh well, as I said to Bill, at least now they'll know better than to call on me in an emergency, that's for sure.
Also at work, I got a call from a salesperson, the kind with the gift of gab that could talk the ears off a wooden Indian. (Now THERE'S an expression that's lost on young people today, and more's the pity, I'm sure.) I had explained to him that he needed to contact the person in charge of our department, whose office is at one of our other facilities, and I had given him the phone number, as well as the person's name, which happens to be a rather difficult one, even when you spell it for people, which I do often. He was profuse in his thanks, and also asked for the fax number, which I gave him. And then, not leaving well enough alone, he carried on glibly: "And so I suppose then that his email address would be something like 'rick [dot] desiderario @ ssmc [dot] com,' would that be right?" Well, as a matter of fact, no, our email addresses are nothing like that at the hospital. But it amazed me that someone would try to guess anyone's email address out of the blue like that, it would be like trying to guess someone's phone number from knowing their street address or birthday. Thank you for playing our game, please step out of the booth.
While we're on the subject of email, I had gotten an invitation from a cyber-friend to join them on FaceBook, the social networking site where friendly people go to meet and greet. I thought it would be interesting, and I found the sign-up process to be simple and seamlessly automated. When you tell it who you are, where you work and went to school, it goes out all by itself and rounds up people already on FaceBook that you may know, asking you if you want to add them to your list of Friends. I was so impressed, because sure enough, it really did find people that I know from email, people from my school and coworkers from the hospital, just like that. Now, it must be said that it also finds people that I would prefer to avoid, like the pastor who recently left our church to go to Lebanon (and not a moment too soon) and people selling used trinkets on eBay. One of the suggestions that FaceBook decided that I wanted as a Friend turned out to be someone from my hometown, who for all I know may have turned his life around and become a pillar of the community, but was such a juvenile delinquent when I was in school that his name was legend in our neighborhood. Parents would chastise their misbehaving children by asking: "Do you want to grow up like Sonny Stallone?" which was enough to put the fear of God into even the most recalcitrant youth, because there was nothing worse that we could imagine. We all figured that it was a foregone conclusion that Sonny would be in prison, or dead, by the time the rest of us were graduating or getting married and settling down, and there was no future for this sociopathic misfit. So you can imagine my surprise, and by that I mean chagrin, when FaceBook chose him as someone to offer me for my list of Friends, and it made me wonder just what kind of disreputable blackguards that FaceBook thinks I consort with, when this is their idea of a suitable Friend for me. Well, I've got news for FaceBook, because I am not so desperate for companionship that I need them to go out and drag in every wretch from the gutter to be my Friend, and if that's the best they can come up with, then they can just keep their suggestions to themselves. After all, I may not know my own name, or my extension, or how to evacuate patients, but by golly, I still have standards.
Elle
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 8:24 PM
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