I have to share a story I read in the paper about a Consumer Reports telephone survey of 1,000 respondents. The conclusion of the survey is that Americans indulge in all sorts of risky behavior. I read further, expecting a discussion of extreme skiing; wandering off into the desert; driving motorcycles without helmets; stuff like that. Turns out (as if you didn't already know) that I am a bad girl.
Did you know that 75% of Americans put cotton swabs inside their ears?
Yep. I do that. So much safer than the cap of a ball-point pen.
40% confess to having eaten raw cookie dough.
And raw cake batter, which is even tastier.
50% of us have a carbon monoxide detector in the home.
Well, we had one in the old house, when we had a wood stove, but not now. My colleague Rebecca says that she decided to get a CO detector after she and her husband got a fondue set. I find myself imagining a fateful dinner party at Rebecca's house: a fondue set the size of a jacuzzi, with corpses littering the dining room.
And 61% of us don’t have a rubber mat in the shower.
Shower mats remind me of a housemate I had once. He was trying to avoid some people who were looking for him (yes, this was a more exciting epoch in my life than the one I am currently experiencing), so he dyed his red hair "Rich Dark Brown". But the dye made his hair fall out. He would hoard it under the rubber shower mat. One day he took me into the bathroom to show me his hair collection and I really haven’t felt OK about shower mats since then.
This survey has done a lot for my feeling of suburban confinement. I AM edgy! If I stand on a street corner, licking the beaters from my hand-mixer, I could get a reputation. I have been wanting a reputation.
OK, time for true confessions. Please comment and share your responses to the following questions. Do you:
1. put Q-Tips in your ears?
2. eat raw cookie dough?
3. have a CO detector?
4. have a rubber mat in the shower?
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Friday, February 6, 2009
Harassment Free Workplace
My school has about 50 employees, and only two are men. They both work in my department, so whenever the talk turns to sexual harassment, eyebrows start to waggle in my direction.
Who, me?
We were sitting in a staff meeting just tonight, talking about what might constitute sexual harassment, when one of the men walked in, went up to one of the women and said, “We’re all set! I’m just getting it enlarged. I’ll have it ready for you next week.”
He was talking about a photo, but I think I could be forgiven for blowing coffee out my nose.
Who, me?
We were sitting in a staff meeting just tonight, talking about what might constitute sexual harassment, when one of the men walked in, went up to one of the women and said, “We’re all set! I’m just getting it enlarged. I’ll have it ready for you next week.”
He was talking about a photo, but I think I could be forgiven for blowing coffee out my nose.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Yet More Progress
I know Simon is getting better quickly, because I'm starting to feel annoyed about dumb little s*** that he does again. He doesn't call me when he is going to be late, which makes the yams soft and overcooked. Everywhere I turn in the kitchen, there he is; but is there a cocktail forthcoming? Noooooo! His crutches, too. They are blocking me at every turn.
OK, today I'm going to label a blog entry. All of my blog buddies do this, and so will I, after two years of blogging, just to prove to the world that I am a mindless lemming. If anyone can tell me what the point is, though, I'd love to know.
OK, today I'm going to label a blog entry. All of my blog buddies do this, and so will I, after two years of blogging, just to prove to the world that I am a mindless lemming. If anyone can tell me what the point is, though, I'd love to know.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
'Bout Time
Life is actually returning to normal. Si still has a VERY long way to go, but he makes some sort of progress every day. Yesterday, I drove him over to the big church parking lot near our house, so he could demonstrate his driving abilities. Stop, go, stop, go, SLAM on the brake. Stop, go, SLAM on the break. I unstuck my cheek from the windshield. "That's great, honey!" If he can press down on the break hard enough to cause whiplash, he's good to go. So, today I let him drive up to Snowbird to pick up the kids from ski school. Avoiding icy patches, he carefully crutched to his office and sat down at his desk. That was that. "I'm going to work tomorrow."
His leg looks like s***, but less so than last week. He can shower himself, sitting on a plastic stool. His recovery has been seriously set back by his complications, but he is determined to get full movement back - he's spending about three hours a day doing various exercises.
And all this means....
That Simon can return to blog-livion. Move over, Tiny Tim, and let someone else have the attention around here.
Sara is writing her autobiography for a school project. This is a big project, with assigned chapters and sub-headings. Today, I recommended that she work on the page she is supposed to devote to her brother Nathan.
Nathan
My parents say they gave me Nathan as a gift. [Ahhh...the gift of a sibling. Spared the misery of only childhood...] But sometimes I wonder... My brother was born on February 11, 2002. A few very interesting things about my brother are:
1. He likes to say very weird made-up words like "hubajubaloco".
2. He likes to pretend to do kung-fu, but really all he's doing is flailing his arms and legs.
About this time, Nathan found her and asked her to read what she was writing. She was more than happy to share. Nathan came stomping into the kitchen to tell me that Sara was just writing mean stuff.
I was reminded of that passage from the Kevin Henkes book "Julius, the Baby of the World". Lilly can't stand her baby brother; when her mother suggests she tell Julius a story, she says,
"Once upon a time, there was a baby. His name was Julius. Julius was really a germ. Julius was like dust under your bed. If he was a number, he would be zero. If he was a food, he would be a raisin. Zero is nothing. A raisin tastes like dirt. The end."
His leg looks like s***, but less so than last week. He can shower himself, sitting on a plastic stool. His recovery has been seriously set back by his complications, but he is determined to get full movement back - he's spending about three hours a day doing various exercises.
And all this means....
That Simon can return to blog-livion. Move over, Tiny Tim, and let someone else have the attention around here.
Sara is writing her autobiography for a school project. This is a big project, with assigned chapters and sub-headings. Today, I recommended that she work on the page she is supposed to devote to her brother Nathan.
Nathan
My parents say they gave me Nathan as a gift. [Ahhh...the gift of a sibling. Spared the misery of only childhood...] But sometimes I wonder... My brother was born on February 11, 2002. A few very interesting things about my brother are:
1. He likes to say very weird made-up words like "hubajubaloco".
2. He likes to pretend to do kung-fu, but really all he's doing is flailing his arms and legs.
About this time, Nathan found her and asked her to read what she was writing. She was more than happy to share. Nathan came stomping into the kitchen to tell me that Sara was just writing mean stuff.
I told Sara that she was going to have to give some thought to a more balanced portrayal of Nathan, causing her to burst into tears at the very thought of saying anything nice about her little brother.
I was reminded of that passage from the Kevin Henkes book "Julius, the Baby of the World". Lilly can't stand her baby brother; when her mother suggests she tell Julius a story, she says,
"Once upon a time, there was a baby. His name was Julius. Julius was really a germ. Julius was like dust under your bed. If he was a number, he would be zero. If he was a food, he would be a raisin. Zero is nothing. A raisin tastes like dirt. The end."
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Show Me Normal
Sometime late tonight, the internationally renowned orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Charles Beck will return to Salt Lake from Austria, where he has been marketing his amazing medical innovation: synthetic tissue that can be used to replace a damaged meniscus in the knee. He may think this was more important than sticking around to check on the patients he operated on right before he left. I disagree.
It’s been a long time since I have written on my blog and it’s very likely that my readers have given me up for lost. In a way, that’s a relief. I had always tried to reflect on my life in a humorous way, and that well is totally dried up at the moment. And this is a long story – not exactly reader-friendly. But I need to write it all and not worry about style. I’ll spit it out, go to bed and maybe be able to sleep.
So here’s the deal. Si needed to have an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction because of his soccer accident in September. When he tore the ligament, he also released a blood clot, so we’ve been waiting to have the surgery until the clot was under control. 1/9/09 was the magic day. Dr. Beck (who really does have a great reputation) did the surgery, pulling a bit of Si’s own hamstring tendon to fashion a new ACL. It was textbook. No problems at all. A few hours later, a nurse was helping me load him into the car to recover at home. Ice, elevation, a big bandage under a pressure sock that we were told to leave alone, a lot of Percoset. They warned me that he would be pretty uncomfortable for a couple of days, then would start feeling better.
By the following afternoon, he was in agony, complaining of terrible pressure. The Percoset didn’t touch the pain. I phoned the on-call doctor about it. He told me to loosen the dressings. WTF? It was this enormous ball of bandages with a super-tight stocking holding it in place. Loosen it? How loose is loose? What if I let germs get in there? I called my dad, the ancient doctor, who told me to cut the damn pressure sock off. I did. Didn’t help in the slightest. Si reached to touch his thigh and felt a big tender swelling. Scared the s*** out of him – he thought it was a sign of a blood clot. I called the doctor on call once more. He wasn’t happy to hear from me and let me know that (“This is Dr. Henderson again.”). I explained our concern and he said, well, you should get him to an emergency room.
I wish now (like, at least twice a minute), that I had chosen the ER at the hospital where Si had the surgery. It’s really far away, though, and he was in a lot of pain. I chose the nearest ER to our house. They dismissed a blood clot out of hand, after I told them that I was currently giving Si two different types of blood thinners. They took the dressing off and looked at it, said it looked OK, wrapped him up again. Si started shouting, screaming. They gave him morphine. It didn’t help. They gave him more morphine. He hyperventilated. They gave him valium. He calmed down. The nurses there talked to me about pain management. Reminded me not to skip his meds (As if! We would both stare at the clock, WAITING for it to be time for the next meds). Told me that Si might simply have a low tolerance for pain and a high tolerance to Percoset. So we went home in a tough-it-out frame of mind.
We waited for the pain to abate, but it didn’t. We talked to friends who had had the surgery. They assured us that, yeah, it was really painful. We waited some more. Monday, I called the surgical practice to tell them that I was not going to replace the pressure stocking, because Si's leg was too painful and swollen. They just said OK.
He reached the point at which he couldn’t get up to pee. Even sitting in the edge of the bed and peeing into a bucket was agonizing. Monday night was when it got really bad. At about midnight, he lost it with me: told me that I resented having to take care of him. He could SEE IT! Well, never mind! HE could take care if HIMSELF! He got so worked up over it that he was shaking all over. I had to plead with him to let me give him his blood-thinner shot. He told me he didn’t want me around. Sent me out to sleep in the living room. I could hear him struggling in the other room so I couldn’t sleep; at 4:00 AM I went in to give him his pain-killers, and found him hysterical, gasping. He asked me if I were the ambassador (?). In the morning, I begged him to come to the ER, but he wouldn’t – told me the doctors just think he’s a baby and can’t handle pain. This went on and on. Our bedroom became sort of prison cell where he would lie and scream and shout for hours; he would beg me to change his position – nothing that I tried worked. The place was an explosion of pillows, towels, discarded ice packs, tangled sheets. Tuesday evening, I tried the doctor on call again. I was in despair. I just cried on the phone and said that his pain was unrelenting and that I didn’t know what to do. The doctor very helpfully suggested that it was because we were using a generic version of Percoset. Sometimes the generics don’t work, he told me. I had a prescription for Lortab so I went and filled that. I told the pharmacist about the generic Percoset and she told me that was absolute nonsense. I hurried home and gave Si the new pain meds, wildly hopeful that this was the crux of the problem. It didn’t help in the slightest. Si started crying. He just sobbed. The kids started melting down. We were all exhausted and hadn’t slept in days. The kids had been eking out a living on peanut butter toast since the last meal I cooked on Sunday night. Tuesday night, he screamed all night. I mean he shrieked at the tops of his lungs. I never lay down for more than two minutes. I was never so glad to see a sunrise.
Wednesday morning he had an appointment to see his family doctor, who wanted to check the level of thinners in his blood. Getting him to the appointment was horrific. Every tiny bump in the road made him scream. When we got to the doctor, I said that I was fed up. I told him that he was to call the ER at the hospital where Si had had the surgery and tell them to expect us. And that they would be admitting him. I told the doctor to call the surgical practice and tell them to have a godd**n surgeon there waiting for us. Of course, now that it was a doctor calling in, rather than a distraught wife, they actually paid attention.
Long, agonizing drive. More morphine, and still more. The surgeon on duty was Dr. Marshall (Dr. Beck’s partner) and when he opened the bandages and looked at Si’s knee, he froze. “Well. This looks like…” He couldn’t finish, so I said, “A mess.” “Yes. A mess.”
This was the first I had heard of Compartment Syndrome. Everyone had been worried about clots and focused on eliminating that as the source of the problem; but no one mentioned that opposite side of that coin- that his blood might be too thin and cause a hemorrhage. That was what had happened. He started bleeding into the knee cavity where the surgery had taken place. Like a blood blister under a fingernail, the pressure grew and grew. The blood and contaminated fluid, having no where to go, gradually started forcing their way up to the surface of the skin, where they formed blisters on the ruined tissues.
They operated on him that night, late in the evening. While they got ready, I went home to arrange for care for the kids, and I felt happy. Elated that the cause of the problem had been found; relieved that he was not in pain. I tidied up the house, especially our room; I stripped our bed and chucked the sheets. I never want to look at them ever again. I cooked a proper meal for the kids; I bathed them; supervised homework; read stories; took a shower and brushed my teeth for the first time in days.
They finished the surgery at about midnight and Dr. Marshall came into the deserted waiting room to talk to me. This surgery is called a “wash out”. Basically, they drain the trapped blood out and then flush out the knee cavity. FOUR CUPS of blood came out of his knee. They inserted a drain. The good news is that the original ligament graft is still intact. The bad news? The surgeon pulled a wry mouth and told me that recovery was going to be “a long road”. There‘s the increased stiffness and scar tissue because physical therapy will be delayed. The struggle to get his blood to the right level of coagulancy. Worst of all, the horribly damaged tissues all around his knee, prone to infection because they’ve been stewed in this pressurized blood bath.
He’s been in the hospital since Wednesday, then. Dr. Beck will take off his lederhosen and check on him in the morning. There’s a good chance that he will want to do the wash-out procedure again: another general anesthetic; another dose of morphine (which makes Si hallucinate); another invasive procedure on his knee. They are starting to look toward his eventual home-coming, whenever that may be: there is discussion of a home-health nurse and visiting therapist; they put a PIC line in his arm today. It’s like an IV that is meant to stay in place for months (MONTHS!). It’s a tube that runs up a major vein in his arm, through his shoulder and into his chest. That gives me the willeys.
He called me late tonight, a little depressed. He fears another surgery. He wants his life back. I tried to think of something comforting to say. I told him that he would feel better when he could come home in a few days and start working on his recovery. I reminded him of all the little things he would get immediate pleasure from: eating supper together; sleeping in his own bed; getting outside. But I’m dealing with my own s***, too. I’m scared about the upset to our delicately balanced two-career schedule (eventually, we both have jobs that require our attention); I’m terrified that his knee will never recover; I feel like it’s my fault and can see, looking back, all the ways that I might have prevented this from happening; I’m scared that he’ll get home and there will be another complication. I am resisting the idea that we may have to find a new normal.
It’s been a long time since I have written on my blog and it’s very likely that my readers have given me up for lost. In a way, that’s a relief. I had always tried to reflect on my life in a humorous way, and that well is totally dried up at the moment. And this is a long story – not exactly reader-friendly. But I need to write it all and not worry about style. I’ll spit it out, go to bed and maybe be able to sleep.
So here’s the deal. Si needed to have an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction because of his soccer accident in September. When he tore the ligament, he also released a blood clot, so we’ve been waiting to have the surgery until the clot was under control. 1/9/09 was the magic day. Dr. Beck (who really does have a great reputation) did the surgery, pulling a bit of Si’s own hamstring tendon to fashion a new ACL. It was textbook. No problems at all. A few hours later, a nurse was helping me load him into the car to recover at home. Ice, elevation, a big bandage under a pressure sock that we were told to leave alone, a lot of Percoset. They warned me that he would be pretty uncomfortable for a couple of days, then would start feeling better.
By the following afternoon, he was in agony, complaining of terrible pressure. The Percoset didn’t touch the pain. I phoned the on-call doctor about it. He told me to loosen the dressings. WTF? It was this enormous ball of bandages with a super-tight stocking holding it in place. Loosen it? How loose is loose? What if I let germs get in there? I called my dad, the ancient doctor, who told me to cut the damn pressure sock off. I did. Didn’t help in the slightest. Si reached to touch his thigh and felt a big tender swelling. Scared the s*** out of him – he thought it was a sign of a blood clot. I called the doctor on call once more. He wasn’t happy to hear from me and let me know that (“This is Dr. Henderson again.”). I explained our concern and he said, well, you should get him to an emergency room.
I wish now (like, at least twice a minute), that I had chosen the ER at the hospital where Si had the surgery. It’s really far away, though, and he was in a lot of pain. I chose the nearest ER to our house. They dismissed a blood clot out of hand, after I told them that I was currently giving Si two different types of blood thinners. They took the dressing off and looked at it, said it looked OK, wrapped him up again. Si started shouting, screaming. They gave him morphine. It didn’t help. They gave him more morphine. He hyperventilated. They gave him valium. He calmed down. The nurses there talked to me about pain management. Reminded me not to skip his meds (As if! We would both stare at the clock, WAITING for it to be time for the next meds). Told me that Si might simply have a low tolerance for pain and a high tolerance to Percoset. So we went home in a tough-it-out frame of mind.
We waited for the pain to abate, but it didn’t. We talked to friends who had had the surgery. They assured us that, yeah, it was really painful. We waited some more. Monday, I called the surgical practice to tell them that I was not going to replace the pressure stocking, because Si's leg was too painful and swollen. They just said OK.
He reached the point at which he couldn’t get up to pee. Even sitting in the edge of the bed and peeing into a bucket was agonizing. Monday night was when it got really bad. At about midnight, he lost it with me: told me that I resented having to take care of him. He could SEE IT! Well, never mind! HE could take care if HIMSELF! He got so worked up over it that he was shaking all over. I had to plead with him to let me give him his blood-thinner shot. He told me he didn’t want me around. Sent me out to sleep in the living room. I could hear him struggling in the other room so I couldn’t sleep; at 4:00 AM I went in to give him his pain-killers, and found him hysterical, gasping. He asked me if I were the ambassador (?). In the morning, I begged him to come to the ER, but he wouldn’t – told me the doctors just think he’s a baby and can’t handle pain. This went on and on. Our bedroom became sort of prison cell where he would lie and scream and shout for hours; he would beg me to change his position – nothing that I tried worked. The place was an explosion of pillows, towels, discarded ice packs, tangled sheets. Tuesday evening, I tried the doctor on call again. I was in despair. I just cried on the phone and said that his pain was unrelenting and that I didn’t know what to do. The doctor very helpfully suggested that it was because we were using a generic version of Percoset. Sometimes the generics don’t work, he told me. I had a prescription for Lortab so I went and filled that. I told the pharmacist about the generic Percoset and she told me that was absolute nonsense. I hurried home and gave Si the new pain meds, wildly hopeful that this was the crux of the problem. It didn’t help in the slightest. Si started crying. He just sobbed. The kids started melting down. We were all exhausted and hadn’t slept in days. The kids had been eking out a living on peanut butter toast since the last meal I cooked on Sunday night. Tuesday night, he screamed all night. I mean he shrieked at the tops of his lungs. I never lay down for more than two minutes. I was never so glad to see a sunrise.
Wednesday morning he had an appointment to see his family doctor, who wanted to check the level of thinners in his blood. Getting him to the appointment was horrific. Every tiny bump in the road made him scream. When we got to the doctor, I said that I was fed up. I told him that he was to call the ER at the hospital where Si had had the surgery and tell them to expect us. And that they would be admitting him. I told the doctor to call the surgical practice and tell them to have a godd**n surgeon there waiting for us. Of course, now that it was a doctor calling in, rather than a distraught wife, they actually paid attention.
Long, agonizing drive. More morphine, and still more. The surgeon on duty was Dr. Marshall (Dr. Beck’s partner) and when he opened the bandages and looked at Si’s knee, he froze. “Well. This looks like…” He couldn’t finish, so I said, “A mess.” “Yes. A mess.”
This was the first I had heard of Compartment Syndrome. Everyone had been worried about clots and focused on eliminating that as the source of the problem; but no one mentioned that opposite side of that coin- that his blood might be too thin and cause a hemorrhage. That was what had happened. He started bleeding into the knee cavity where the surgery had taken place. Like a blood blister under a fingernail, the pressure grew and grew. The blood and contaminated fluid, having no where to go, gradually started forcing their way up to the surface of the skin, where they formed blisters on the ruined tissues.
They operated on him that night, late in the evening. While they got ready, I went home to arrange for care for the kids, and I felt happy. Elated that the cause of the problem had been found; relieved that he was not in pain. I tidied up the house, especially our room; I stripped our bed and chucked the sheets. I never want to look at them ever again. I cooked a proper meal for the kids; I bathed them; supervised homework; read stories; took a shower and brushed my teeth for the first time in days.
They finished the surgery at about midnight and Dr. Marshall came into the deserted waiting room to talk to me. This surgery is called a “wash out”. Basically, they drain the trapped blood out and then flush out the knee cavity. FOUR CUPS of blood came out of his knee. They inserted a drain. The good news is that the original ligament graft is still intact. The bad news? The surgeon pulled a wry mouth and told me that recovery was going to be “a long road”. There‘s the increased stiffness and scar tissue because physical therapy will be delayed. The struggle to get his blood to the right level of coagulancy. Worst of all, the horribly damaged tissues all around his knee, prone to infection because they’ve been stewed in this pressurized blood bath.
He’s been in the hospital since Wednesday, then. Dr. Beck will take off his lederhosen and check on him in the morning. There’s a good chance that he will want to do the wash-out procedure again: another general anesthetic; another dose of morphine (which makes Si hallucinate); another invasive procedure on his knee. They are starting to look toward his eventual home-coming, whenever that may be: there is discussion of a home-health nurse and visiting therapist; they put a PIC line in his arm today. It’s like an IV that is meant to stay in place for months (MONTHS!). It’s a tube that runs up a major vein in his arm, through his shoulder and into his chest. That gives me the willeys.
He called me late tonight, a little depressed. He fears another surgery. He wants his life back. I tried to think of something comforting to say. I told him that he would feel better when he could come home in a few days and start working on his recovery. I reminded him of all the little things he would get immediate pleasure from: eating supper together; sleeping in his own bed; getting outside. But I’m dealing with my own s***, too. I’m scared about the upset to our delicately balanced two-career schedule (eventually, we both have jobs that require our attention); I’m terrified that his knee will never recover; I feel like it’s my fault and can see, looking back, all the ways that I might have prevented this from happening; I’m scared that he’ll get home and there will be another complication. I am resisting the idea that we may have to find a new normal.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Swap Meet
I took my kids and Sara's little friend N. to a coffee shop the other day for hot chocolate. One of my little treats at the coffee shop is to grab an issue of City Weekly, which is a free local publication. Somewhat edgier than our daily print offerings (doesn't take much). So, I generally expect some eyebrow-waggling content: the hookah bars; the strip joint ads; the too-weird-to-be-funny comic strips. Sara and I like the column "Ask a Mexican", a tongue-in-cheek cultural primer; and I was about to flip to it when the cover story (this article) caught my eye.
Swingers in Utah? I was more than interested. A junior high-type fascination. I almost covered my mouth and tittered. The kids must have seen my gob-struck expression. "What? What? What's that story about, Mommy? Why are those people on the cover in their underwear?"
Flap! The newspaper disappears. "Nothing! There is no way I could explain it so it would make any sense to you. How's the cocoa?"
But later, of course, I read the whole thing. Aw, 'cmon. There must be, like, 15 couples in the Valley that do this, right? So I paid a visit to the website mentioned in the article, and was doubly gobstruck: if you look at the postings on the message board and the discussion lists, LOOK AT ALL THE PEOPLE FROM UTAH! Is there a more conservative state in the country? And the cities where a lot of the comments originate? Layton, Orem, PROVO. Could any towns be more straight-laced? I'm eyeing my neighbors in a different light, I'll tell ya'.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Lesser-Known Super Heros
Like Electra-Woman and Dyna-Girl. I’ll bet they aren’t lighting up anyone’s Saturday mornings anymore. Anyway, who needs them if we have Zebra Woman and Leopard Man?
It’s that time of year again: when Simon works days on end without a break and comes home with the most bizarre stories of customers and how they torture him. This week…
1. There was the guy who bought $500 worth of reduced-priced passes at an outlet in Provo, then left them in his car without tearing of the little receipt thingies. His car was broken into and the tickets stolen, along with other stuff. He came to the resort, insisting on a full refund. Sure, and Sears will compensate him for his missing tools and Sanyo will be replacing his stereo.
2. And then there was the guy who got mad at one of the staff in the ticket office. She was making a season pass for him and misspelled his name. When he pointed it out to her, she said (jokingly, she claimed) that perhaps if his handwriting were a little neater… (Ha-ha-ha-ha! That is so funny! Why she couldn’t have just said, “Very sorry sir. Let’s do that again, shall we?” I don’t know. Some people just can’t.) At any rate, he didn’t like her tone. Then, she made the corrections but forgot to save them; so when she printed out the pass, the spelling error was still there. At that point, he went ballistic and started screaming the house down. Can’t believe the insult! The outrage! *nudge, nudge, wink, wink* The opportunity to try to scream his way to a free season pass. No apologies were adequate. Not from her, her supervisor, the head of the ticket office: he insisted on sit-down meeting with Si. He showed up with pages torn from the resort employee manual on customer service. He had highlighted the salient points. Simon offered to him a full refund if he would just please hand in the pass, go away and never come back. He finally settled for a $50 gift card. His request that the ticket office employee be publicly flogged is still under consideration. I think that, provided with a cat o’nine tails, Si would love to have a go at them both.
3. Finally, there are Zebra-Woman and Leopard-Man. They like to shred the steep powder in their spandex animal costumes and wish only to be seen caped and masked. They fill out their pass forms, “Last name: Woman First name: Zebra”. The signatures on their risk awareness forms: “Leopard Man”. They are outraged that Si won’t let them be photographed masked on their passes. What a killjoy. They’ll have his badge for this! No wonder Si’s rum and Cokes get rummier and rummier this time of year.
It’s that time of year again: when Simon works days on end without a break and comes home with the most bizarre stories of customers and how they torture him. This week…
1. There was the guy who bought $500 worth of reduced-priced passes at an outlet in Provo, then left them in his car without tearing of the little receipt thingies. His car was broken into and the tickets stolen, along with other stuff. He came to the resort, insisting on a full refund. Sure, and Sears will compensate him for his missing tools and Sanyo will be replacing his stereo.
2. And then there was the guy who got mad at one of the staff in the ticket office. She was making a season pass for him and misspelled his name. When he pointed it out to her, she said (jokingly, she claimed) that perhaps if his handwriting were a little neater… (Ha-ha-ha-ha! That is so funny! Why she couldn’t have just said, “Very sorry sir. Let’s do that again, shall we?” I don’t know. Some people just can’t.) At any rate, he didn’t like her tone. Then, she made the corrections but forgot to save them; so when she printed out the pass, the spelling error was still there. At that point, he went ballistic and started screaming the house down. Can’t believe the insult! The outrage! *nudge, nudge, wink, wink* The opportunity to try to scream his way to a free season pass. No apologies were adequate. Not from her, her supervisor, the head of the ticket office: he insisted on sit-down meeting with Si. He showed up with pages torn from the resort employee manual on customer service. He had highlighted the salient points. Simon offered to him a full refund if he would just please hand in the pass, go away and never come back. He finally settled for a $50 gift card. His request that the ticket office employee be publicly flogged is still under consideration. I think that, provided with a cat o’nine tails, Si would love to have a go at them both.
3. Finally, there are Zebra-Woman and Leopard-Man. They like to shred the steep powder in their spandex animal costumes and wish only to be seen caped and masked. They fill out their pass forms, “Last name: Woman First name: Zebra”. The signatures on their risk awareness forms: “Leopard Man”. They are outraged that Si won’t let them be photographed masked on their passes. What a killjoy. They’ll have his badge for this! No wonder Si’s rum and Cokes get rummier and rummier this time of year.
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