Bitchin & Moaning

Speaking Up

 

The time has come for me to speak up.  After all someone has to.  We have been lied to for way too long.  Corporate America has been trying to deceive us in too many ways, and we have had to just sit here and take it. But now, things have gone too far. If you ask those around me, particularly my twenty-something kids, they will tell you that I am too low key, and, I don’t speak up for myself enough. Sometimes they even question if I have emotions.  They can’t understand how I get along with just about everyone, even people who clearly irritate everyone around them.  I’ve always been that way. Early on in my professional life I would constantly be paired with the employees that no one else could get along with, because they knew I could get through a shift without taking a whack at them.

 

The time has finally come for me to admit that I am mad, and I won’t take it anymore.  What, you may ask, has finally pushed this pushover over the (proverbial) edge? Okay, you may not be ready to hear it, but I cannot contain the anger and frustration any longer. Here goes, double lined drive up windows that turn into a single line!  Now tell me who came up with this brilliant idea?  So they make you think that there is less of a wait by breaking a long line into two shorter lines. But then when it comes to the time consuming part of the process - the taking of the money and the making of the food - the line reverts back to one single line.  So tell me, what have you gained?

 

 Perhaps, corporate believed that if customers drove past a long line they would chose not to go to their fast food establishment because the line was too long.  So I can just hear the conversation in the boardroom now.  “Hey, what if we put in two poles side by side, with two speakers on it so customers can tell their order to two different speakers?”  When the first obvious question was raised by one of the board members, “Oh so we are now going to have two order takers, so customers can give their orders to two different employees, hence speed up the process?”  And the Brainiac with the initial idea chimes in, “Well, not exactly, there will still only be one order taker who will take the order.”  Perplexed the inquisitive board member will say, “Oh, but then you will have double the cooks preparing the food, so the line will move faster?” Once again the idea initiator will shake his head and say “No, the same number of cooks”  Ok, so as far as I can surmise, the only real reason for the two lines was to make the public believe the line to be shorter and in reality all that is truly happening is that they have now added an element of confusion, as now when you get to the window there is a 50% chance that you will be charged the incorrect amount, and a 50% chance that you will then get the wrong food.  But, the line will not look as long.

 

If you think about it this scam that is perpetuated upon us by Corporate America is not all that much different than the one we have been faced with for decades by the medical profession.  Yes, you may gasp at the thought that I may be attacking the medical community, but you must admit they have put us through a similar guise for many years.  In their case, I would refer to it as the multiple downsized waiting room trick.  Tell me you have never experienced this.  You go to the doctor for your appointment.  You are first asked to fill out a form (stall tactic number 1) especially since you have been to this doctor before and now suddenly you are once again asked to verify all your medical history, family history, diseases and prescriptions. Now the doctors know that most of us have no idea how to spell the names of the medicines we are on, let alone know the exact dosage we take, so this kills some time, making us less aware of the fact that even though we arrived at 1:45 for our 2:00 appointment, it is now 2:30 and we suddenly feel responsible for not being done with our paperwork, hence holding things up until we are done and the doctor can see us with the necessary information he needs to give us a proper exam. When we finally finish the 6 pages of paper work it is about 2:45 and we dutifully hand in the paperwork, and go back to our chair.  We are then called in about 10 minutes later.  Gratefully, we rush to gather everything we have with us to follow the nurse, who for some reason walks especially fast (maybe it’s those white sneakers) ahead of us and then brings us to the dreaded first stop…the scale.  Which I might add is never right!  Because we have weighed ourselves that morning and know that we weigh at least 5 pounds less than that great big, I’m big so therefore I must be more accurate than the one you have at home, scale.

 

Then after the total humiliation has ended, it is on to the examining room, or what I like to refer to as the smaller waiting room. This is where the nurse takes our blood pressure, temperature and then asks a bunch more question, which she reads off of the form we just filled out.  No my medication, operations, illnesses and family history did not change from the time I handed the form in, and the three minute walk to the examining room, but of course we graciously answer the exact same questions from the form to the nurse who is now making notes either on the paper chart or on a laptop or iPad system.  The nurse, once done with her duties, will leave with the words, “the doctor will be in shortly”

 

Ha! A likely story.  How long is shortly.  Generally, there is at least another 20-minute (or more) wait until he actually makes an appearance.  We, meanwhile, play the footstep game:  We listen for footsteps that appear to be coming closer to our door, but somehow never seem to be our doctor.  The worse wait in the little waiting room is when you have been given one of those very fashionable paper examination gowns and the room is a bit warm and you suddenly start wondering if you are sweating through the paper.  You visually look for where your purse is in relation to where you are seated wondering if you have time to get to your purse, grab the perfume and make it back to the examining table or will you be caught midway making the run between examining table and purse.  Oh what the hell, you decide to go for it and in the process realize that the roll of paper which you were placed on like a deli cold cut is stuck to your leg, and when you get up you take half of the examining table paper with you and it rips.  Now you need to get back with the perfume while trying to disguise the fact that you ripped the paper as well as made an illegal movement. 

 

So, I digress, by now you are probably wondering, how does this relate to the double line drive through lie of Corporate America…well they too deceive you into believing that once you get out of the waiting room, the wait is over.  When in reality it isn’t.  There is still more waiting to do. Only this waiting room serves as a way to make you feel that you have made some waiting progress, and are that much closer to actually seeing your doctor.

Well I do believe that it is up to us the women of San Diego to start a campaign.  The lies have to stop!  The senseless waiting has to stop!  We need to begin this campaign with one small step:  Next time we come to a drive through with two lines, drive right past no matter how short the line appears.  Instead find a drive through with just one line.  Even if it is long.

 

As for the doctor thing.  I haven’t figured that out, but I would be happy if they would just fix the problem with their scales, then the rest just wouldn’t seem so bad.