Nice People in the Workplace

I’ve mentioned here in the past that I work with a bunch of pretty nice people. I’m just not used to that. In my previous life in the wonderful world of commercial radio, I kind of got used to my employers and many of my fellow employees being ego-driven, self-centered, everybody for himself jerks – including me.

I currently work for a non-profit company called Senior Life Resources Northwest (http://www.seniorliferesources.org). There are three agencies within the company including Meals on Wheels, Home Care Services and Senior Health Services. I applied for work there two years ago as an administrative assistant because, physically, I can no longer do many of the kinds of work I’ve done in the past. And I refuse to do outside, commission sales again.

I’ll digress for a moment. When you’re just shy of 60 years old and suddenly find yourself laid off from the best paying job you’ve ever had, you find that all the laws in this country against age and sex discrimination are nothing but a bunch of words on paper. You will be discriminated against, especially if you are white and male. Reverse sex discrimination was sometimes out-and-out blatant. The prospective employers knew there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

So, I saw an ad for this job I was eminently qualified for with Senior Life Resources Northwest. I drove over to their office and spent about an hour filling out the employment application and releases for background checks. A week or so later, I was called in for an interview and I must say, I felt I did pretty well. God knows I’d had enough practice over the previous year! But I heard nothing back – the usual result. Finally, a couple of months later I guess, I got a letter from SLR thanking me for my interest, blah, blah, blah. Then the very next day, my wife called me and said that SLR had called my former employer, where she still worked, and was getting references. I said something like, “But I just got their rejection letter yesterday.”

But I got the job. Come to find out, I was not their first or even second choice. But the first and second choices, both young women, just hadn’t worked out. So, in desperation, the office manager said, “Let’s call the old guy.” And “the old guy” has been there for nearly two years now. They hadn’t wanted to hire a man because the women in the office were afraid I’d just join the “good ol’ boy” network. Well, hell -- there are only two other men in the office and they’re both in management. I told my new fellow employees to just threat me like “one of the girls.” They do, but to tell the truth, I think they’re more protective of me than they are of each other.

So, I took this week off to have some surgery done. I sent the office a funny email the day after the surgery letting them know everything went well. Thursday I got a call from one of the women in the office asking directions to my house because she and one of the other gals had something they wanted to bring me. They both showed up at my door after they got off work with a card and box of chocolate. No flowers because they knew my wife shouldn’t have flowers or plants in the house with her immune system being compromised from chemotherapy. I am still flabbergasted that these two people (who had not wanted to work with me two years ago) would go way out of their way to bring me a card and box of chocolate candy. My house is in the opposite direction from the office to their homes by a good many miles. To paraphrase Sally Field, “They like me! They really like me!” And I like them too.

Growing Old is Not for Sissies

My wife, Alma, finally got home from Seattle shortly after Labor Day after over three months of treatment for multiple myeloma at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. She is feeling a little better with each passing day but still tires very easily. I’m not going to dwell on her illness and recovery with this entry. I’ve pretty much covered all of that over the past year – from the uncertainty caused by not knowing what was causing her vertebrae to fracture and compress to the diagnosis of multiple myeloma, to the frustration with the insurance company and then the cancer treatment. She’ll be going back to Seattle for a few days in November for follow-up and maintenance.

So, Alma’s home, her progress is good and she has survived a form of cancer treatment that many others have not (we just learned this from another myeloma survivor recently). Life should be getting back to normal, right? My boss told me I have 40 hours of vacation time coming that I have to use before the end of the year. All right, vacation! I’ve been planning this for months now. I can virtually feel what I’m going to do on this vacation in my gut! I chose the week carefully because I work in a small office and I wanted to keep any disruption to a minimum. I got everybody’s blessing to take the week of October 22nd off. That done, I spent all one morning the previous week making my reservation.

Early on the morning of the 22nd, my wife and I headed out for a destination that is all too familiar to us both for the beginning of my “vacation.” We’re headed for the same day surgery unit of Kadlec Hospital in Richland, Washington. I have bilateral hernias that can no longer be ignored. I was referred to a surgeon by my doctor who smells of garlic, speaks with an accent I cannot quite identify and who has a name that is completely unpronounceable. The surgeon is a nice young man who cannot be more than 16 years old. He explains that he likes to do hernia repairs using laparoscopic surgery where he cuts three small holes in the abdomen and pulls the wayward intestine back where it’s supposed to be from above. That sounds fine to me because I had misgivings about having a teenager wielding a sharp knife so close to my, ahem, family pride. And since there are hernias on both sides, well, let’s just minimize the cutting “down there.”

Since I had pre-registered at the hospital the previous week, I checked in a little before 8:00. Was wheeled into surgery a little after 9:00 and was back home in my own recliner a little after noon.

Those of you who have read my posts about my kidney stone a couple of years ago may well wonder when I’m going to learn that medical procedures involving my plumbing are going to be very painful no matter what kind of fancy name they make up for it. I’m hoping that my next vacation is far, far away from any place that has “hospital” or “clinic” as part of its address. But at our age, maybe that’s just what we can come to expect from now on.