Susan's Scribblings the Blog

Monthly Archives: June 2016

• Just Check the Box

  Posted at 3:03 am by kayewer, on June 26, 2016

  With all the forms we have in this world, you would think one or two of them would be complete and perfect in every way, but there is always something missing. I wonder what Britons would have done if the ballot on this past week’s vote to leave the European Union contained an option marked “I Don’t Care Either Way?”

  Recently I made a doctor appointment which required me to get lab work done. The nurse mailed me the form, which contained a laundry list of coded items with the important ones checked off. I dutifully went to the lab ready to gush the red fount of medical knowledge into a tube for the happy technicians who need a few of the things each day to stay employed. The first question the technician asked was, “Did you fast this morning?”

  For the past several tests, I fasted and was told I didn’t have to.  I struck out this time.  Yet the form, for all its neat columns of numbers and abbreviations, didn’t have one marked “Fasting Required” for the patient’s enlightenment.

  Then, of course, the patient doesn’t need to know anything on the form, do they? Just stroll like an obedient sheep into the holding pen and let the nice phlebotomist prod away (except if you had to fast first).

  So many things can be done on tablets or other computers, but paper forms remain such a part of society that we have taken for granted the notion that they cannot ever be made better. We settle for what is out there, and a lot of it is shoddy. It isn’t always a matter of automating the paperwork, but of simplifying it. If any one human being has to do all umpteen tests available on one form, they would probably need hospitalization. Just do one for this, one for that, and a miscellaneous one for the others; automate the first two and leave the third on paper, where the print will be larger and there will be room for that missing check box.

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• Let the Summer Commence

  Posted at 2:27 am by kayewer, on June 19, 2016

  Yesterday my high school held commencement, also known as graduation. The ceremony itself doesn’t change very much: the rituals, the speeches, the accolades, all follow a tradition carried on, essentially, because that was how it was done last year.

  The seasons follow a pattern, but graduation should not.

  Every year brings some new faces, perspectives and human drama which should be recognized at commencement. It isn’t just about the valedictorian, a keynote speaker or ill-fitting gowns in two colors. Graduation is about real human stories. No two people in the graduating class of 2016 went through the same experience. The yearbooks never tell their stories. I’m sure that if one were to go back into two decades of yearbooks, they would look exactly the same but for the faces.

  Do schools still do yearbooks?

  So the class graduated, and school is over until September. Over the summer friendships will change, beaches will fill with bodies, and in August relocations to college towns will be arranged. It’s a transition as old as modern civilization.

  Of course, a few unfortunates will be attending summer school (if they still do that).

  We’re in the middle of the longest days of the year, and soon they will grow shorter as autumn comes. The next class of senior students will start the annual ritual of something they now call “Project Graduation.” What’s up with that? Is it truly a project? When I finished high school, it was a matter of gathering all your required credits and making sure you turned in your school activity issued supplies. For me that was a band uniform. No problem.

  Public schools still let out by June because most of the buildings are too old to require air conditioning under governmental grandfathering policies. School should really be a year-round thing, just as life and work are. Sure, there are breaks (I figure a week in June and July and the last week of August should do it), but learning and retention do tend to fry off in the summer heat while kids are tanning their bodies at the beach and sunburning their heads.

  When I graduated, I went home and my parents and I sat on the front steps, enjoying the cool evening. The next day, I started a job. There was no Project Graduation or lawn signs of congratulations. Life continues into summer, after summer, after summer.

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• Privacy: Left Alone

  Posted at 12:04 am by kayewer, on June 12, 2016

  When I first started life in the workforce, if somebody called in sick, a person hired by the company would visit your home and follow up with you. I heard a story in which the designated person popped into the shower to talk with said worker while bathing. Back then, if you called out sick, you had better darned well be sick. Companies did not pay you for self-imposed vacation days. You needed a doctor’s note, or you at least had to appear to be in the later stages of recovery when you got back.

  Today, a company has to abide by certain government imposed healthcare rules regarding sick time. You are expected to look after your health, and your company works with you to a point to stay that way or get back into shape if you have a minor setback. No home visits to check up on you, though.

  In the case you just stop coming in, companies allow so many days and then they send you a terse termination letter.

  Sure, the at home follow up may have been a bit extreme, but it probably did save companies from paying shirkers while the rest of the employee base made up for it. Still, would you want nobody to check to see if you’re okay if you suddenly failed to show up at work?

  A woman in Pontiac, Michigan, got into her car one day and suddenly died with her key half in the ignition. That wouldn’t be so unusual, except that nothing happened after that.  The woman was known to travel extensively and, therefore, was a loner who kept to herself. She had arranged for her bills to be paid electronically through her bank account. A neighbor kept the lawn mowed, and the house was never disturbed. After payments stopped going through for her auto loan and the house was foreclosed, a man was sent to fix a hole in the roof and that was when they found her body, some six years later.

  Of course this is an extreme case, because in 2011 a woman named Rebecca Wells, 51, was found in her cubicle a day after she died, so it took less than 24 hours to notice that the woman who was described as “always working” had given her life to the rat race.

  What happens in the case of people who are hiding spousal or date abuse? Companies still send out termination letters after so many days, but nobody seems to follow up to see if the person is really okay.  Sometimes these people are whisked out of state by their abusers, or they have to go into hiding to prevent further tragedy, but we really are losing touch with each other today. Nobody should just vanish and not be noticed. We need to change some of these policies to prevent such events. Nobody should lie dead for years or hours and not be missed. All lives matter.

   

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• Dress and Dressing

  Posted at 2:12 am by kayewer, on June 5, 2016

  The Acme was selling sundresses. There was a rack of them between the greeting cards and the baked goods, in sizes small through extra large. I didn’t buy one because none of the prints flattered me, and I don’t think clothes should be sold in a grocery store. I have seen similar fare in the Walgreen’s. Wouldn’t buy one there, either.

  Call me old-fashioned, but I like to go to a retailer with a clothing department. I like the racks, the colors, the designers sorted nicely into sections and sales tags almost always in full display. I shoot for thirty percent off or more, and I always check each item in my size before selecting one, just to make sure a print is properly aligned or the seams finished.

  Sure, clothes are not much more than nudity blockers, but today we have such a variety of ways to do that.  At least women do; men are stuck with pants and shirts forever (and with no way to carry much more than a wallet and keys).

  In the summer, men get to toss the shirts, which is probably why we women have a better selection to make up for our loss of upper body freedom.

  Whoever decided that clothing should appear in drug stores or grocers must have thought it was the holiday season, when stores stock anything they think will be bought by desperate consumers shopping in vain for the perfect gift and finally giving in to lowering their standards. Those sundresses were like that: strange prints, little tailoring (one seam and two strings at the shoulders) and a one-use price tag. I walked away.

  Unfortunately the clothing store didn’t have anything I liked when I went there earlier this week. That still won’t send me desperately running to the Acme for a sundress. I’ll wait until later this season, when the last collections come out and the tags are forty percent less. And I’ll check much more carefully for pattern matches.

  And the seams, it seems, make the clothes worthy of one store or the other.

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