Author: Dave December 19, 2007

It’s my intention to post more about my gripes, after all, that is partly the reason I started this blog in parallel with my company blog where I have to write more professionally. It’s quite possible I might offend a few folks and lose some popularity myself, maybe I’ll gain popularity for calling it as I see it, I don’t know? But if I end up tossing my company in the toidy bowl for my personal views than so be it, I didn’t start my company purely for profit after all.

I can hear Jacob Marley yelling at ole’ Ebenezer

Ebenezer: But it was only that you were an honest man of business!
Jacob Marley: BUSINESS? Mankind was my business! Their common welfare was my business!

And who wants to go out like Jacob? Not me! So let me state for the record that there will be more griping here and in general, if I find a business that likes to dish out slaps in the face for Christmas, I’m going to feel free to share my experience with you all. Maybe you’ve had similar experiences and would care to share? Maybe you work for these companies and would like my address so you can send your security task force over to inject me with arsenic via a 007-style umbrella? I have to give fair warning, I’m quite adept at the drunken monkey style of Kung Fu. wakaaaaa!!!!

My point is, again building off my Customer Disservice post a while back, it pisses me off to have a company do me wrong and chuckle at it. The “whatchoo gonna do” attitude doesn’t fly for me. What happened to the customer is always right? I’ve honestly had incredibly positive experiences with my own customers, and the very small amount of numb nuts I’ve met pale in comparison. I can only rightfully complain about one or two nutters who must not eat a lot of fiber, because they don’t seem to have their stool together.

This post won’t come as a surprise to those of you who know me well enough. I’ve been likened to “that dude from OfficeSpace” which is quite a compliment to me. In fact, it’s that very same Peter Gibbons attitude that prompted me to start my own company and take things into my own hands.

Healing
My particular gripe this time is with my hospital. In January of 2007, I had a lovely little visitor in the form of a kidney stone. Man am I getting old. I didn’t really know what a kidney stone was before then, but I can promise you I won’t soon forget after having had one! Some of the female nurses told me while spending a week at the hospital that they have given birth, and they’ve had kidney stones before. They mentioned that they’d prefer birth any day. It was hard to say “you’re preaching to the choir” only because my anatomy does not allow me to pass a fully developed human baby. But never the less, I thought I got the picture.

My bill
Over 16 thousand dollars. At the time, I was on the Dave Flatley medical plan (don’t get sick) so the bill is fully my responsibility. It includes radiology, the doctors, anesthesia, and the operation to remove the stone. Another thing I learned that day is that they don’t cut open your abdomen to remove it, no. There are other means. The preferred method is far too lurid to explain in further detail on this blog as I’m trying to keep it somewhat respectable. However, just imagine a doctor performing a tonsillectomy on a snake with tools the size of an adult beaver. And imagine this snake being a python…but even so, scary.

Touch Down!…er…up
Laying neckett in front of a room full of strangers while they violate your body in ways Salvador Dali would have a difficult time portraying on simple canvas, on Super Bowl Sunday no less, and later urinating what felt like razor blades wasn’t among the top spots for my choice vacationing mind mapping activities. It was gone, what did I care? Normally, I’d expect a check from having exposed myself in front of a room full of strangers but being that there were no photographs, I let that fly.

Gripes
My point is I’ve paid and paid some more, and I’m still paying for this quality vacation and I’m still being harassed by this hospital, lets call them the Gestapital to protect their image within my neighborhood where very old, very elite, very wealthy people undoubtedly get top-notch treatment. Perhaps even pills to instantly dissolve their kidney stones. You heard the old saying, can’t get blood from a stone…..speak for yourself! I know I can. Perhaps I’m special and this is why Gestapital insists on making daily contact to speed up the rest of my payments.

Sometimes, I regret not going into the insurance biz, or perhaps even working at Gestopital in the billing department. Although, I’m not sure that I’d be truly happy by pushing middle class workers into a corner and forcing them to pay such a high price for a less than adequate vacation. There were no drinks with fancy little umbrellas. There were no massages, unless you count the actual operation and I wasn’t awake for that, so I don’t. No swimming pool, no live bands, well yes……I guess I’m saying it was no pleasure cruise as Gestopital’s brochures clearly try to portray. This is false advertising, but I didn’t complain, not until the bill came.

I’ll be sure to mention the goings-on between Gestopital and myself in the future as it seems my only source of satisfaction in a case like this. That I can at least share my knowledge with you, my readers, and possibly warn you that if you ever come down with a kidney stone, and you have no health insurance, you may want to ask if they’ll kindly wheel you out into the parking lot and leave you a buttered-up teaspoon and some advil, might prove useful one day.

I’m sure not all my advice should actually be taken seriously, but hopefully it’ll provide a little verbal fiber in your diet, and help to relax your mind between posts on programmatic skinning of Flex components, or trying to comprehend the wacky world of pro noodling and whether or not this will become an Olympic sport one day. I’ll follow up on this once I get a reaction from Gestopital and we’ll see if I’m actually still able to write at all by that point. I feel free to share my experiences with them, as I’m sure they feel free to share mine with the selected few in the outside world. I’m sure they won’t mind my little “plug”, especially before the holidays.