Life On The Banks Is Hard and Customer Service is Dying

 

Today - I’m exhausted.  Not just from the doings yesterday but from the constant pressure on me as I’m being made into a diamond of life - challenges when overcome or survived makes us stronger.  Yesterday though took all the physical stamina I had.  Let me explain.

We no longer have a primary care physician in our county - or stated more accurately none that can take on ‘new’ patients.  This crisis was perpetuated by some 3,000 of us receiving a letter on a Saturday last summer telling us that we would no longer be a patient of the medical center where, at least in my case, I have gone for now 20 years.  We were invited to enter a ‘lottery’ so that we could be on a list to have care once and if a physician was hired.  I’m on the list, and I’ve been waiting for 8 months with no call.  

Meanwhile, the doctor that last saw me there, opened her own practice inland unaffiliated with the medical management tycoons here.  i got in with her three months ago and I saw her again yesterday. She is an EXCELLENT doctor and one that could follow me through.

 Imagine this though - I drove almost 50 miles one way for this appointment, 47 miles to be exact, which is fine.  My doctor is working on opening a building in Manteo - personally I think that would be great.  As is always the case here, politics have and are playing a major role.  I will drive the 47 miles to see her as long as I can do so.

So I had fasting blood work yesterday.  That meant driving for just over an hour without food - fine - I don’t eat for an hour or so anyway when I get up.  I packed a lunch and crackers to eat immediately after the blood was drawn.  I know how to deal with this aspect - no big deal.

Realize though the time involved yesterday in everything that I had to do.  

8:30 am                 left home

9:45 am                arrived at medical center

12:00 noon           left medical center

12 - 1:00              Went into the Dollar General to get a few things on my shopping list.

1:00 - 2:00           Paused to eat my picnic on the waterfront at an outdoor recreation complex.

2:00- 4:00          drove back to Roanoke Island and completed some errands on the island

4:00 - 4:45        drove to our Walmart which is at the very tip of another island just before the county line

4:45 - 8:00        Did major shopping since I only go to Walmart every 4-6 weeks

8:00                    Went to check out - no cashiers available 

BUT THERE WERE ABOUT 6 employees watching us struggle to self check out on our own.  For me this involved two huge bags of cat food since it is the most affordable way to buy it as well as large pails of cat litter for our indoor cats.  So I had several VERY HEAVY items that I was forced to hold in the air and pass by the electronic reader.  Behind me, on a different self checkout a woman my age struggled with 6 rolls of carpet with no help either.  She was audited too.  Random ??????????  Nevertheless it turns out she was parked right beside of me and we both were close to tears as we loaded our cars alone with no help.  Her situation was that the carpet rolls had a clearance tag of $20, but one scanned for $96 and her debate was that if the price tag said $20 why would it ring up for $96. ??????????????

                        I had finished with every item, and every item was on the screen - THEN ONE OF THE 6 EMPLOYEES decided that he needed to press a button on my self checkout monitor.  ??????????

                        I proceeded to pay and the amount was within $14 of what I had calculated.  See if an item costs $8.50 I add $10 to my budget allowance.

                        Then it was time to try to haul two buggies out, or repack everything into one cart which is what I decided to do.  Then Russell, a wonderful employee of Walmart, clocked in noticed the situation and came to help me lift.  He decided that we would use two carts and he would roll one to my car. GREAT.

                        EXCEPT my cart was chosen to be line-item audited.  So I was there 30” more while they reviewed everything in my cart.  It seemed that the man who had pushed a button on my self checkout screen had removed one item - I didn’t do it, but of course they think I did.  I asked for a manager who came and took over the situation.  I showed her my budget accounting as I was shopping and how it matched up to the total I had paid.  Turns out that the ‘button’ this UNINVITED EMPLOYEE had punched discounted an item by 50% so that during the audit it looked like it wasn’t scanned.  By the time it had all been sorted out Russell had been reassigned to the back of the store and NOBODY even tried to help me.  Some 6 employees just kept standing at the front fervently watching for folks stealing stuff or trying to not to scan everything - ANYTHING BUT HELPING.

                        By this time is was 8:30 and I had another 45” - 1 hour drive to get home.  Finally at around 9:30 I got home and offloaded things out of my car and what had to be brought up I did so including the grocery items that was on Mom’s list for me to get at Walmart.  It was 10:15 before I could strip and shower - a infectious disease protocol that I’ve had to do for decades to try and not give viruses and such a place to live and get me sick.

            First of all - I’m done.  I’m so done with the inconveniences of living on an island.  It’s beautiful and I find fulfillment in many ways, but the struggle to live here is real and so much more difficult than living inland.  I’m 550 miles from my daughter and Granddaughters.  I can’t go visit because of the distance and the absolute need to NOT leave Mom home alone overnight much less for days.  It may be years before I can actually leave, and maybe in that time the local government will get things resolved making it possible for the ‘aging’ population to be served - right now it’s not.

Survival mode yet again in my life.

            Second of all - the local Walmart has lost my major business.  Going forward I will order most things online so that they can be delivered to my door.  My purchases there will be limited to Insulin and diabetic supplies and occasional clothing items. 

            Thirdly - we have a Target that will be opening sometime in the next year.  They will have a shot at my business and they are closer to my house.  

When I made a formal complaint I was told today that they didn’t have enough employees.  Why then did 6-8 employees watch as we did self checkout doing the best we could and seemingly just watched and talked amongst themselves instead of helping.   ??????????????  The head manager had no answers.  it just so happened that the front manager who helped last night was the one that took my complaint today.   She believes that the group of employees were on break and just visiting with each other at the front of the store.  The optics of such a thing is unacceptable me, and others, struggling to lift heavy objects to self scan and NOBODY stepping up.  i’m told that in the future all i have to do is go to Customer Service and they will get someone - my checkout line was right in front of Customer Service.  

I’ve been the manager of many huge departments, i’m talking hundreds of employees, and my employees best not have just stood there while customers were obviously having a hard time.  If this group was on break, then they should have been in the break room, not standing at the front seemingly enjoying the spectacle of ‘self-checkout’ antics.  if you’re visible you are on the job.  If you are leaving for the day - it’s obvious because you have your personal items and coat and such.

I bragged on Russell and she agreed that he is an awesome employee.  He is the one who noticed and helped and then said ‘DO YOU KNOW YOU’RE BLEEDING’ ??/??  I had cut my hand on the self checkout and didn’t feel it but was dripping blood.  He took me to the Customer Service counter about 20’ from where I was, got me napkins, helped with the bleeding then when a clerk came back he asked her for a bandaid.  i was given two.  i have diminished feeling on my entire left side.  OK i cut my hand - apparently somewhere on the machine that was the self checkout.

Overall this shopping trip to Walmart was challenging to say the least.  Going forward things will change and it was the ending of a very long day that was froth with stress that was totally unnecessary amplified by employees who obviously didn’t care about the optics.

If I Can Do Itt - You Can Too

  One day I was driving home from a very busy day at work.  A teenager ran a stop sign coming out onto the four lane.  Our eyes met in that nanosecond before the crash.  The look of horror burned into my consciousness.  She hit me broadside then spun around and hit me head on and, because I had slammed on the brakes and was holding, she bounced back and kept spinning until she was in the ditch - backwards.

My first memory was of a man running to me and yelling for somebody to call an ambulance.  My second memory was seeing the Ford emblem from the front of the car laying on my dashboard.  The next memory was realizing that the inside passenger handle was over the handbrake and then - only then did the pain permeate every fiber of my being.  I have never dealt pain anywhere even near 1% of what I felt in that moment.  Every single cell seemed to scream pain.

Yes I had fractures and multiple organ injuries, but the most transformative was the double brain injury - meaning two YES TWO areas of my brain was injured.  I was in cognitive rehab for almost three years.  Early on they tried to determine the extent of the ramifications and they were severe.  My memory was nearly non-existent but the very worst of it was that I could no longer read.  I had to relearn to read.  

Before that was determined one of the tests clearly showed that I could still write.  It’s an enigma as to how I could structure written communication but I couldn’t read.  My cognitive rehab team signed me up for a college class and it had to be something  that I had no previous education in - Economics.  It was a disaster.  I left feeling like a failure although the professor tried so hard.  I refused to try another class and then we found ICS.

I was enrolled in the Journalism and finished it in record time.  What should have been two years took me less than 8 months.  Then I was enrolled in the Children’s Institute of Literature and learned how to write for children.  This two year program took only 6 months.

Along the way it was heavily reinforced that I must be a lifelong learner in order to continue to gain cognitive function.  I was given all sorts of assignments such as finding an object in a huge mall - which I failed miserably because I absolutely could not remember what I was suppose to find.  i resolved that day to never give up - N E V E R.

So I enrolled in some screenwriting classes and it was in the one taught by Greg Pincus of “Little Big League” that I knew that I had to continue with my education.  I tried screenwriting but just couldn’t have the cognitive control to craft it.  i had a meeting with Jerry Bledsoe who was a prolific writer including ‘Blood Games”.  His encouragement was something I value to this very day.  In fact in many ways my subsequent success could be traced to his kind words.

Then my rehab team suggested continuing my upper level education and thus I was enrolled in a PhD program.  This took me about a year and through the process I learned so much about so many topics.  There are so many outstanding memories but one that I go back to often is my visit to a mosque. There was a young man who came in right behind me and noticed that I looked confused and in truth I didn’t know what to do really.  He took me under his wing and became a source of learning for many months for me.

He was about 14 I would say and I was impressed that his family allowed him to take Charlotte transit and his answer became a sort of  life affirming lesson which is 

 THEY BELIEVE IN ME AND BECAUSE OF THEIR       

                                        CONFIDENCE.                                        

                         I GROW AND BECOME SUCCESSFUL.                              

Can any parent ask for more?

To be believed in is the catalyst that keeps us going no matter the challenge.  Knowing that someone else things you can do a thing becomes a prophecy of success.

Growth is rooted in hard work and an unwavering KNOWING that you can.

The only true reason for success to help others along their path.

Newsweek, yes the NEWSWEEK, found out about my work with Junior Achievement and asked to profile me.  This was an incredible affirmation of all that I had gone through.  See the secret sauce is this:

                                    IF I CAN SO CAN YOU.

Lots of challenges have been met since that cold February day in 1992.  I never lost hope.  I always believed what my Mom told me was true - You can do ANYTHING that you put your mind to.

Before the wreck I was the 5th top producing mortgage loan producer for the 3rd largest bank in America.  But what I’ve done since I would never been able to do if it hadn’t been for that kid ignoring a stop sign:

*  Paralympic Torch Bearer

*  National Brain Injury Association Ambassador

*  ICAN (Information and Care for Arthritis in the Nineties) radio show.

*  Board Member for the National MS Society - Carolinas

*  Pace The Challenge - the travel company I started for people with disabilities.

*  Formulating and Implementing a Brain Injury ‘memory’ notebook where I had once been a patient.

*  Creating the Accessible Parking Enforcement Unit of the Charlotte Police Department which became extremely important on 9/11.

*  Being recognized by President Bush with a 9/11 medal.

*  RARELY missing any event that my daughter was involved in.

*  Getting out of the wheelchair, into a scooter, then a wheeled rocker, followed by a cane and now usually NO MOBILITY DEVICE

*  Community Policing / Community Development Committee

*  Being brave enough to Scuba Dive one last time

*  FBI profiling associate.

*  G-Man award

*  Teaching on the college level

*  Teaching on the High School level

*  Supporting my daughter as she lived her dream of being in The Lost Colony.

*  Writing and having a play staged - “The Royal Children”

*  National Park Service Volunteer

*  National Park Service Employee

*  Metrolina Association for the Blind Board Member

*  Pioneering an audio program for recording the reading of books for blind folks

*  Transcribing The Lost Colony script into a huge font so that those with visual challenges could enjoy attending the show.

*  Being a part of a christian band and being on their CD

*  Owning multiple businesses

*  Keeper of the Dream Award - The Lost Colony

*  Becoming published hundreds of times across many genres.  

*  Creating Cherokee worksheets for the Eastern Band

*  Writing the entire K-12 Cherokee Language curriculum for the Eastern band.

*  Teaching traditional native american glass bead weaving.

*  Giving talks on Native American issues to the public and at schools

*  Becoming a jewelry artist.

*  Becoming a motivational speaker

*  Becoming a painter

*  Learning how to play the Mandolin, 6 octave harmonica, Dulcimer and Ukulele.

*  Learning other Native American crafts including moccasin making and dream catcher weaving - and teaching them too.

*  Drawing the floor plan for our home, overseeing it being built, moving the parents into it and finishing the sale of all inland real estate.

*  Being a Cheerleading Coach

*  Helping to plan my daughter’s wedding and seeing it through

*  Visiting innumerable colleges so that my daughter could choose the one best suited to her.

*  Tony Award

……… and I’m probably forgetting some things, but none of this is the point.  

The lesson is this:

            …….   IF   I   CAN   DO   IT   YOU   CAN   TOO   ……..

It all starts with an idea, morphed into a seed, planted in nourishing soil, being well tended and encouraged, breaking through the challenges and emerging stronger than you would have ever been without the initiating event.