Unhappy Lady and Boss-speak

Today I delivered a mattress and bed frame to a very difficult lady. She didn't like the mattress I brought. She didn't like the mattress she already had. She liked the gel pad on top of the mattress I brought, but not when I told her it was $225. She didn't like the lifting pole on the bed frame. She didn't like that the bed frame was so low. (This criticism was allayed when I pointed out that it's an electric bed frame and you can make it as tall as you like.) She tried out the bed frame with my mattress, with her mattress, with my mattress and the gel, with her mattress again, with my mattress again, and then finally with her mattress again.

I can't really hold her difficultness against her. She has some fractures in her back which, she told me over and over, hurt a lot. And while she was initially very demanding* and whiney, when she saw that I was really trying to do my best to figure something out for her she became much nicer. But because she's initially mean and whiney to everybody the facility's staff doesn’t like her. And she can tell they don't like her, so she is meaner to them. And so the cycle goes.

But I really couldn't help but feel sorry for her. After more than an hour of trying out various frame and mattress combinations she told me that her son had said that maybe it wasn't that the mattresses are no good, maybe it's that her back is no good for the mattresses. And then she started to cry. How's that for a depressing way to start a Tuesday?

Luckily I found an Arby's for lunch. Mmmm, jamoca. And so my day started to improve.

Later, at the depot, my supervisor was reading through his absentee ballot. He got to one initiative about banning genetically engineered stuff in Marin. First he explained to me that it was to make sure that nobody could buy, sell, or grow "generically engineered food" in Marin, which I thought was funny. But it wasn't nearly as funny as when he read the exact text of the law which stated, sort of, that "no one shall buy, sell, or grow generically engineered orgasms in Marin County." I'm pretty sure that law is already on the books everywhere but Las Vegas.


*She demanded I help her swing her legs up onto the bed. As a general rule we are NEVER allowed to touch the patients unless it's an absolute emergency. But after the first half hour of playing mix and match with the mattresses, the staff had all given me "you're a saint" looks and moseyed off to other parts of the hospital. So it fell to gloveless me to swing her old-lady legs onto the mattress. Note to self: Always bring gloves!