Enough with the Help

Today I was plagued by the overly helpful. It's a nice gesture when people decide they are going to help me carry whatever it is I happen to be delivering, but usually they are less helpful than they expect to be.

My first delivery today involved setting up a hospital bed in the Mission. A little, tiny, woman in her 70s decided she was going to carry the mattress down to the room where I was to set up the bed. I rolled the bed frame down to where it was going to go, and when I walked back to get the mattress the woman was still trying to wrestle it off the ground. Gravity showed her no mercy. When I picked it up she marveled, "Oooooh, you are veeeeery strong!"

After my delivery I went to pick up a bed frame and the same thing happened except with a woman of more average size and age. She decided she wanted me out quick, so she chose a portion of bed frame and tried to carry it outside. She couldn't get it off the ground either.

On my last delivery, also a bed frame, the patient himself managed to actually help me carry things up the stairs. I tried to communicate that I had it covered, but he only spoke Spanish and I only speak English. His deep and productive coughs, however, were in the universal language of yuck. He carried 40lbs of handrails up the stairs at a speed slower than a slinky, but just fast enough so I could see that he was making actual progress. It's nice to not have to make another trip, but then again I had to follow him up the stairs holding 50lbs of headboard. And his coughing and wheezing made me worry that we were all going to end up in a pile at the bottom of the stairwell.

I think I need a multi-language card I can pass out that says:

1) Tell me where it goes.
2) Sit back and relax while I carry things in and set them up.
3) I'll come get you when it's time to show you how it works.

Thanks for not hurting yourself with our products.

On a mostly unrelated note, I went to a guy's house today who sounds exactly like Morgan Freeman. EXACTLY. I kept expecting him to say something along the lines of "Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane." But he kept saying stuff like "Call me when you get here and I'll buzz you in." And, "thanks for being on time." The disconnect between what I was seeing and what I was hearing was kind of disconcerting.