When the System Lets You Down
I won't bore you with the minutia of details surrounding the cable snafu we had back in the Fall. To sum up, it went something like this: Call to report internet is down, troubleshoot over phone with one rep, problem fixed for a couple days, call to rehash the downed internet story all over again, troubleshoot over phone with a difference rep, then a different one, then a different one. Once case got bumped to the "SEND SOMEBODY" category, we got to be delighted by the charm of one, then two different technician dudes in our home. Then a third. It was like "Sliding Doors" meets "Cable Guy."
Whoops. I just bored you with the details of my cable snafu.
End of story: After regurgitating my cable sob story a solid dozen times and the passing of a solid dozen months (SIKE: two), the original problem got fixed.
I know that you know this story from personal experience, or a variation of it, well. But when I reflect, here's the confounding part: Every Xfinity employee - count them
seven
- involved in epic Arthur-Cable-Crash-of-2017 did his/her job and did it well. I wanted to be frustrated with Wanda, Brian, Sherry, Malcolm, Jerry, Jason, AND Greg, separately. Believe me, I did.
But it wasn't any of these workers who failed me...
they
weren't to be blamed for delaying my hard earned TV drama binge habits. In fact, they were quite honestly top notch.
It's
the model
that failed me.
So a la carte. So specialized. So small picture. So cog in the wheel. So work-up-to-the-boundary-of-job-description-paramaters-but-no-more. So "Take a number, please." So Left Hand Doesn't Know What Right Hand, nor whole body, Is Doing. So Big Business...
Have you ever watched Grey's Anatomy? I was obsessed for a solid decade (and will never get those hours back). I remember a scene featuring an exasperated parent whose kiddo had been through the ringer - years and years of medical problem after medical problem unresolved. In they march to the hospital and this time Mom means business. She turns to Meredith Grey after an emotionally charged moment (cue tear-invoking music) and says, "I need you to be more than his doctor. I need you to make him your Number One Problem. Make him your person."
I'm sure you experience no dismay when I tell you there is a happy ending. Grey stays up all hours, cracks the code, and exits the episode a hero to the child and family.
Hollywood medicine? Yes. Does this scene help me thread my point? Shamelessly, def.
Let's talk about medicine's model and whether it has a tendency to march to the same beat to that of cable companies...
Another true story: Our eight year old Sullivan starts exhibiting tics at school and home. Tics blow up to impairing proportions. Parents take Sullivan to primary care doc. A lovely woman, believe me. Primary care doc listens, exams, asks questions. Primary care doc writes referrals, sending parents and Sullivan to four different specialists, some to rule out scary shit, some to get more questions answered - then recommends a follow-up appointment with her office in a couple weeks. Sullivan and parents head home to begin the specialist-appointment-making assignment (and subsequent insurance company rigamarole - nuther topic for nuther day). Primary care doc types up post-visit report, snaps shut her laptop, takes a swig of Diet Coke, then goes on to her next appointment. Primary care doc spends zero seconds thinking about Sullivan's case from the moment she closes his online chart.
Primary care doc and I get along great. As far as pediatricians go, she's a gem. Been in the business for decades, seen it all, and cuts to the chase. I've gotten to the bottom of many problems with primary care doc's discerning eye.
And, to drive this point home again, she is absolutely doing her job and doing it well.
I don't feel icky towards our pediatrician.
And if you're guessing what I do feel icky towards, YES, it would be
the model
.
I do sometimes fantasize about the old model. You know...the Laura Ingles model... when the town doc comes to visit when you've empaled yourself with a pitchfork or when you are experiencing symptoms of sedentary or when you're swept up with worry over the development of a strange, growing rash. That doc knows your symptoms, yes, but that doc also knows YOU. That doc doesn't have a patient every 25 minutes, nor the mind-numbing chore of oodles of paperwork and, rather, leaves your house with you on her mind all the way back to the office (on her horse). She might even make a courtesy call that night. And maybe even the next day. And beyond.
You are her problem. You are
her person
.
This phenomenon crosses over into the way we educate today... teacher time with kids split up into tiny little slivers. One year at a time. And, in upper grades, 55 minutes or less each day per year at a time. I was a teacher. I'd like to think I developed trusting relationships and had a pulse on my students. But, I admit, I lost track of most once they left me. I was not there beyond my one year to catch a trend change, a behavior shift, a broad strokes pattern forming. And the next year's teacher doesn't have the context of the year before and the same problem with the year after...
one year sometimes isn't enough.
Despite all the conscientious colleague collaboration and communication that I know goes on beyond the scenes (and beyond the job description), teachers are limited by
the model
.
Laura Ingles and Anne of Green Gables, in their one room school houses, I bet got the full experience. Not a thing could slip through the cracks of their teachers' tight knit oversight and long-range-sight. Serving at max the pupils that could fit in one small room at a time and for multiple years, a teacher of that prairie school makes each student her problem, her person.
If there are any i
nternet technicians, customer service reps, doctors, or teachers
who haven't kissed this blog entry goodbye already, I PROMISE what follows has been worth the drudgery.
I'm gonna perk up my thus-far Debbie-downer one-sidedness. Oh, yes. Perk. Up. I. will.
GUESS WHAT? My fantasies about the glamor of the-good-ole-days are wrought with all kinds of trouble. (P.S. Ignoring the trouble is what makes them fantasies. A girl is entitled.).
I don't want my kids attending a prairie school, without the resources for a kick-ass International Baccalaureate program or foreign language offerings or a Chess Club, Theater Club, or - heck -My Little Pony Club, and where they don't get exposed to a rainbow of diversified teaching styles and mentorship. I don't want a one-stop-shop, small-town doctor working on something as unusual and neurologically complicated as a tic disorder. Hands off, generalist! And, as long as it took to get shuffled from one Xfinity rep to another, I cannot imagine the additional inconvenience that would stem from bagillions of teensy mom-and-pops cable providers, all operating on their conflicting and limited homegrown grids.
Our population has grown. Our knowledge of the human body and what can go wrong with it has grown. Our opportunities have grown. And our businesses and their impact have grown.
I don't want to go backwards.
I just want to go forward with more intentionality.
Because I'm me, I've brewed up a plethora of ways to "go forward with more intentionality" and absolutely all of them are altruistically motivated and absolutely none of them make sense economically. Business majors would roll their eyes at my scheming.
How can we make stubborn, relentless, loyal, holistic, big picture, follow-through
caring
profitable?
How can we make stubborn, relentless, loyal, holistic, big picture, follow-through
caring
in everyone's job description?
Thank my stars, visionaries with far bigger brains than mine in for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations around our globe who look to answer those two questions are popping out of the altruistic woodwork. I do my happy dance. Thanks, Millennials. Your cause-caring is paying off.
I'd say let's let this rub off - in more ways than it already has - on how we do business systematically, too. With medicine. With education. Let's blend a little of the old with the new we've got now. Sounds like a yummy stew of possibility.
Make new friends. Keep the old. There's something to be learned from both.
