Much better manners

The story of DD’s efforts to interview a PR professional for school is continuing, it seems. In a good way this time.

She, of course, had explained the whole situation to her program coordinator, complete with righteous indignation and accompanying dramatic body language. Her coordinator, of course, was very sympathetic and reassured DD that she would try to work something out, perhaps with a willing graduate of the program, in time for DD to complete the project. But before she started to make those phone calls, she fired off an email to an acquaintance of hers, who just happens to be on the board of some PR association in the province. She wanted to let him know that some of the members of this association had treated some of her students very unprofessionally and they needed to understand that a student’s time is just as valuable as theirs, that students have deadlines just like they do, and that students are deserving of just as much respect as they are.

This gentleman (and you will see why I call him that in a minute) replied very quickly. Basically, he was astonished that some of his association members would behave so disrespectfully. Their behaviour was unacceptable, according to him, and he would certainly bring it up in a general way with all the members in the future. And as for this poor student, he’d like to help her out. Would she like to interview him?

The coordinator quickly passed on this information to DD, who could not quite believe it. This man is one of the top PR people around, and is in charge of the PR of a number of very large, very well-known companies in the Vancouver area. He is a board member of a huge association. He is kind of a big deal. And he was offering to give her an hour of his valuable time, if she was interested.

If she was interested??? Hell yes, she was interested!

After a few emails and phone calls, the appointment was set up for Saturday afternoon. Yes, this lovely man is going to take time out of his weekend to help out a student who is thinking of entering his profession. And he has laughingly promised her that there is no way that he will blow her off, because he was once stood up on a date when he was teenager and he still remembers how awful that felt, so he has made it a point to never, ever do that to anyone else.

Now THAT’S good PR.

Where are your manners?!

I’m feeling very irate on behalf of DD. She’s feeling quite livid on her own behalf. Why? Read on …

DD’s major assignment at school this semester is to research a career in which writing skills are used and to interview someone who actually works in that career. This is not necessarily a novelist or journalist, though it could be. There are many, many ways to earn a living that involve writing, and after much thought and deliberation, DD decided to research a public relations career.

What she learned excited her – particularly the fact that if a PR person works for a large company, it is very possible to earn scads of money. This really interests DD. So, she found a woman who runs her own PR company, contacted her, and arranged to meet her for an interview.

DD rehearsed all her questions many times, figured out the most efficient way to get to the appointed location on time, practiced with her digital recorder, carefully planned her clothes, hair and make-up (must look professional, you know!), and headed off early so that she wouldn’t be late. She texted me when she arrived, way too early.

Then she phoned me. In the middle of the morning. You don’t phone a teacher in the middle of the morning. We are busy teaching. So when the phone rings, we immediately assume that it’s an emergency and we answer in a panicky voice.

It wasn’t exactly an emergency, but DD was pissed. Her interviewee didn’t show up. All that preparation for nothing – not to mention a big project that revolved around this interview.

But DD did make contact with her MIA interviewee later, who was full of apologies. So sorry, she wailed, I forgot! One of the casualties of running your own business is that you don’t have secretaries making your appointments and keeping you organized any more, it seems. The woman offered to meet DD another day, but that didn’t work for DD. So, she offered to set DD up with another PR person who lives in our area. DD agreed, thinking that this would be the very least this PR person could do to make up for the missed meeting.

So, after a few emails and phone calls back and forth, DD ended up making an appointment to meet with this second PR person today. She even emailed her yesterday, reminding her of the time and place of their scheduled appointment, concluding with a friendly, “Please call or email me if something has changed and you’ll be late or won’t be able to make it after all.”

I was getting my nails done late this afternoon. My phone rang. Luckily, one hand was done so I could answer. It was DD.

“Mom,” she said flatly.

“Hi DD,” I replied. “What’s up?”

“I have a question.”

“Okay.”

“How long is it appropriate to wait for someone when they don’t show up on time to meet you?”

“This one didn’t show up either?!” I sputtered.

DD’s voice was cold. “No, she didn’t. I’ve already left her one message saying that she was fifteen minutes late and I was wondering if she was still on her way or had I gotten the day or time or something wrong.”

No, DD, you didn’t get anything wrong. You did everything right. It’s just too bad that some people can’t keep commitments to those who are counting on them. And five hours later, this woman still hasn’t had the courtesy to call DD back to explain her absence. I hope it’s not death or destruction, because that’s all that could possibly excuse this lack of manners. Possibly.

And DD still has to interview someone who makes their living by writing. Someone who will actually show up to the interview.

Weight, shmeight

Halloween will be upon us in two weeks. This is a huge event for kids. I don’t especially like it myself, but seeing as how I spend my working life with kids, I do have to suck it up and “enjoy” Halloween for their sake. I’m just that altruistic.

The school at which I am currently teaching has a Great Pumpkin contest every year. Somebody (the principal? a teacher? the parent group?) gets a really big pumpkin and places it on a table in the front hallway near the main office. Kids take a good look at this pumpkin and guess how much it weighs. They write their guess on a piece of paper and stuff it into a box beside the pumpkin. On the afternoon of Halloween or the day closest to it, somebody (again, the principal? a teacher? the parent group?) looks at all those slips of paper, and the kid whose guess is the closest to the actual weight wins. Something. I don’t know what. Maybe the pumpkin itself? As is by now obvious, I’m not a huge Halloween fan, so I haven’t honestly paid a lot of attention the the Great Pumpkin contest.

But I do pay attention to the kids. And one little kindergarten boy had what I would definitely say was the best guess ever. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the contest should just be shut down right now, because this youngster should win, no question.

His guess?

“At least ten hundred feet.”

Oral guesses count, right?

Case closed

Do you recall that car crash I had in the summer of 2008? The one where the driver of the other car involved decided to sue me for damages back last February?

Since receiving that rather disturbing sheaf of papers, I have only spoken once to the lawyer that my insurance company assigned to the case. I had just wanted to ask him a couple of questions about those papers, including were they still legal if my address was typed wrongly all over them (answer: yes). I also told him my side of the story, giving him additional details, all of which I wrote about in that post last February.

I have not been contacted since.

Till today.

There was an envelope from my lawyer in the mail today. I couldn’t help it, my heart started to pound and my hands started to shake. I didn’t want to open it up. I was scared of what it might contain. I told myself that it was quite likely just an update on the case, that it surely wasn’t anything awful, because if it was, my lawyer would have phoned me. Certainly that would be how legal cases worked.

Wouldn’t it?

Like an idiot, I sat there holding the envelope in my trembling hands for several more minutes before I finally took a deep breath and opened it. As I did, I mentally scolded myself for being such a drama queen.

Inside was one sheet of paper with very little typing on it. It very briefly informed me that the lawsuit had “settled”. The word “settled” was in bold. My participation in the case was now “concluded”. The word “concluded” was not in bold.

I breathed deeply again. It’s over, and pretty painlessly, really.

But now I’m wondering what that jackass ended up getting as his settlement. And yes, the word “jackass” is in bold.

Who ya gonna call?

I was driving home from work today, minding my own business. I’d just turned onto a busy four-lane road that leads up a hill to a traffic light, where I then turn left down my own street and from there, into my driveway.

I heard the wail of a siren. (Apparently I didn’t have my stereo cranked too loudly this time. That has happened in the past.) I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw the lights of an approaching ambulance.

I was in a line-up of four vehicles, in the left lane. I know you’re supposed to move to the right and stop while the ambulance passes, but there were more vehicles in the right lane, so I really had nowhere to go. I chose to stop right where I was.

The two cars ahead of me did the same thing. As the ambulance came closer, the three of us didn’t move. But the white SUV directly behind me did.

The joker in the driver’s seat decided to drift over into the right lane, regardless of the what the cars already there were doing. Fortunately, they had all pulled over to the far right, beside the curb, and were waiting motionless, just like it says to do in the driver’s manual.

But our friend in the white SUV had obviously never read a driver’s manual. This brainiac kept on driving, slowly, in the right lane, with the ambulance coming up fast to the rear. The SUV finally rolled to a stop pretty much in the middle of an intersection, and the ambulance threaded its way around it. The ambulance returned to the lane which the SUV was now blocking, and when it picked up speed, so did the SUV, right on its tail. In this manner, the SUV passed everybody who was correctly stopped either in the left lane or on the right side of the road.

The rest of us watched this twit zoom up the road, as if in pursuit of the ambulance. Then we started moving again up the hill, sedately.

I just don’t understand how some people think that their time is so much more valuable than that of paramedics in an ambulance trying to get to a medical emergency as quickly as possible. In a perfect world, these would be the people who one day have their own medical emergency, but the ambulance cannot get there quickly enough due to incompetent drivers blocking their progress.

But that probably won’t happen.

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Pinklea’s political rant (to be read at your own risk):

The paramedics here in BC are currently on strike and have been since April 1. The thing is, they are an essential service, and as such, the public hasn’t seen as much disruption to their life as might be expected if, for example, grocery store employees were on strike. People make that 911 call, and an ambulance still shows up. The government doesn’t seem to want to negotiate better ambulance service for all, as well as better working conditions and a fair wage increase for these hard-working people. I don’t know any of the details about what the paramedics are asking for or what the government is offering or even if they are going to mediation soon, but I do think that a six-month strike is ridiculous (hello, OC Transpo?). Surely there is some room for compromise before people start to die at an alarming rate. Surely, if they are deemed an essential service, the government can treat them like one, with updated and properly tested equipment, sane working hours and conditions, and wages that match the importance of their work.

There. Political statement over. Back to our regular programming.