The Blame Game

The Army Times posted a follow-up on the story of SPC Kevin Shumaker today that makes for some very interesting reading – both the actual story and the comments from other soldiers below the story.

For those of you who are not already familiar with Shumaker’s story, here is a quick recap: Shumaker joined the Army in 2009 and eventually went on to serve in Afghanistan as a cook at COP Chamkani. While there, he was caring for a stray dog that the unit had adopted as a mascot. He was bitten by another stray dog while attempting to break up a fight between the two dogs (the mascot and the other dog), and contracted rabies. He never did seek any medical attention, nor did he inform his chain of command about the bite – though he apparently mentioned it “to a visiting veterinarian” and “on a post-deployment health survey.” After Shumaker returned from Afghanistan, he was posted to Fort Drum, NY. It was there that he first began showing symptoms and went to the hospital for arm pain, which was treated symptomatically as tendonitis. On August 19, he collapsed and was taken to the hospital again where doctors recognized symptoms of rabies and had him hospitalized and started on an experimental treatment for the disease. However, during treatment, he suffered from bleeding in the brain and died on August 31.

So much for the recap. After this originally hit the news, Shumaker’s family wanted the case investigated – which the Army did. Now the results of the investigation are out and Shumaker’s family are unhappy because “nobody is getting punished.” Says his mother,

“If you ask me as a mom what I would like to see, it’s accountability for the people who were neglectful, who caused Kevin’s death,” she said. “You can’t take Kev away from me and allow the chain of command, who was responsible for Kevin, to go on and live happily; nothing happens to them.”

…

Being that this happened on Fort Drum, it happened sort of close to home, and the local casualty affairs office has received no end of calls and emails with complaints about how this case was handled and requests for more information to be released, even though they had really very little to do with any of it. Especially considering that Shumaker had basically just arrived and in-processed on Fort Drum after coming from Germany. Fort Drum would have been the last place to have been aware of anything that went on prior, in Afghanistan.

Shumaker was lucky that the day he collapsed, he was taken to Local Small Hospital, which is the same hospital I go to a lot as an EMT with patients both from the local area and from the base. There, he was seen by Dr. J – identified in some of the news reports as “a former military doctor.” – who is possibly the very best person in whose care he could have wound up because Dr. J has the experience to have recognized the symptoms as rabies and immediately had Shumaker transferred to Very Large City where, I am sure, he was getting the best possible care at the university hospital.

Unfortunately, this did not save his life because it was too little, too late, but I thought it would be important to point out that neither Fort Drum nor the local medical facilities have any part in Shumaker’s death, nor that they deserve any blame. So if you’re ferreting for more information or want to point the finger of blame, you may as well point it elsewhere.

Which brings us to a pretty good question … where should the finger of blame be pointed?

Obviously, Shumaker’s parents believe that his entire chain of command should carry the blame and be punished for … well … for what, actually? Obviously, the parents do believe that the chain of command is responsible for their son’s death, but are they, really?

Let’s face it – wherever soldiers go they will adopt cats and dogs as pets because, well, if you’ve got animals at home, that’s something you tend to kind of miss when you’re in a combat zone. And being that you can’t cuddle with your wife or girlfriend and you can’t just pick up the phone and call or send a text message anytime you want, having a little furry critter staring up at you in adoration when you bring it some scraps, or curled up on your chest when you go to bed, makes a pretty big difference. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t have so many soldiers adopting pets. And you wouldn’t have agencies such as the SPCA International helping soldiers bringing those pets stateside at the end of the deployment.

It this against regulations? Sure it is – but that’s one of those rules where everyone tends to turn two blind eyes because they understand that while there are risks to keeping animals, the impact it has on the morale and well-being of the troops does outweigh the risks.

And yes, it does outweigh the risks. We have been at war for 10 years and 131 days (according to Wikipedia) as I write this blog post. We’ve had hundreds of thousands of soldiers deployed overseas. And we’ve had one fatality from rabies. By comparison, one or two people die annually of rabies in the United States, usually after being bitten by a rabid bat.

I understand why the parents want to blame the military for their son’s death.

They want to blame the military and they want to see people lose their jobs and careers because they’ve lost someone very dear to them and they can’t stand the thought that they may need to face tomorrow having to admit to themselves that the primary person who needs to carry blame was Kevin himself. Because he did get involved with the pets on base. Because he decided to get into a dog fight to break it up. Because he did not report the bite and he did not seek medical attention. Heck, even because he lied to his parents, telling them he had sought help and was receiving treatment.

Says the article,

After he was bitten, Shumaker told his parents by phone and online messages that he had been given a partial sequence of rabies shots that was stopped because the medication was expired. He also told them he was ordered to shoot the dog and bring it in for rabies testing.

It appears this may not have been true. The investigation found no evidence that Shumaker sought or received the care he described to his parents, that he was ordered to shoot a dog or that one was tested for rabies.

A blood test after his condition was detected found no rabies antibodies in his system, and there was no human rabies vaccine available or called forward to COP Chamkani, the report states.

His stepfather conceded that Shumaker, while an honest person, may have told them a “story” to keep them from worrying. “I personally think he was trying to make us feel better,” David Taylor said.

On that note, I have to admit that I’m having a hard time putting some pieces of information in this article together in a way that makes sense.

On one hand, Shumaker obviously knew a thing or two about animals, having grown up in a family that owned dogs and having volunteered his time at a shelter together with his mother prior to joining the Army. You’d think anyone who’s spend any time working with animals would know that you don’t try to break up a dog fight because it very likely means you will be bitten.

But the thing that bothers me most is this -

By some accounts given to investigators, Shumaker had close contact with the dogs on the post, feeding, petting and playing with them. He sought treatment in July for a scratch from either a bite or a fall after he was attacked by a dog, the investigation said.

I think this does raise some eyebrows.

Here’s someone who is bitten (or otherwise injured) by a dog and he goes and seeks treatment. Then, a few months later, he is bitten by another dog and he doesn’t seek treatment – he doesn’t even mention it. Which makes me wonder why. I wonder whether he was, in fact, told to keep away from the dogs on base and to stop feeding them and paying them any attention. And then, bitten again, he was worried he’d get in trouble, so he didn’t seek any medical attention. Of course, this is just speculation, but I’m having a hard time understanding why he wouldn’t seek medical attention the second time as well if there’d not been something that would have made him feel like he probably shouldn’t.

Of course, this also brings up the question of whether the times he supposedly told people about the bite – the time he spoke to a visiting veterinarian and the time he wrote it on a post-deployment health survey – he was talking about the first bite, the one he sought medical attention for, or the second bite, the one that killed him.

Those questions bug me about this case.

Of course, there’s also the little, insignificant thing of personal responsibility. This isn’t a child we’re talking about but a grown man, a 24-year-old soldier. And while his chain of command may have turned a blind eye to the fact that he was caring for a stray dog on the base, something that violated regulations, the fact remains that he chose to take care of this stray animal, to feed it, to play with it, to take the risks of being around stray, unvaccinated dogs. This was his choice.

He also made the choice not to report the dog bite – for whatever reason. He didn’t go to the medics and say, “I’ve been bitten by a dog and I’m worried I might catch rabies.” Or even to say, “I’ve been bitten by a dog.” if he didn’t realize he should be worried about rabies.

But I don’t think his parents have looked at it from the point-of-view of personal responsibility. To them, it’s the Army’s fault. Partially because the chain-of-command didn’t stop the soldiers from keeping dogs, even though the base did have a “dog eradication” program in place. And partially due to a lack of educating the soldiers themselves. Says his stepfather, “They had not educated (…) any of the soldiers themselves as to the subsequent results of being bitten by a dog.” Really? Don’t parents and schools teach children not to get bitten by wild or stray animals anymore? I was taught this as a child. It’s certainly not the military’s responsibility to make up for educational shortcomings in the school system or the parental home. At least not last I checked.

Of course, I think his parents statements show how out of touch they really are when it comes to the military. Says his mother, “More recently he aspired to earn a Ranger tab, apply to intelligence school and put his expertise with computers to work for the Army.” Right. I’d like to be a special forces operator, myself. Or maybe take my artistic talents and become an illustrator for the Army. And I’m pretty handy with computers, so maybe they need someone to work Photoshop. Doesn’t change the fact that I’m not qualified for half of those. Also doesn’t change the fact that our future Ranger, intelligence-school-computer-expert was actually a cook for an MP unit.

And all the finger-pointing at the Army and the chain of command doesn’t change the fact that a young solider chose to break up a dog fight and then chose not to report the bite or seek the medical attention which could have saved his life.

I understand the parents’ grief, but they’re looking to put the blame in all the wrong places.

Dislocated Shoulder Day

I’ve noticed that Emergency Medicine is a “feast or famine” job.

Either nothing happens at all or everything happens at once. Which really isn’t a bad thing if you think about it. When everything happens at once, that’s when you get those interesting calls you’ll be talking about for years to come – the diabetic who passed out behind the wheel and slammed her car into a tree; the arguing boyfriend/girlfriend couple that winds up with her getting punched in the face and him getting stabbed with the kitchen knife; the guy with two dislocated shoulders. And when nothing happens at all, you get a chance to catch up on your reading, surf the web (we have wireless Internet at the squad) or get some studying in.

The majority of the time when I get to the squad, it’s a famine day. Actually, the majority of days in upstate New York are famine days unless the weather is bad, the roads are slick, or we have some level of stupidity happening somewhere that contributes to an interesting call. (Like the guy who hit his head on his own backhoe, knocking himself out. Or the school bus that drove right into a lamp post in the high school parking lot.) And, on famine days, I do all of the above. Actually, that’s when I get most of my studying done for the undergraduate certificate I’m working on currently.

And sometimes, the days fall somewhere in between. Usually when I’ve had little sleep and lots that I need to get done or would like to get done. Like today, when I got up with only about two hours of sleep, to head out early in the morning to have my Jeep inspected. That’s always cause for rising blood pressure (mine) because it’s a Jeep and while it doesn’t have any functional issues as far as I can see, it can’t be counted on not to develop them during inspection just to piss me off.

The other big issue I’ve found with getting a vehicle inspected – Jeep or otherwise – is that there are plenty of shops willing to rip off women who bring their cars in for inspection. I’ve heard it from just about everyone at the squad – for some reason, all the women have needed new brakes on their last inspection. Even if they didn’t. And because I drive a Jeep, I think most mechanics assume that I’m driving my husband’s car. (Actually, some of his soldiers assumed the same thing yesterday, when I popped by his unit’s training on the way home from getting stuff done. They told him “nice Jeep.” He told them it wasn’t his, it was mine. I suppose it never occurred to them that it would be mine before they said something because it’s a Jeep and women just aren’t into those kinds of things.)

Last year, I had it inspected at my dealership where they knew me well because I’d been putting a lot of money into upgrades – shocks, rocker guards, and the like – and where they knew I’m no idiot. This year, we live more than an hour away from there, so I needed to find a new place. Smartly, I asked the guys at the squad and was pointed to a small dad-and-son operation down the road, and assured they wouldn’t rip me off. They didn’t. They were very pleasant, very fast, and kept up conversation about both cars and dogs during the process. It was pretty painless, actually.

So after getting that out of the way, I headed to the squad and pulled in just as 2 was pulling out with lights and sirens. I contemplated going after them for a minute and then turned around and parked since I hadn’t gotten the page. Apparently, I didn’t get the page because it came from Lewis County, the next county over but still somewhat in our service area, and I only get the Jefferson County pages until Mat sets me up to get them both. And besides, they ended up getting disregarded and returned about five minutes later.

The first two hours at the squad were pretty boring with no emergency calls or transports of any kind coming in, but I’d been warned that there’d probably be a few transports going out that day, and I figured I’d get some online reading done before that happened, if I had the time. I recently stumbled across the EMS Basics page, which has some good info, and I wanted to read more. I really like the pocket cheat sheet he’s come up with and mentioned to MBF I may want to put one of those together, and she thought that would be a great thing for everyone to have.

We had a student at the squad from a High School program that runs through the local BOCES. In the program, high school students get a chance to take regular classes but also go to various medical-related jobs to observe and learn, which will help them decide what direction they want to take after graduation. The girl doing ride time with us is thinking about becoming an anesthesiologist. She’s had a chance to check that job out, along with some others, and really liked it. She hated physical therapy. (I found it entertaining when I did it, but to each their own.) And I don’t think she was terribly interested in emergency medicine, at least not the kind we do at the rescue squad. But that may have had more to do with the fact that she hasn’t had a lot of calls to observe and was seriously wondering if “things were always like this.” I suppose at age seventeen, I wouldn’t have found a job where you spend the majority of your time sitting there, waiting for a call to be very interesting, either. She was pleasant, however, and had plenty of questions.

Our first call ended up being a transport from the medical floor of our local hospital to the bigger hospital in Nearby Big Town, which is a pretty routine thing we do since our resources at the local hospital are pretty limited. They turned out to be even more limited today, as the ER was literally overflowing into the hallways with patients in all of the rooms and nurses who hadn’t had a chance to go out to smoke or get a bite to eat since starting their shift at 06:30. I don’t know what Fort Drum’s been doing, but half the ER patients were soldiers, most of them still in PT uniform from that morning’s PT.

Our first patient was ready to go when we arrived on the medical floor, but the nurses weren’t quite ready to let her go; with everything that’s been going on that morning they were just as behind as the emergency room was. We spent a bit standing around, waiting for them to get her IVs disconnected, give her a pain killer to make her transport more bearable, and get her paperwork ready for the other hospital where she was being sent for an MRI. Lucky for us, one of our squad members was actually in the room next to hers – he had emergency surgery the other day for an obstruction – so it was nice that we got a chance to visit with him, his wife, and his adorable little daughter. He, too, was waiting on the nurses to get his paperwork done, but he was getting released, not transported.

Although stressed, the nurses were being very nice and very funny, and we eventually got our patient loaded up and headed to the hospital. My patient was a little grouchy, as could be expected from someone who’s in pain and taking a trip to another hospital just for the purpose of an MRI, but turned out to be quite pleasant on the ride. She was fairly talkative, although her medical history was confusing to follow, particularly as it didn’t match up with the medical history in my paperwork (which yes, was hers). Thankfully for me, her attending doctor did a really nice job in his documentation which allowed me to fill in the blanks and get the two stories to match. Actually, I kinda wish they’d give us a copy of the history that was included in her packet as it had everything from past history to medications to current pertinent history. And in a nice format, too. I wish they’d automatically give us those on our transports.

Fat P made every effort to bounce us around in the back of the rig the entire way to the hospital by taking the back roads instead of the main roads. I realize most people don’t like driving in the city and hitting all the lights, but if your patient is already in a fair deal of discomfort, it may not be the best choice. I think this was the first time I told my driver to slow down and try not to hit every pothole. I’m usually not the type to, but they usually don’t drive this badly. You know your driver is doing a bad job if you can’t read MY handwriting. All the nurses comment on how nice it is, normally, because I write nicely even in the back of an ambulance. Not so much if someone is trying to bounce that ambulance from pothole to pothole, however.

The hospital in Nearby Big Town turned out to be just as busy as the one we’d come from, which, coupled with the fact that it’s under construction for changes and upgrades, didn’t make things any easier for us. We had to ask directions twice to find our way to radiology, and due to the construction, had to go up one story in the elevator to go over into the building annex to go back down one story in another elevator, since the ground-level connection was under construction. This was overly complicated but we eventually made it, dropped our patient off for her MRI appointment, and then tried finding our way back. We ended up taking the most complicated possible way, but it was nice to get a little bit of exercise.

When we got back to the rescue squad, I went upstairs to file my PRC and, of course, we got another call just about immediately after I got started. I made it to the page on vital signs before the pagers went off for a “traumatic injury” and MBF came looking for me to see if I wanted to go on that one. Sure, why not. I’ve had two hours of sleep since yesterday morning and three pages of paperwork to enter, but I’m always up for a good trauma call.

I hopped in the back and we headed out, with Fat P driving and MBF in the front passenger seat as the EMT in charge. (This mainly so that we could do our paperwork at the same time on return, rather than me having to do two sets of paperwork.) As our patient lives about 10 minutes out of town, I got a little bit of shut-eye on the way there, in the jump seat behind the stretcher. It was pretty refreshing, actually, and I was ready to go when we got there.

Our patient was waiting for us in the driveway and got into the ambulance as soon as MBF pulled the side door open, so I scrambled to raise the head of the stretcher up and clear it of the airway bag and extra blankets. The patient’s position of comfort was sitting up, with his legs on either side of the stretcher, which was awkward for everyone but worked for him. He was in a fair bit of pain, having obviously put his shoulder out of its socket and just wanted to get to the hospital quickly. Getting vitals on him proved to be a challenge as, of course, the arm we could take vitals on was on the opposite side of the patient from where I was sitting. MBF tried getting blood pressure using the monitor, but as our patient was in so much pain he was shaking, this proved to be impossible, so I got a manual pressure, which was still hard but do-able.

In EMT class, they teach you to sling and swathe for a fractured or dislocated shoulder. Pretty much like in this Army manual illustration below.

That’s all sorts of fantastic when you do it in class on someone whose shoulder isn’t actually dislocated, but wasn’t even an option in our case because our patient couldn’t bend his arm without going into spasms of pain and, in the end, we decided it would be easier to just try and get him comfortable and drive the 10 minutes to the hospital than mess around. I did find that using a blanket to pad the area between his arm and his body relieved some of the discomfort, as did putting the head of the stretcher into a 90 degree position for him to sit straight up.

The patient was well-familiar with what worked for him since this was the third time in about as many weeks that he has popped his shoulder out of place. Previously, he had it popped back in at the hospital in Nearby Big Town as well as at the VA Hospital in Much Larger City an hour-and-a-half south of us, where we take a lot of our patients for advanced care, trauma centers, heart surgery, and just about anything else that requires a specialist. He originally screwed up his shoulder while deployed overseas … getting stabbed in the shoulder will do this. Looks like this time around, he undid any repairs that had previously been made, so I expect he will be on a transport to Much Larger City before long.

I got to talk with this patient for quite a while because our local hospital was still very busy and MBF took a long time to accomplish her paperwork. Fat P and I reassembled our airway bag, restocked what we used (or attempted to use), and got the cot made and back into the rig. And then we mostly stood and waited. Had some cake. Talked to some nurses. Apparently, it’s been real busy for them with several heart attacks and a slew of post-Valentine’s Day overdose attempts. And dislocated shoulders.

Actually, in the room next to our patient was another … another soldier, of course, since this seems to have been the day for all of Fort Drum to seek emergency care at our little hospital. This one had managed to break both clavicles and dislocate both shoulders. He would have been in a fair amount of pain, I suppose, but was knocked out and waiting for a transport to Much Larger City for surgery, which, of course, he wouldn’t get for hours because he required ALS-level care and we’ve had on nothing but Basics all day – and the next bigger ambulance squad had nobody free for transport for at least another three hours. (Gotta love being in a small area with small resources.)

So, yeah, another fun day in paradise. Let’s see what we’ll get tomorrow.

…

Oh, goodness … I suppose the world will end if there’s a TYPO in my blog posts. Yes, of course it’s feast OR famine. Thanks. That could have probably be pointed out a little more nicely, being that it’s just a typo.

Customer Service

It feels like I just wrote about bad customer service yesterday, but that really has more to do with the fact that I haven’t written in ages than the fact that I’ve been experiencing more than my share of bad customer service incidents.

Truth be told, I probably don’t experience a lot of bad customer service … but then again, my expectations aren’t really that high. If I go into a store, get what I came for, can check out, and get on my way, that’s really all that matters. If a cashier isn’t engaging my into conversation, I don’t necessarily mind that, and I’m not one to run to the manager or to call the corporate office if people aren’t bending over backwards – but you bet I will if they’re just not doing their job or if they just don’t care.

The latter is something I experienced twice at my local Ulta store now.

I’ll be the first to admit that I was pretty happy that an Ulta finally opened in Watertown because there really aren’t any stores around that have a decent selection of haircare products, makeup, nail polish, and the like … outside of Walmart or Target. I was particularly thrilled to find that Ulta carries NYX Cosmetics because I have been wearing eyeliner more frequently and their liners are fantastic – they go on very smooth and come in many beautiful colors. I have a copper-colored one and a light-green one that I wear a lot.

I also like nail polish. A lot. Due to my broken thyroid, I have never been able to grow nice nails that didn’t bend or break easily, so I’ve been doing gel nails … the kind where the gel is basically just an overlay over my own natural nails. That means my real nails are underneath, but the gel is what keeps them nice, strong, and looking good. The fantastic thing about them is that I can use nail polish over them – and that I can use standard, non-acetone nail polish remover to take the polish off while leaving the gel nails intact. So I’ve been having a lot of fun with polish … colors, designs, and such. None of my dog training clients care, and nobody at the rescue squad cares because patients never see my nails … thanks to the non-latex gloves. So I can get away with some pretty funky nails. (Needless to say, I do my nails on Friday … take the polish off before Civil Air Patrol and put new polish on after.)

Anyway. So I’ve been thrilled to have an Ulta.

At a visit in December, I realized that they actually offer salon services, and I got my hair trimmed. I’ve been doing an angled bob hairstyle, which is extremely easy to take care of and always looks nice, even if I’ve done nothing but dried and combed it. And I can make it look really nice for various occasions by using my s-curler and turning it into a pseudo-Marcel Wave in about twenty minutes and with very little fuss.

The girl who cut my hair, Gabby, did a fantastic job and talked to me about adding some angled bangs to cover my enormous forehead, and I was glad that she talked me into that, because it really improved my look. I loved it.

The problem with hair, unfortunately, is that it keeps growing.

So, having been very happy with my cut at Ulta, I decided to head back in for a trim. Gabby wasn’t in, but the girl who was there was talked up quite a bit by the girl working the register, who said that she’s the only one allowed to cut her hair and that she always does a fantastic job. That’s a pretty good recommendation, so I figured I would get her to cut my hair.

After waiting for her to get finished with another customer, it was finally my turn. I explained to her that my style was an angled bob, which had grown out a bit since my last trim, and that I just wanted it trimmed. I showed her how short I liked it in the back and where the “points” in front should come below my chin. I also explained to her that I had my bangs cut so that they would only fall to the one side, and that I wanted to keep them, but just have them trimmed a little as they were starting to hang into my eye, which was annoying. I thought that these were pretty simple instructions (along with pointing to where things should be) and that a professional stylist – this girl is one of the salon’s “senior stylists”, as I later found out – would understand what I mean … or ask if she didn’t. She did a lot of nodding and “yes”ing.

So far so good. After a while of trimming and styling, none of which I was watching because I’d been wearing my glasses that day instead of my contacts, and I’d taken them off so they wouldn’t be in the way, she announced that she had finished and wanted to show me the back first to ensure it was short enough. I put my glasses on and looked at the back of my head via the hand-mirror. The back looked great. I told her so. Then she turned me around and the front looked … not so great.

Ugh.

I no longer have an angled bob … the hair looked almost level and barely goes to my chin in front. It made my face look very round. I pointed this out to the stylist and she said she didn’t think my face looked round, but if I wanted the front of my hair to come to more of a point I could always flat-iron the bottom. Right. Because the fact that I mentioned I wanted to keep the same style because I don’t like fussing with it in the morning makes me extremely likely to spend time flat-ironing every day.

I told her I didn’t like it, and that I didn’t want to spend time flat-ironing and wouldn’t need to if she hadn’t taken so much off in the front. She promised to “make a note” in the computer so that “next time” they “won’t take so much off.” Right. Because there’ll be a next time with her after she basically shrugged off my concerns with “it doesn’t look bad” and “we’ll fix it next time.” Not likely.

Then I got the bill … $45 for a haircut, not counting the tip. Say what? Apparently, it’s $45 and not $35 because she’s a senior stylist. Really? Shouldn’t I get the cut I asked for for $45? And, more importantly, if your cuts cost $10 more because of your status as a senior stylist, shouldn’t you, say, mention this at some point before putting scissors to someone’s hair?

Needless to say, I was pissed, but between her uncaring attitude and the fact that it was getting to be late in the evening, I didn’t want to make a fuss at the store … but I was definitely going to call their customer service department and let them know about the bad cut and the blase attitude that followed.

Of course, then I got a closer look at my hair after getting home, and the more I see of the cut, the more I hate it. Not only isn’t it what I asked for, it’s not even – the right side is just a little longer than the left. And the bangs are a disaster. Instead of keeping them a side-bang, which is sort of half-a-bang, she trimmed my bangs across, so now I have to use mousse or gel to keep them to the side and I have to put up with having a full bang to manage, rather than just the portion that sweeps to the right. Not only that, but they’re crooked, too, so it’s not even a case of just combing them forward and doing bangs for a while.

More and more pissed, I spoke the customer service over the phone, who were very, very nice and addressed my concerns. They took notes and asked me if I thought it could be fixed. I told them fixing it would require it to be cut even shorter, and that I thought it would be best to just grow it back out for the time being. They figured that would be a good idea if it can’t be fixed and said they’d advise the local manager to arrange for a refund.

The local manager called me the next morning and told me to just come in any time I had a chance to get my refund. She was very apologetic that I had a bad experience and wanted to make it right. Good for her. I felt like she was the first person at that store who actually cared that I wasn’t happy and understood why I wasn’t happy. So a couple of days after that call, I went in to get my refund.

The manager on duty, on the other hand, really, really didn’t give a shit. One of the girls that greeted me at the front as I walked into the store called her for me and I explained that I was there to do the refund I had spoken to the general manager about. She wasn’t apologetic at all. She wasn’t even nice.

She took me over to the register to do the refund and asked me if I had the original receipt. I did. I gave her the receipt and she asked if I had the debit card I used to pay. I did and gave her that, too. I tried telling her just how bad the cut was … actually, I tried showing her how one side of the front is longer than the other and how the bangs are crooked. She didn’t even look up. When she finally did glance up, she said, “But it looks cute.” Really? That is your customer service? “It looks cute?” Not, “I’m sorry you had a bad experience.” or “Oh … that really is crooked!” Nothing. I couldn’t even get her to look at me!

I walked out with my refund done but felt even more pissed with the store staff than I had before getting the refund. I said to my husband, who was there with me, “Well, I’m glad they really care about their customers.” He suggested I let their corporate headquarters know, via the phone number, how I’d been treated for the second time and how they just didn’t give a rat’s patootie about the bad cut or their complete disinterest. I did. So we’ll see where that goes.

I don’t think there’s an excuse for bad customer service. Ever. Especially when it comes to something like giving a haircut. Or dying hair. Or doing a tattoo. You should ensure you understand what the customer is asking for and you should try to give the customer what they’re asking (and paying) for. If you don’t, you should see how you can fix things – not brush it off or act like it doesn’t matter. Because it does matter.

I would never interact with my dog training clients or my patients this way and I don’t think it’s asking too much to expect that people don’t interact that way with me. Especially when I have been nothing but nice. I’m usually the last person to complain, but a combination of a bad job and a bad attitude … that gets a follow-up. And certainly deserves one.

Something Like An Update

Yet again, I haven’t written in some time. I should probably just create a standard blog preface paragraph that apologizes profusely for not writing anything worthwhile and makes excuses why. I suppose my excuses are good one. I run a home, work as an EMT, am working toward an Associate’s of Science, train dogs, and belong to Civil Air Patrol. Things are busy.

I am now up to three dog training clients, whom I see on Mondays and Tuesdays, respectively. I train a yellow Labrador, who is seven months old now, and two German Shorthaired Pointers, one of whom is six months old, the other eleven weeks. They’re all adorable and I couldn’t be more proud of my two older puppies because their owners have really committed to working with them and they are doing fantastic.

My yellow Lab is working toward becoming a Therapy Dog so she can work with her owner, who is a psychologist. His goal is to bring her to work with him so she can help him work with his patients. I think she’ll do fantastic at it – once she’s old enough and has the maturity to do this kind of work. Right now, we’re working toward getting tested once she turns one, so she can get her TDI. At that point, she could technically begin working, but I think he should wait a little longer and give her a chance to mature more. People tend to overlook the fact that this kind of work can be stressful for dogs, too.

Other days of the week, I am working at the rescue squad where I am in the odd position of working as a sort-of-paid volunteer, which means that I volunteer my time but I get paid for some of the work that I do. Primarily, I am getting paid to do transports to the area’s specialty resource centers, which are an hour-and-a-half away in Syracuse. I make an average of $15/hour for those and I am not complaining, but of course I spend lots of time at the squad that I don’t get paid for as well … but it works for me. We have a lot of quiet days, which I am able to use studying and preparing for tests for college.

I’ve been going back to school since last October and am currently doing my first semester, which are my general education credit hours. I’m doing my classes online, and I’ve heard from a lot of people how hard that is, since you have to be motivated to get it started, and people felt I wouldn’t do well with it since I can be a procrastinator. But I’ve been doing well so far. My GPA remains in the 90′s and my lowest test score so far has been 85, which was just plain embarrassing. I was clearly not having a good day. Mostly, my tests are between 92% and 96%. My current class is Essentials of Psychology, and once I’m through with that, I’ll be facing the class I am least looking forward to, “Music Appreciation” (which is pretty much music history, from what I gather). I’m not musically inclined, so I’m hoping to just get that one over with quickly. And my last one after that will be English composition. I don’t think that will be particularly challenging since my initial college education was English / journalism.

And, of course, I’m still part of Civil Air Patrol. I’ll actually be up for promotion in late March or early April, so I am looking forward to that. CAP has actually been very helpful in getting some classes that are useful for me as an EMT as well and that may otherwise be difficult to find.

In December, I took the helicopter ground crew class that Mercy Flight offers. They do give this class to EMTs and Fire Fighters – people who may need to set up a landing zone for the life flight helicopter – but it just so happened that it was offered doing a CAP encampment I went to. It even counts toward my pilot program hours as an EMT.

In January, I went to Joint Base Maguire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey for the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation (ICISF) Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) class. There are two parts to this class – one is individual and peer support, and the other is group support. The class held by CAP covered both; 27 hours of instruction in three days. Needless to say, those were some very long three days! But I made it through, got my certificates, got my 27 hours, and I put in my application to join the Wing CISM team. That hasn’t been approved yet, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I guess we’ll see if they want me or not.