Happy Festivus!

Today is Festivus! Thanks to Seinfeld, I learned about this holiday. The short description is a day to fight against the commercialism and pressures of the holiday season. It includes a dinner, an aluminum pole to surround around, a feats of strengths competition, but I think most importantly airing of grievances. 

Here is my airing of grievances:

• Lack of customer service. Why is it so hard to be kind? When someone is a customer, they are making a choice and that choice is you. They should be treated with kindness. It makes me mad when I am being felt that I am putting them out, bothering them, or ticking them off. You never know what someone is going through and if your job involves customer service, you need to keep that in mind.
  
• Not doing the minimum required of your job. I do not expect everyone to be superstars but I do expect everyone to do the job they were hired for. If your job is to fulfill orders, make sure each item makes it into the bag. If you job is to create a product, it should be put together correctly. If your job is to deliver something, it should get to the correct address. If your job is to care for, protect, and/or serve, I expect you to do it without bias and with good intentions every minute of every day. I want people to show up for the job they are supposed to show up for. If you hate your job, find a new one. If you are unhappy, find something that makes you happy. If you have to stay in a job that is less than satisfying, make the best of it, do the minimum, and keep looking for other opportunities.
  
• Politicizing everything. We should not live in a world where everything is based on what letter is on your voter registration card. Taking care of the children and elderly in our community should not be decided based on a letter. Ensuring everyone has access to health care should not be decided based on a letter. Politicians should work together to compromise on solutions to ensuring everyone has access to basic needs at reasonable rates.  
  
• Lack of empathy. This goes hand in hand with the above grievances. People need to pause and be empathic to others. I understand that everyone has rules, guidelines, and processes they must follow. Do not let those get in the way of being empathetic to those who you are working with. It is challenging when you are talking to someone and feel that you are just a number, rather than an human being. Remember, you may deal with the situation every day but this may be the person's first time through. This is very important in the medical community. 
• Forgetting the concept of community. We need to remember we are all members of a community. A community is a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common. It starts at home, we have a family community. Hopefully, you have a work community as well. It extends to the neighborhood, city, county, state, and country we live in. We are made up of many communities.
• Making uninformed decisions. Before making a decision, first make sure you are correct person to make the decision and if you are not, put it in the correct hands. Second, collect all the necessary information. Third, make sure you have collected the necessary information from the correct sources. Fourth, if you do not fully understand the impact of the decision, ask questions. Fifth, if you have made an uninformed decision, be open to changing it.  
  
• Making the sick fight so hard. When people are going through illness (physical or mental), they should not have to fight so hard for everything. I understand processes and rules but everything should not be so hard. Patients should not have fight so hard. Do not assume all patients are trying to get something or are something they are not. Do not blame the patient. Have resources available when people ask for help. Help patients navigate the complicated system of medical services, insurance, and life with illness. As I write this one, many of my above grievances align with this. Having a doctor confidence my family I had an eating disorder, denying my telemedicine appointments, and having to follow-up with all of the people that say they will call you back are just a few examples of things I had to fight against this past year. It is exhausting enough to fight cancer, I get frustrated when I have to do the jobs of others and fight so hard to get things done.
  

I do feel fortunate because for everything I listed as a grievance, I can name specific examples of people or situations that exemplified the opposite of my grievance. I remain ever hopeful that next year the list of grievances is empty. I hope that people reflect on the past two years and have learned lessons about what really matters and how to treat people.

For tonight . . . I'm just sayin' XOXO