As a tow truck driver on a call you're always in a
rush. The loss of even one second is frustrating as
someone might be in distress of where it was your job to
assist. That's why when I couldn't find the address and
went into the office of the retirement center, where the
address I was responding to was supposed to be, I found
an additional delay
The retirement home was on several acres, the largest
and best known in the area. I pulled open the glass door
and walked up to the clerks glass enclosed cage and asked
if this was the address and if there was if anyone had
called for a lockout. I assumed the individual might be
waiting in the lobby. The clerk held her response for
just an instant and then said "no." I proceeded to go
back out the door but it was locked.
Looking for a latch there was none. I looked up at
the clerk who blatently ignored me and then stared with a
certain arrogance. Her goal was to get me to beg to get
out. Glancing up and realizing she saw me I tried the
door again. No go.
"Can you open the door," I said with my hand ready,
to the clerk through glass while all the while imagining
or wondering if I could break the door down.
No acknowledgment. The clerk ignored me as she looked
at some papers, above and out of my view on her desk.
"I need to get out. Can you open the door?"
She stared for a minute full well knowing I would know
she heard me then looked away again in full fledged
ignore mode.
I marched back over to the glass window and demanded
she open the door. "Do I have to file paperwork with
management to get out of here?" I said, finally evoking a
response. I heard the door buzz. The buzzing stopped
just as I grabbed the handle. I looked over with obvious
rage and she buzzed it again and I got out.
I should have taken a complaint to management right
then and there, but I had a call to make. I was enraged
and that was probably what the clerk wanted. What a
perverted little game, to make people beg, in her
presence, to just get out of a glass cage with what
looked like bullet proof glass. This was far too much
power for a disgruntled clerk.
This style of interaction with the public is not
uncommon. How many facilities are set up with lockout
doors with no way to get out. It's a low priority item
with management, and a necessity in their job of dealing
with members of the deranged public, but here was a
retirement home, where relatives and friends would visit
their aging relatives.
I'm sure the answer is that they don't want any of
their 'patients' with dementia wandering out into the
streets, but the institutionalized packing of our elderly
is abused for profit and petty vindictiveness of a
frustrated employee, not to mention reflective of a
management that's probably much the same.
There's no changing the system. The clerk would not
have treated a doctor the same way. The door would be
ready and buzzing the minute his hand touched the handle.
'Johnny on the spot' ready to be a good employee, yet she
was able to take out her frustration on a disheveled tow
truck driver. That may be the error of institutions, in
that responsibility is turned over to working people who
some how are obsessed with their temporary power.
This institutional management style only gives in to
the decay of values, heritage and social fabric that
ultimately are destroying our society. Imagine a family,
kids in tow, going to visit grandma at the retirement
home, only to see video cameras and locked doors, not the
home with garden and candy they used to remember. This
is how society treats it's participants, with
institutionalized power and sterility.
