Tag Archives: professionalism

Credit where it’s due…

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I spend a lot of time on this blog bitching and complaining about things. No apologies. It’s just who I am as a person. However, when credit is due, I like to think I cover those bases too. So, with that said, here’s the credit due this week:

1. Summit Bridge Veterinary Hospital. As soon as I found Hershel on Sunday morning, I was on the phone immediately to Summit Bridge. The fact that on a Sunday morning, they were open and immediately available for an emergency phone consult put them steps above just about any other practice I’ve used. Assessing that the situation was likely beyond their capabilities, they immediately referred me to two local emergency vet options. Quick, professional, and focused, they’re a solid recommend in my book if you have veterinary service needs in the local area.

2. BluePearl Pet Hospital – Christiana. BluePearl, like a lot of the other large chain veterinary practices get a lot of guff. I suspect that’s at least in part because of the prices involved when it comes to emergency or specialty vet medicine. I get it. However, everyone I worked with there on Sunday morning was fantastic. Hershel was in triage within 45 seconds of walking through the doors and the receptionist seeing his condition. Fifteen minutes later, the emergency vet was providing a detailed breakdown of his condition, pros and cons of treatment, and likely outcomes. She was compassionate and responsive to questions throughout our conversation. The tech who walked me though options for cremation or other arrangements was incredibly professional. The vet and tech tending to the actual euthanasia somehow managed to be a physical presence and yet disappeared in plain sight, allowing as much time as I wanted both before and after administering the final drug cocktail. From start to finish, the team at BluePearl displayed competence, professionalism, and compassion both for Hershel and for me. I don’t regret a nickel of their fee.

3. Jorah. This sweet, slightly neurotic boy has been unfailingly happy through what has felt like a very long couple of days. After sniffing around a bit Sunday night, he settled in to his own routine of snoozing in the living room, barking at the squirrels, and chasing the birds from the back yard. I honestly don’t know what I’d have done if he hadn’t been here when I got home with an empty crate on Sunday afternoon.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Missing the obvious. I dropped my glasses on the sidewalk sometime back in about September. They weren’t damaged beyond repair, but there is a small gouge in one of the lenses directly in my eye-line. It’s obnoxious, but as long as the lenses are super clean it was something I could deal with until I was due for a new pair. A couple days ago, while they were particularly grimy, I mentioned how annoying it was to my mother. She, being ever practical, just sighed and said “You know they’re probably under warranty.” Yeah. I hadn’t even considered that. My new lenses will be here in 7-10 business days.

2. Sign stealing. I don’t know baseball. I admit it. But color me perplexed at the current “scandal.” I have no idea why you’d assume, in a venue in full view of 50,000 people, that someone wasn’t going to figure out what you were doing with your hands and translate that to what was happening on the field. I have a hard time buying that’s a situation where you have any legitimate expectation of privacy at all. But like I said, I don’t know baseball.

3. Professional decorum. Professional decorum, as far as I can tell, exists only to make it socially unacceptable for people to tell unpleasant truths to those higher along the wire diagram. If it weren’t for professional decorum, for instances, it would be totally acceptable for someone to kick in every door in the building, shake his or her fist, and scream I TOLD YOU SO! while a shitstorm unfurls. Instead this person ends up saying some ridiculous bullshit like “That’s an interesting idea and we should consider it.” Utter bollox.