Category Archives: Rant

Stewing Away on the Back Burner

Emotions, People, Rant, , , , ,

I know I should let it go. There’s nothing to be gained except a small satisfaction for me and perhaps my brother. My mom wants to just forget about it.

But I don’t want to let it go. I want an apology. A real apology, not an offhanded remark about “getting off on the wrong feet”.

And then there is the fact that perhaps there is nothing to apologize for. That we were hyper-sensitive and that any rational person would have let it slide. Perhaps we should have not gone to the funeral home the day Dad died, but waited until the next day. But we were ready for it to be over. We’d already spent 4 and a half days knowing that this was how it would probably turn out.

Here’s what happened. (I know I’ve mentioned this on Facebook and have told many friends about it — so feel free to ignore this post if you already are sick of hearing me talk about it).

In a nutshell, we believe that the young man who helped us plan my father’s funeral was rude to us in the initial moments of the planning process. I called him on it and he changed his attitude. Perhaps that is all that needed to be done. However this was not someone selling us a wrench at Ace Hardware. This was someone who was supposed to help us deal with the grief of losing a loved-one.

I stewed about this for about a month, then wrote a letter to the director (who was out of town when we used the services of his funeral home). I’ll post the letter (names removed) after the break.

When another month passed and I’d not heard back from the funeral home director, I sent him an email. I never got a response to the email.

I sort of figured that if he got the letter and the email and didn’t respond, it was not worth dealing with anymore. I’d gotten it off my chest and that is all that mattered. I nearly forgot about it until my mom callled me a few days ago and said that the funeral home director left a message on her answering machine. I asked her what he said and she said he wanted her to call him back but she was reluctant to do so. She thought she’d ramble on and make no sense. I said I’d send her a copy of the letter I’d sent him and then she’d know what was in it.

That evening I accessed Mom’s voice-mail account — we had it set up for that when she was here and I was curious to know what he said). Here is, verbatim, what the funeral director said:

Yes, [Mom’s Name],  this is [funeral home director’s name] of [name of funeral home]. I’ve been meaning to get ahold of you but I’ve…I’ve…it’s just been on my back burner and I really wanted to talk to you regarding a letter that Dona had sent me regarding the funeral services for your husband. I just wanted to kinda touch base with you and I had a couple of questions for you. So if you could, at your convenience, give me a call back [phone number] I’d appreciate it and I’d like to speak to you. Thank you.

The next evening I called my mom to see if she’d called the funeral home back. She hadn’t and pretty much said she didn’t want to and didn’t know what the big deal was. Maybe the person who helped us was young and inexperienced. She said it was part of the past and didn’t want to deal with it any more.

I can completely understand her point. After all, I was already done with it before she called to say they had called. But now I’m upset again. Upset that it took him 70 days to call. Just another, in my opinion, insult to us.

I may call him myself to tell him that Mom’s done with it and doesn’t want to reopen old wounds. I may tell him that I’m disappointed that it took so long for him to contact us. I may write a review on Yelp. Or I may just sweep it under the carpet and move on.

There are not too many other options for funeral homes in my home town. This family owns the two main ones and as Pastor Keith said on Facebook the other day, they’re the “biggest game in town”. I don’t know what we’ll do when we need funeral home services again — many many years from now of course.

Letter I wrote after the break.

Continue reading Stewing Away on the Back Burner →

Suburban Parking

Rant,

One of the many things that surprised me when we moved into our house in 1993 was the fact that we had to buy a parking permit to park on the streets of our neighborhood — including in front of our house. Residential parking permits (as well as visitor permits) cost $35 per vehicle and are good for two years. Cars without parking permits can be ticketed, and often are.

I understand the reason — we live near a hospital with limited parking areas as well near NIH — which also has limited parking spots. People working at or visiting these locations would park in our neighborhood, taking our parking spots if parking restrictions were not enforced.

That knowledge does not make it any easier to take though, especially when the parking permit office is not very conveniently located and has short hours. And then there is the red tape.

This summer I noticed that our car’s parking permit had expired in March. In addition we’d not yet gotten a sticker for the car we inherited from Dean’s mom. We were using the visitor pass for the third car which was a bit of an issue when we had visitors, or when the neighbors wanted to borrow the pass because they were having more than one visitor.

So I made plans to visit the parking permit office and get a permit for the car. I knew I needed the license of the car and the registration and needed to fill out a form. I got a little lost going to the parking permit office, but eventually found it. If you’ve ever been to a DMV you’ll get an idea of what this office was like on the inside. Also a Greyhound bus station. Two surly women sat behind windows in a cluttered, florescent bulb-lit office.

When I approached one window the woman at that window was about to go on break, so I had to use the other. I handed over the paperwork and after some typing, writing, looking up things on her computer, the woman behind the window asked for my driver’s license. I handed it over and the woman looked at the paperwork and back at my license and said. “You don’t own the vehicles.” I explained that they were in my husband’s name and she replied, “But you don’t have the same last name.” I agreed, but showed her that our checks had both of our names on them. She said that the owner of the car would have to obtain the permits. Or I could bring a copy of his driver’s license. She did sell me a visitor’s pass though.

Several weeks later, after our vacation, my first fall trip to Illinois, and a healthy dose of procrastination I went back to the ugly office with the surly workers. This time I was prepared with a copy of Dean’s driver’s license. It went smoothly this time — the woman behind the window was not surly in the least. It may or may not have been the same woman.

I got home, put the stickers in the cars, and announced my success to Dean.

“But what about the truck?” he asked, “its permit has expired too.”

Crap.

An open letter to email newsletter subscribers

Rant, ,

Dear Subscribers to Email Newsletters:

I am not speaking for the spammers of the world. I am not a spammer and think spammers are quite horrible and deserve to be banned on ISPs. I am speaking for people who send legitimate email newsletters to people who asked to be placed on email newsletter lists, either by signing up on the Internet or adding their name to a list in a shop or at an event.

Please do not mark legitimate newsletters as spam when you get tired of receiving them. A legitimate newsletter will have a link to unsubscribe your email address (usually near the bottom of the email). Please use that link instead. If you mark legitimate newsletters as spam you are hurting the reputation of the address of the sender and if too many people mark the newsletters as spam, the person sending the emails will be banned from sending emails. Many newsletter programs will also ban newsletter authors if too many list members mark their newsletters as spam.

Yes, clicking “Spam” in your email program is easier than scrolling to the bottom of an email newsletter and clicking unsubscribe, but please take that extra couple of seconds and unsubscribe that way. It really is the right thing to do. Many people who send legitimate email newsletters take great pains to make it easy to identify who the email is from and how to unsubscribe.

Thank you very much.

Love,

A legitimate newsletter list sender