gridlore: Doug looking off camera with a grin (Penguin - Wobble)
Douglas Berry ([personal profile] gridlore) wrote2014-01-02 06:32 pm
Entry tags:

Two days in and 2014 is a fail.

And I had such hopes.

Today was my long awaited appointment with a dermatologist. Anyone who has seen me in the past few years may have notice the blemishes on my hands and the thing on my face just right of my nose. There are other things that I wanted to deal with.

I'm still using Outreach to get around. Today they sent a cab from the company they contract with for overflow work. I didn't write down my pick-up window; so I just sat here with the door open to listen for a car. Now, Outreach has specific rules. The people who take it are disabled, so the drivers are supposed to meet us at the door, and help us into the car. This guy just sat there. I walk with a cane these, days, and was carry a book. No help at all.

Now Outreach is a share-ride service. So when the driver headed away from where I was going, I thought nothing of it. But then he pulls into the parking lot of a very nice restaurant and starts muttering about not seeing the address. A bit confused, I point out I'm going to 701 El Camino Real in Mountain View. ECR is an extremely long road that goes from here in the South Bay to just outside San Francisco. It is over 40 miles long, and the numbering resets in every municipality it passes through. This moron didn't read the city on my reservation.

He gets turned around, and I have to practically yell at him not to get on 101N. That freeway is a nightmare up through noon most days. I make him get on Central Expressway. Despite me telling him that I take this route almost every week, and would tell him well in advance of the best place to turn, he kept staring at the GPS. Even when I gave him a clear direction (turn right at the next light) he'd get in the wrong lane.

This guy wasn't a driver. A driver knows his area. A driver doesn't need to be led around by the GPS. A driver confirms his route before pulling out. I'm a pretty forgiving person, but called in a complaint on this guy.

But onto the doctors. More great news. The things on my face are suspected to be basal cell carcinoma. Biopsies were taken, I'll know in a week. The stuff on my hands and elsewhere is seborrheic keratoses. My INR was off the scales. Recheck next week.

And I may have to start drinking non-alcoholic beer.

2014 is going to need to mount one hell of a comeback at this point.
claidheamhmor: (Default)

[personal profile] claidheamhmor 2014-01-03 08:34 am (UTC)(link)
Suck when you're having to deal with someone who don't know their job as well as you do.

Ugh - sympathies on the carcinoma; good luck with the biopsy.
nodrog: the Comedian (Comedian)

[personal profile] nodrog 2014-01-03 05:19 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, complain! Call the cab company and Give Feedback - in the electric-guitar-amp sense! You have that right, and think of the other customers who deal with this guy! Admittedly he'll probably get better at his jiob in time, but not without course corrections, yes?

[When I drove for Yellow Cab, I'd normally say, “Now, how do you normally get there?” which is a polite way of saying, “Huh?!”]


p.s. Reading those links, man, you could have been a LOT worse off. Don't fret this. Think of it as cumulative sunburn - because it is, essentially. It doesn't even mean you're cancer-prone: “It is the most frequently occurring form of all cancers.” A LOT of people in that 1970s “sun and fun” lifestyle are paying for it now.
Edited 2014-01-03 17:28 (UTC)
melchar: (zombies)

[personal profile] melchar 2014-01-03 11:39 pm (UTC)(link)
The idea that it is a cab driver - someone who is supposed to drive for a livelihood - who failed so badly at driving that is the worst part of this. It's even worse that you were demonstrating a knowledge of where to go/how to get there and he ignored you. That is more infuriating to me. I think you handled it better than I would have done.