Farm New 06-01-08

Sunday evening, after chores, the internet link was down all day.

Weight: 204 lbs.

Barn News

Drat! Something took Bobby, the gosling. Bobby was my favorite gosling. He was well educated, having been to school twice, and would eat from my hand. Like all young geese, he looked like a T. rex with a duck's head, but he was friendly and cheerful. I”m tired of feeding the predators and am going to take steps to reduce the toll. I know that unless I do something another gosling will disappear each night until they are all gone.

Insubordination

"No, sir."

Sunshine, a friend, is the most sardonic, cynical person I know. He also is quadriplegic, which inhibits most men from punching him in the nose when he is at his worst.

Sunshine works in a call center, responding to the desperate cries of the of the distraught who are trying to obtain an intelligent response from Medicare. Sunshine, on the telephone, is empathetic, reverberating to the problems of the callers. Thus, when a 90 year old blind wman called, Sunshine became almost blind to the rest of creation.

Everyone who knows Sunshine, including those who work with him, know that he is subject to brief empathetic trances, states where the normal rules of reality do not apply within his space. It's not really a problem, except in a bureaucracy.

It did become a problem when his supervisor sat down to observe his performance. Mr. Supervisor, Sunshine said, had a wife, three kids, a mortgage, and just wanted to keep his job. Thus, Mr. Supervisor was sitting next to Sunshine, performing a monthly performance rating observation, when the 90 year old war widow from Wisconsin called on the phone, crying. And, in a natural, beyond his control, response, Sunshine fell into an empathetic state, and existed only to serve a lonely, 90 year old, befuddled woman.

Gently, deftly, Sunshine began to guide the old woman thrugh the intricacies of indentifying herself and her problem in such a way that she and the problem would fit into the problem-solving capabilities of the call center. Finally, all the boxes were checked and blanks filled, except for the Medicare number on her card. She didn't know the number and couldn't see the card to read it. The number was not essential to resolving her problem, but the script clearly stated that, when the caller couldn't supply a Medicare number, the conversation was to be closed down.

Sunshine looked at his supervisor and said, “No, sir.”

Books

I haven't finished any books this week. That's what happens when I move from mysteries and westerns to non-fiction.