customer service with a smile

it's been about 3 weeks since my last update.
leslie just got off her week of inpatient medicine and is happy to be done...lots of sick patients in guam. her pager went off consistently all week, even in the middle of the night, even though her other colleagues admit pts overnight while she's on inpatient service. it seems a frequent occurence is that a colleague oncall doesn't respond to their pager so the nurses like to page leslie. lucky for me.

i, on the other hand, don't have a pager of my own yet, and hope to keep it that way for a while. i've begun moonlighting at 2 different clinics the last couple weeks and think i even worked a respectable 34 hours this week. both clinics have docs leaving the island for a couple weeks in a week, so i should be pretty busy then. hope to decide which clinic to sign a contract with by the end of next month. it's good to be working again, although i haven't really had any intellectually challenging cases yet. unless you consider the common cold or flu challenging. both clinics have their own xray machine and it's somewhat of a new experience for me to rely on my own reading of the film to aid in my diagnosis. it seems to take a day or 2 for the formal radiologists interpretation to come back.

nearby is the grounds along the cliffline where the old guam hospital used to be...now its just an empty lot with abandoned houses and a good view. there are "no trespassing, no dumping" signs at the entrances. gordon and i both did the former, but only gordon did the latter.

our pool table finally got set up. 2 guys from town who set up the pool tables for billiards halls in town came out for 2 days straight (about 7or8hrs total) to set ours up. keep in mind one dude took about 2hrs to set it up solo when we lived in tacoma. after they finished we realized it was nowhere close to level. they wanted to come back the next week and place slim wooden pieces ("shims") under the legs. i said that was unacceptable and made them take the table down to the slate and re-level it, which they reluctantly did. another 8hrs and 1 week later our table is finally playable. i've been told i need to lower my expectations if i want to stay sane and agreeable while living here. i think i just need to start taking valium.

i ordered some cases of washington wine about 1 month ago from the nex (navy exchange). long, long, long story short, after 20 phone calls, 5 emails, lots of obscenities, i still have no idea if they are able to special order it for me. i don't even think the manager i've spoken too has even looked into it. the manager even had the gall to ask that instead of the wa state gewurztraminer i ordered, if i'd rather just buy their $3 fetzer gewurztraminer from california. it was only after my hospital discharge 3 days later for my heart attack that i was able to phone her and say "no, i'd prefer the wine i ordered". customer service is not in the local vocabulary here. most of the service/retail jobs on the military bases are occupied by locals due to some agreement the military made way back in the middle of the last century in order to be here. the guam work ethic is nothing to write home about and military personnel and their dependents here suffer b/c of it. the military should be ashamed they let these atrocities occur. needless to say, i've found my complaining groove and have placed many an irate phone call and email to those purportedly in charge. doubt it'll do much good, i've been told. case in point, i'm sitting here drinking franzia (not really, but i'm that pissed).