I am not your “customer”
In “news of the weird”
I got an email from the Head Honcho in regard to an email
I sent after the fuckin’ place broke my soul, one more time with real feeling, over two weeks ago.
I thanked Head Honcho for their “eventual reply.”
(Gotta consult those attorneys and corporate go-betweens before
firing off a really stale email — I mean, I’ve received far more human
and sincere emails from fuckin’ Pita Jungle
than I ever have from
American Healthcare Systems.)
In the email, Head Honcho used words like “customer” and
“customer service” and it was a very cold, corporate, soulless email
that could have been written by a robot or a million chimpanzees over time (a la The Infinite Monkey Theorem).
But I’m confused.
Am I a customer or a patient?
A little of both?
I do not wish to be a customer of doctors.
I am a customer of Trader Joe’s, Apple, and
sometimes, yes, Amazon, but am I a customer of my oncologist?
Or a patient? A client? A human being who needs help?
See, I don’t expect Trader Joe’s to care about my feelings or my general wellbeing because they’re just in the business of feeding my American ass.
I make lots of choices when I am in Trader Joe’s:
do I want strawberry or chocolate mochi?
Frozen ramen or bibimbap?
Garlic or pink salt?
If my mochi is a little freezer burnt, or my salt shaker is
a little janky in the grinder department, it’s not a big deal.
It’s a mild inconvenience.
Utterly inconsequential.
However, if my PET scans sit under a pizza box for weeks or
my labs are misread or I miss a medical appointment
due to a scheduling error on the part of a healthcare system,
the consequences are a bit more significant than if my Bibimbap
just isn’t what I wanted in a Bibimbap
(this said, Trader Joe’s frozen Bibimbap is solid
as far as frozen Korean food goes).
I was assured, in the email “by” Head Honcho,
that I did not receive “substandard” care
as a customer.
Well that’s a relief!
Thank god that care I have been fretting over and spending money on isn’t SUBstandard.
Why are we, as Americans, okay with “standard”
when it comes to education, healthcare, and social safety nets, but
we’re SO NOT OKAY with “standard” when we go to a fucking restaurant? Americans (often white) flip their shit if
their Applebee’s Asian Quesadillas (or whatever) come out burnt
or fucked up in some manner, and we DEMAND JUSTICE
for the FOOD WE PAID FOR and yet, so often,
when it comes to healthcare
we just accept that we’re going to be treated badly and traumatized and fucked up until we go broke or die — whichever comes first.
All this, I suppose, to say:
I am not your fucking customer, American Healthcare System
and all affiliated Head Honchos.
I am a customer of places I CHOOSE to spend my $$ for PLEASURE.
I am not a customer of institutions where I, an American Human Being,
have sought help in the treatment of real existential threats.
Nor are students and parents “customers” of public education
in a country where students (rightly) must attend school;
where I would wager the average American spends more time -
in their first eighteen years of life — INSIDE OF A SCHOOL
than they do INSIDE OF A HOME.
Choices made about healthcare and education
are seldom made for pleasure.
Choices made about healthcare and education are often (if not always)
made around necessity.
Choices made about healthcare and education
are deeply, tediously, excruciatingly impacted by class, race, ability,
and gender.
Amazon don’t lie:
Bezos doesn’t give a fuck who I fuck or how I live or what I look like
so long as I pony up my $$.
I don’t need Bezos to care because really, at the end of the day,
if I don’t get my copy of Alcoholic’s Anonymous or my dog cbd
by Wednesday, nothing terrible or irrevocable or traumatizing
has happened.
When things get fucked up in healthcare? In education?
The consequences for the patient or student
are real dangerous, real traumatic, and sometimes
irrevocable.
Any institution run by humans will be flawed.
No person is perfect.
No one group or philosophy is perfect.
“Perfect” is a subjective word for a concept
that doesn’t really, truly exist in any objectifiable way in
— or outside — of nature.
(Didn’t Plato already say this shit like seven million years ago?)
I don’t expect perfect.
I don’t expect it from my doctors or my students.
What I do expect, at least in organizations that specialize in the care of humans is this:
humanity.
See, I expect Amazon to lead with profits in mind.
Amazon Prime is not a “natural right.”
And I feel pretty fucking certain
that access to affordable, modern healthcare —
regardless of age, race, income, or gender — must be
a natural right, not something
like Everything-But-the-Bagel Seasoning
or money
that gets hoarded by the lucky few
who are able to gain access.
You wanna make money?
Invent something cool and convince me that I need it.
You wanna help people?
Pay the nurses, doctors, educators, and the staff
who are doing the heavy work of actually caring for people
a reasonable living wage (like one where maybe once a year they, too can
afford to take their family on a proper vacation
or buy the occasional new computer or phone)
and take the folks who are there merely for $$$$
out of the “business”
of helping people.
Go work for fucking Amazon. Start a tech company.
Sell me some fucking coffee. Open a dispensary.
You wanna help people?
Pay good people of sound morals who are experts in their fields,
driven by passion, ethics, and forces beyond money alone
to do the work of helping people.
You wanna push papers and talk to lawyers and formulate cold, boring, dispassionate emails that will assuage the concerns of your lawyers and Head Honchos whose primary interests center around the number of boats and houses they can amass while ensuring their friends and family get their slice of cheddar, too?
You wanna make lots of cash
without having to overburden yourself with shit like
empathy and decency?
IF your answer is “YES”
then here is my response:
Good on ya!
Now get
the
fuck
out
of education
and healthcare
forever and ever
amen.
