Monday, August 22, 2011

Editor Reddoch

It kind of bugs me (like a lot) when people that earned a doctorate in their field of studies insist on people calling them doctor so-and-so instead of Mr./Mrs./Ms./Mizz or what have you (yes, including the medical variety and not just the ivory tower chaps). And then they get all huffy about if you forget it, like you called their babies ugly. I get that they went to school for a very long time and know a ton about some very specific field (e.g., plant lobotomies, primate psychology, or ancient Chinese footwear) but what do they think the rest of us were doing while they were reading books for an extra six years, sitting on our bottoms? No we were gaining actual life experience, i.e., working and stuff. Television counts as life experience.

So I find it a little insulting when doctors wanna shove their degrees in our faces. It’s fine on your business card because it’s appropriate to mention your credentials when it is a work situation. Heck lots of people put their job on business cards or even email signatures and I guess that’s the point: at the end of the day being a doctor or a professor or pirate captain or a Kentucky chicken baron (colonel) or a judge or headmaster of Hogwarts is just a job. Unless you’re my professor or manhandle my broken body parts, you have no authority over me: quit trying to make everyone outside your realm of influence your subordinate. Quit it.

And since we know they won’t stop doing that, I propose we play it by their game. I will insist that they call me by my professional title as well. Please call me Editor Reddoch; I didn’t go to college for over a decade to be called mister.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Shower Unsafety Seat

So you may have read my blog where I bought a shower safety seat. It was all fun and games, until the defective product made me fall out of it in the shower. Changed my life again. Don’t worry, I am fine. No permanent damage, aside from my ego. I was luck not to be geriatric, cause then I could have broken a hip. Anyway so I said Carex cares. Do they? I hope the x in Carex doesn’t stand for “just kidding.”

At first I thought it was simply because I exceeded the weight limit by 2lb. leaving me to feel all fat and wet, but then we discovered the truth. Negligence!

So here is the actual letter I wrote to them explaining the situation:

First let me say I have used previous Carex products with no problem (crutches and a foldable cane work great!) but this chair nearly killed me. OK it didn't nearly kill be but it would have killed me if I were a retired person. Instead I just fell off it and hurt myself with no permanent damage but it didn't feel good to fall in the shower because of your poor quality control. This happened because when my wife assembled the chair (she's an engineer by the way), whoever put the stickers on the parts somehow put one of the stickers on the wrong side. So the chair didn't function properly even though it was not an obvious mistake (it looked normal unless you looked very close). I took two showers and on the third I fell when the chair fell over. My wife took it apart and reassembled it correctly after she examined the product and saw that you mislabeled it. This is a very dangerous mistake to make. I could have been seriously hurt. An older person would have hit their hip on the side of the tub and perhaps their head on the ground. Now the product works fine (since my wife reassembled once she figured out your dangerous mistake), except my paranoia that I will fall in the shower again remains [I do get a scary feeling sitting on it now]. I have a picture showing the mislabeling, but this form doesn’t allow for an attachment [attached below for your viewing pleasure]. What can you do to make this right (short of me suing you for negligence)?

Here is the pic it wouldn’t let me attach. This is the pic of the chair AFTER Rachel fixed it. I circled the numbers. The numbers are supposed to go together, but one rogue 2 wandered way off from his family. So the leg was built slightly askew the first time around.

Anyway, let’s hope the Carex people do the right thing. And by right thing, I’d like an apology, a stern talking at the idiot that messed up, and maybe a free wheelchair so I won’t have to crutch around as much next time my foot has one of it’s crises. BTW my feet are almost all better, almost. And I have new custom orthotics arriving next week (I hope those aren’t mislabeled).