Ed Mini-Story Time!
As a furtherance of my previous post, ironically enough today I was out and about getting my "sprinkler on"
(actually a rare treat these days) and got a call out of the blue by a co-worker from the previous gig...
I have been recently referring some of my long-time customers to my former employer out of an abundance
of responsibility to see they get properly taken care of, since where I am now there simply is no support in
place - at least, yet.
Sort of a weird situation - but I don't see a choice in the matter, if I'm being true to taking care of folks...
So, anyways - my former co-worker calls (I'm friendly with many in fire protection in this neck of the woods -
small world and all, you know) and he wants advice on where he's at, a school system in my own county.
I listen, then tell him to sit tight, I'm on the way....
There then commences to be a meeting of competing company service trucks in the same parking lot of the school,
which I got a kick out of since they're both fully marked trucks and all.
There's something you don't see every day....
He and I get our heads together on what he's working on (something I had actually arranged while still at the
old company, just now reaching fruition) and the facilities manager for the schools shows up (another friend;
we've got history) and has a good laugh at the spectacle.
Crisis averted, situation resolved...and my bud from the old company then proceeds to catch me up on all the
scuttlebutt from that company, full of how things had gone since my departure.
He had apparently thought it would please me to hear how it wasn't going so well there in the interim...
and to be honest, a younger me might very well have taken some measure of satisfaction in hearing the news.
I'll admit that...
The "me" since all the health hell had descended, however? Not so much.
I smiled, made polite responses and all that - but the gossip didn't honestly do much for me really.
In fact, a series of emotions from slight sadness to borderline nostalgia came over me instead - and I found
it all sort of regrettably avoidable, since I helped build that company and all.
Who knows? Maybe i should have given more of a pass to the "banties" and the corporate climbers and such,
whose motivations were more driven from ambition than any need to take care of the customers....
and to do this damn job
properly - to me at least, the
prime directive of fire protection, after all.
They in turn could have perhaps tried to refocus their motivations and tried to remember we're in the life
safety gig first - and allowed their own chest-thumping to take a bit of a back seat.
Oh well, such is life...
I don't ask so much why people and things are the way they are anymore...
I've finally arrived at the conclusion that we can only do what we're in control of doing and that human
nature is to bristle up and resist when someone tries to get us to change - the exact opposite of what
we'd like to have happen.
As I go through what is likely to be my last internal organ challenge now, that's got to be good enough...
and I believe it is.
I'm good with my efforts, regardless of the outcome.
So, yeah - the ultimate
failure for me is that it took too many years to reach this awareness.
