After watching the movie “Blood Diamond,” we adopted their TIA (this is Africa) comment to our fair city. There are so many things that happen here that I just can’t imagine happening elsewhere*.

Case in point: this week I had to order flowers for our neighbor Doris who was in the hospital for an operation. Simple, right? The sort of thing that must happen dozens of times daily at any given hospital?

Not so much. I call over to their gift shop first thing (Wednesday) morning:
“Gift shop.”
“I’d like to order…”
“No flowers.”
“uh…excuse me?”
“We don’t have no flowers. We only get ‘em in on Monday mornings and they’re usually gone by that afternoon.”
“This is the hospital gift shop, right?”
Confused:”Yes?”

Okay, so…what would you do, were you the manager of a hospital gift shop? “Let’s see. We have a really popular item, highly relevant to our captive audience. We just can’t keep it in stock. Hmmm.”

On the other hand, if they kept more in stock, I guess they’d have to do more work, so why not nip it in the bud (har har)?

Alright, so now I’ve got to go to some online retailer and swallow their fee. Oh damn, gotta get back on the phone with the hospital’s patient services line get Miss Doris’ room number. The kindly old man who answers really does try to help…but he can’t find her.
“Maybe she hasn’t arrived yet.”
“Actually, she’s been there a few days.” Check of the time, then, “in fact, she should be in surgery right now.”
“Oh, then she really should’ve gotten here by now!”
Um…yeah. Usually you have to be there to be operated upon.

So began an hour long odyssey for something that should have taken moments. And at the end of any given day, I shake my head and think, “I know I was busy doing stuff all day…why doesn’t it feel like anything got accomplished?”

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*Okay, well having read Hiaasen, Dorsey and Barry, I’m prepared to concede that maybe Florida is equally weird, but that’s about it.