A Lesson You Don't Want Me to Learn

I think it was last December that I noticed the control on my power chair was acting a little wonky. It took me a while to convince myself that it wasn't just my imagination. Mike the Wheelchair Guy first checked it out in January. He confirmed that it was, in fact, wonky. After fiddling and plugging and unplugging and much head scratching, he decided that maybe Mike the Permobile Guy better have a look at it.

So, OK. We made an appointment with Mike the Permobile Guy. He confirmed that it was, in fact, wonky. He fiddled and plugged and unplugged and scratched his head, and decided that the problem was the control unit. Unfortunately my chair, a 2007 model, uses older electronics than they're putting on newer chairs, and it might take some time to come up with a replacement.

That was in January. Now it's April.

I started sending polite e-mails requesting status updates last month. The first polite e-mail to Mike the Wheelchair Guy got an auto-reply saying he was on vacation for a week, but would contact me when he returned. Not wanting to be pushy, I waited for his reply for another week after he got back, but never got one. Hey, I've been there. Your e-mail box can get pretty full when you're out for a spell. Stuff gets buried. It happens.

So I sent another polite e-mail requesting a status update. This time Mike the Wheelchair Guy replied, saying that Mike the Permobile Guy had finally found a control with the older electronics, and he would be calling me early the following week to set up a time to try it out. Mike the Wheelchair Guy would be seeing Mike the Permobile Guy at a conference in Las Vegas the following weekend, and would "remind him of his commitment to getting this problem resolved." Yeah, right.

So it gets to be Thursday of the following week, and I haven't heard anything. I don't want to be pushy. It probably takes a couple of days to recover from a Vegas conference. But on Thursday I sent another polite e-mail, asking if there's anything I can do to get this moving along.

Mike the Wheelchair Guy replies by cc'ing me on an e-mail he sends to Mike the Permobile Guy, asking what's going on. Very helpful. I don't know if Mike the Wheelchair Guy got any response from Mike the Permobile Guy, but I sure didn't.

When I still hadn't heard anything by Tuesday of the following week (that would be yesterday), I was starting to get a little cranky. I pointed out to both Mikes that we started working on this problem in January, and now it's April, and my chair is still broke. My insurance is different now, which is going to make all this more of a pain than it would otherwise be. I'm tired of being nice. I'm ready to start rattling cages.

I got a call from Mike the Permobile Guy a couple of hours later. He made an appointment to come and try the new control box the following afternoon (that would be today). The timing is fortuitous, because Scarecrow was planning to work at home anyway, so we won't have to take time off work to get this done. Finally.

Wait wait wait… not so fast. The appointment was for 2:00. Around 2:45, he calls and says he's running late. Can we do this tomorrow?

Um, not really. We're not usually home in the middle of the day. It just happened that we could do it today. Tomorrow is not a good day.

Mike the Permobile Guy has no idea how lucky he is that Scarecrow answered the phone instead of me. (Actually, it's a pretty good bet, since I can't physically answer the phone unless it rings on my laptop, and he was calling our home number. So scarecrow always answers the phone. But still.) I'm tired of being nice. You have no idea how much of an effort that is for me. I would have used Discouraging Words. I would have let him see the real me, and friends, it would have been a conversation he would not soon forget.

I don't know the end of the story. I don't know whether Scarecrow can arrange to work from home tomorrow, or if we have to try to find another time to get the chair fixed.

I do know that the lesson I take home from this is that as long as you try to be nice, as long as you're polite, as long as you're not pushy, you'll be at the bottom of everybody's priority list. It's only when you speak up, make it clear that you're tired of waiting around for people to get their fudging thumbs out of their ears, that you expect them to get their butts in gear and get it done, that things start to happen.

Don't be so nice. That's a lesson I can learn, but trust me, it's better if I don't.