What's this in the plastic bowl?

OH, hey! More leftovers!

I forgot all about this little anecdote from Thanksgiving, but it finally came back up to the top of my brain cells this morning. My mom was relating that she had gone to get a flu shot a few weeks ago. Her regular doctor had run out, so she had decided to go down one Saturday morning to the Publix supermarket near where she lives. Having a buy 1-get 1 free sale or something, I suppose.

Actually, it think it might have been a thing set up by the Shelby County health department. She had to wait from 8 a.m. until THREE P.M.

Not quite for the reason you might think, though--the line was long, obviously, but the problem she found out after a while was that they had only brought along ONE woman to take process paperwork. They had two nurses to give shots, but half the time they didn't have anything to do because of the paperwork bottleneck.

Now for the part that is one of those things that kinda makes you say, "Huh, whaddya know."

After standing for about an hour or so, Mom started getting a touch cranky (my mom's a 75-year-old lady, after all), and after finding out what the holdup was, she and another lady in line asked if the paperworker needed some help. The offer of assistance made its way back to the front of the line, and after a bit, a grateful reply came back down that any help would be greatly appreciated. So, my mom dropped out of line along with a couple of other women and started helping the receptionist dole out forms and check to make sure they were all filled out and get things moving. The line started actually moving after that (much to the chagrin of the shot-givers).

Anyway, I sat there as she was telling the story, and it struck me about how American the whole scene was. No rioting, no hysteria; a problem, for sure, but regular folks just standing in line volunteered to help fix it.

And they did.

Oh, I'm sure the volunteers probably complained about it some, because it's obvious someone messed up in the logistics of the whole thing, and complaining is pretty fun. But, they also realized complaining doesn't get the job done.

My mom is pretty danged cool.
posted by Terry at 1:56:00 PM