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Friday, August 13, 2010

Folk Hero or Obnoxious Man?

B"H

It's amazing how quickly Steve Slater, a flight attendant who claimed that he was fed up with rude passengers, cursed over the loudspeaker, grabbed a beer and slid down the safety slide has become a "folk hero" of sorts (sort of in the category of Bernhard Goetz, I would think). It seems that service workers seemed to identify with Mr. Slater.

I was reminded of a few things in my life when this happened. My mom didn't believe for one moment that Mr. Slater was justified because recently I (who usually get along quite well with the flight attendants, often talking to them on long flights) had an incident with a flight attendant. A few months ago, I was on a flight (a puddle jumper with only one flight attendant) and had some difficulties with a nasty flight attendant. It started when he refused to let me go to the bathroom before the flight left the gate. It continued (I don't recall what the second "thing" was) and came to a head when he wouldn't give me more water (I'm diabetic and need a lot to drink or I get dizzy). So on one of my myriad trips to the bathroom, I saw an open water bottle and took it from the galley and brought it back to my seat. When "Mr. Personality" saw me with the bottle, he tried to take it from me, wrestling with me over the bottle. When he realized he would not be able to take the bottle from me, he crushed it rather than allow me to drink from it. He had the Captain call ahead and I was met by a woman who I assumed was supposed to escort me out of the airport, but when I told her what happened, she laughed and realized that I wasn't some crazed terrorist or criminal, intent on disruption their flight. I laughed the whole thing off (after sending a narrative of the event in an e-mail to the airlines and promptly put the incident in the cobweb covered filing cabinet in the nether regions of my brain and didn't think about it again until Mr. Slater's incident -- and it took my Mom reminding me for me to extract this from it's place in my brain).

This past week, on Undercover Boss, there was a repeat of an episode about a CEO of a mail order business (I forget the name) was working undercover with a customer service phone employee who was rude to a customer and he was livid. He later told the employee that this was totally unacceptable.

This also reminded me of when I was working many years ago as a teller at Chase Manhattan. I often worked the "deposits only" line and I was also the teller that one of the "not exactly by the book, but let's help the customer" officers (whose name was John and he later was the president of a smaller branch) used to bring the upset customers to (because he knew that I would do whatever he asked me to do even if it wasn't "by the book").

One day, John brought over someone who was really upset. The customer continued to complain while I was taking care of him. I finished the transaction, handing him his receipt, smiled and said, "have a nice day" and he left. The next customer was a regular of mine and so I started chatting with him. He started staring and I asked him what the problem was and he said that he was shocked that I could take that abuse and still be my normal cheerful self. I shrugged and told him that I knew the customer wasn't angry with me, just the bank. I'd been on the other side myself many times.

On that episode of "Undercover Boss", there was also an employee who was able to diffuse just about any customer with his charm and "let's make this right" attitude. He personified the cool customer service representative and he managed to resolve issues, feeling that it was his job to have the customer feel good after the call. I have experienced people like that too, in between the obnoxious "I'm right, you're not!" people.

So what's the real story with Mr. Slater? I don't know. But he's no folk hero to me.

Check out my other blogs:

Israel and it's Place in the World
Jewish Singles
Strong Jewish Women

Check out some of my squidoo lenses (articles):

Strong Biblical Women
Strong Biblical Women 2
Why Be Vegetarian
Vegetarianism: Getting Started 1
Vegetarianism: Getting Started 2
Why be Vegetarian?
Rosh Hashana
Quick Vegan Cooking
Creating new recipes from old
Hanuka
About the Jewish Calendar
Witches and Morality
Math Hints 1 -- Adding Fractions
Presidents1: George Washington

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Healthy Body, Healthy Mind

B"H

I'm a long time vegetarian and vegan (33 and 21 years respectively). Though I didn't make either decision (giving up meat/poultry/fish/leather/fur first and then adding dairy/eggs/lanolin etc. to the list) for health reasons. But somewhere along the line I did begin to be interested in health and nutrition and, of late (within the past 5-10 years I suppose) I've been downright obsessed with it. Health and nutrition books populate my bookcases and I subscribe to several health and nutrition magazines and newsletters.

About the same time I "went vegan", I also stopped taking medications. I don't even take aspirin. Most people find this very surprising (many even find it hard to believe). There are situations where I might take medication (particularly if it would be to treat an acute infection or injury) but I would then have to deal with the "fallout" (for example, taking antibiotics causes an imbalance in the body of bacteria vs. yeast -- for the most part, they keep each other in check, but antibiotics kill all bacteria without regard for whether or not it is helpful to the body's function -- if I were to need to take antibiotics then after I would have to pump up my body on probiotics and prebiotics).

One of the reasons I read a lot about health and nutrition is that I need to read about supplements and herbs to know which ones help the body regain equilibrium (as in how to treat different health issues to assist your body in healing itself).

Toward that end, I read a lot about this subject. My Mom has even "jumped on the bandwagon" (not that she doesn't take any medication, but she also takes supplements, etc.) -- this began when she went to a doctor for some muscular pain she was having. The doctor asked her what she wanted him to do. All he could recommend is semiannual cortisone (or something similar????) shots, something that, thank goodness, she cringed over the very idea of.

I had just been reading in one of my health newsletters about vitamin D and how prevalent vitamin D deficiency is, particularly in seniors, particularly in people who avoid the sun and particularly in the Northeast (all three conditions apply to my Mom). And, as it turned out, one of the symptoms was muscle aches. So she tried increasing her vitamin D and within days, the aches went away.

A few days ago, she had a bit of food poisoning (she thinks, anyway) and I gave her ginger tea (hot water with a few slices of ginger root in it) and, voila! Within a short time, she was feeling better.

I myself take many supplements, including vitamin D, vitamin B complex, niacin and niacinimide, and iodine. Some I take on my own (though I run them by my alternative medical practitioner) and the others I take on the advice of my alternative medical practitioner. With the help of these supplements, I have lowered my blood pressure, my cholesterol (though I think my vegan diet made the biggest dent in the cholesterol since I eat precious little saturated fat and no cholesterol).

So I was pretty intrigued by an article about The 12 Most Dangerous Supplements. I was curious as to how many of them I had heard of (7) and how many I had ever taken (none). The ones I might have considered taking (and with herbal preparations one should always either do research or discuss with their medical practitioner (allopathic -- that's MDs -- or alternative -- naturopaths, osteopaths, chiropractors, etc.) or both (with me, I try to do both)) I checked out more carefully only to discover that they have negative side effects that I wasn't too keen on (so I never tried them).

It's ironic, from my perspective, that they spend so much time and effort trying to make it seem as though thousands upon thousands of people are dying from taking bad supplements. But they ignore the myriad side effects of medications.

Just about every day I see commercials from some law firm trying to find victims of this or that medication (Avandia is the big one right now, but there are so many drugs with potentially fatal side effects that once Avandia isn't there another one will pop up). So why is there such a fuss made of supplements and herbal preparations?

Too many people just follow what their doctors say. But most of the doctors just take symptoms and make a diagnosis and from the diagnosis they pick a medication from the a list and write a prescription for it. Doctors get most of their information about drugs from the pharmaceutical company representatives, who convince the docs that these are the only solutions to these specific issues. So most people are putting their faith in the drug companies. And I think most of them are doing this without understanding the consequences.

Most drugs work by suppressing a symptom, whereas most nutrient supplements and herbal preparations work by helping the body heal itself. What happens with drugs is that they suppress a symptom (say high blood sugar) but they haven't been proven (and in many cases, as a matter of fact, they have been proven to NOT) to save lives. Oftentimes, they cause more deaths than they save. (An example is diabetes drugs -- there was a study to see what would be the ideal dosage of diabetes medications that would prevent heart attacks in diabetics. What they found -- they had to stop the study early -- was that the drugs themselves caused more heart attacks! Everyone was surprised even though this also happened in the late 1960s when they tried this with diabetes drugs from that era!

I think people need to remember that the doctors won't have to live with the consequences of their prescribing. Only the patient has to live (or die?) with the fallout. So it behooves everyone to take control of his/her own health. Do more research, read magazines and books. Be an advocate for yourself and your family members.


Check out my other blogs:

Israel and it's Place in the World
Jewish Singles
Strong Jewish Women

Check out some of my squidoo lenses (articles):

Strong Biblical Women
Strong Biblical Women 2
Why Be Vegetarian
Vegetarianism: Getting Started 1
Vegetarianism: Getting Started 2
Why be Vegetarian?
Rosh Hashana
Quick Vegan Cooking
Creating new recipes from old
Hanuka
About the Jewish Calendar
Witches and Morality
Math Hints 1 -- Adding Fractions
Presidents1: George Washington