The first day of this month, a Thursday, found me manning the information desk of a doctor’s office building a mile or two from my house (I live in a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA). The building, within which 50 or more physicians ply their trades, is owned and managed by Jefferson Health, an enormous player in Pennsylvania’s healthcare sector. I’m part of Jefferson Health’s volunteer staff and have been putting in several or more hours weekly at the info desk for many years.
Visitors to the building throw any number of questions my way during each of my shifts, such as “Why is a grotesquely wrinkled, ancient f*cker like you working here?” Just kidding, of course, about that one. Or am I? Anyway, here are better and far more boring examples of the questions I field and respond to: “What suite are the pulmonary doctors in?” and “Where are the restrooms?”
And I also help people in a variety of other ways. On the Thursday in question, for example, a fellow asked me if I’d accompany him in the elevator to the top floor, where an appointment with one of his physicians awaited him. That was because panic sets in when he is in an elevator by himself. Normally he would take the stairs, he said, but he was having trouble with his knees. Only a prick wouldn’t have gone for a ride with him, right? Well, once in a while I can be a prick, to be honest with you. But I wasn’t in that instance.
Not only am I expected to answer questions and in general to be helpful, my employer, via a written job description, urges me to acknowledge visitors as they enter and leave the building. The point of this is to foster the impression they are in a caring environment. I do so with a high percentage of people, saying “hello,” “see ya” and the like plenty of times each shift, and commonly flashing a smile too. My actions almost always are reciprocated.
What struck me on the day I’m writing about is that many visitors beat me to the punch in the acknowledgments department. This probably has been true for years and years, but I guess it hadn’t registered with me before. Maybe the visitors were amazed and somewhat delighted to see a grotesquely wrinkled, ancient f*cker not only alive and kicking, but still in the workforce. In any case, many hellos, goodbyes and smiles came my way before I unleashed mine. Man, what absolutely floored me was an energetic and clear-as-a-bell “hi” directed at me by a baby with a pacifier in her mouth who was being pushed in a stroller past the information desk. That infant is on the right path in life! She knows how to get along with others.
Yeah, the vast majority of individuals I encounter at my Jefferson Health job are friendly, civil and polite individuals, at least on the surface. Maybe naively, this gives me some degree of hope for American society, despite the fact that the crude, repressive convicted felon named Donald Trump is, as always, hard at work spreading his poisons. The truth is, I consider myself fortunate to hold the information-desk gig. Like just about everybody, I’m a social animal. I enjoy being around people. I spend a huge amount of time solely in the company of my wife Sandy, which is time very well spent. But I regularly need wider doses of human contact. Who doesn’t? The volunteer job delivers that to me beautifully. I have no plans to hand in my Jefferson Health ID badge any time soon.
