When Words Collide, Sentences Form

He took my concern seriously!

Earlier this week, on Monday to be specific, I was driving down Washington Ave. in Minneapolis and as I approached the Caribou Coffee that shares a building with a yoga studio, there was an ambulance stopped in front with its emergency lights on. The standard thoughts went though my head, "Oh wow. Wonder if someone dropped a pot of hot coffee on himself." and "Bet someone pulled a muscle trying to get out of some complicated yoga move." As I got up closer, the ambulance pulled away from the curb and turned off its lights. My next thought was "Oh, guess it wasn't soo bad, they aren't tearing off to a hospital." Then I pulled up next to the ambulance (for which I had pulled over to the left a lane since it was blocking the right lane when it had its lights on at the side of the road). The next thought that ran through my head was "Holy crap, that ambulance just used its emergency lights to stop and buy coffee!!" Yes, that's right - the driver and his partner were drinking their Caribou Coffees and eating some sort of pastry out of a Caribou Coffee brown paper bag!!

At first I was angry. Then I was sad. Then I got angry again when I realized that I just pulled out of a lane of traffic for an ambulance that was buying coffee. So, I then called the medical center that operated the ambulance!! I had to leave a message on some general ambulance services voicemail. Believe it or not, my message was very civil - I really just said that this happened and that it bothered me that emergency care workers were using their lights to stop traffic to get coffee...and that I just thought that they should know about it. It was really a nice message...I didn't get mad at all. And I really didn't expect him to call me back.

But then on Tuesday, someone called from the medical center saying that he had received my message and wanted to talk to me about it. We played phone tag back and forth from Tuesday afternoon until this afternoon (today is Friday), until we finally caught up with each other. The amazing thing was that this guy, who I think is the director of ambulance stuff there, left me voicemails each time he called, called back again before I even had a chance to call back and kept saying that he would try me until we could connect. It was amazing - he actually seemed to care about addressing my concern about driver conduct!

When we finally connected he had already talked to the crew prior to talking to me, and explained their policy to me about putting on their flashing lights for security measures, etc. He also said that it bothered him because their 13 ambulances are basically giant billboards for their medical center and that their drivers have to understand that every action they take reflects back on the organization because of that. When I thanked him for making such an effort to get back to me on the issue and that I appreciated his concern for the perception created he told me that it would be hypocritcal of him to not care about the concerns of the public since their job was to serve the public! Imagine that!!

I was amazed...and impressed that he actually "got it." If I ever need to be whisked away in an ambulance, I'll request his ambulances. Hahaha. Like I'll have a chance to special request emergency transportation!!

posted by Steph @ 2:46 PM