When the bow breaks…

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . February 2, 2012 . 6:08PM

A couple of close friends of mine have recently had a baby. I’ve mentioned April repeatedly in this blog and she and her husband Chris have a new baby girl who is just the most beautiful and cool little girl out there! It was a pure joy for their friends and family to watch April grow and Chris get happier by the day with excitement and love for this child. As the day neared, friends and family became anxious and none of us could wait to meet her.

She came and is wonderful and beautiful, sugar and spice and everything nice and just a little bit of spicy tortilla, because she wouldn’t be part of the group if she weren’t a little feisty, right? It’s easy to adore her and, for the most part, April’s pregnancy and labor went beautifully. Mom and baby are fine, Daddy is beaming and everything is happy. They are adjusting well to their new situation and those of us who waited for them to become a family can feel the love and watch them glow as they grow in their new life together.

However, sometimes challenges arise that threaten the happiness. They often do and they often will when you have a child. Some of them are under your control and some are not. Something has come up that April and Chris prepared for, but due to negligence, has fallen out of their hands. I want to draw your attention to Chris’s post where he explains this fully, but Baptist Hospital in Nashville, where they gave birth, is trying to steal from them. Yes, those are harsh words. This is a harsh situation. See, a deal is a deal and April and Chris made a deal with the hospital to pay them money for the labor and delivery up front. The hospital kept their money for 2 months prior to the birth of their child and then the hospital was supposed to offer them a discount on that labor and delivery. It is to ensure the hospital is paid in a timely manner and that if something were to happen to April and the baby prior to that date that they would still get some of their fees.

Again, this was a deal that they make with perspective parents as an incentive to give birth in their hospital and birthing babies is a lucrative practice. In a city like Nashville where there are 2 or 3 hospitals in a ten mile radius, where you give birth is important. You go to the place that you trust to take care of not only your child, but also mama and daddy. My understanding is that the care Chris, April and sweetpea received was wonderful while they were in the hospital. It is the shoddy way they are being treated now that is unfair and wrong.

The gist of the story is that April had false labor and instead of applying the money she had already paid to her labor and delivery and giving her the discount on that, which was the DEAL, which is what she had ALREADY PAID FOR, they put the money paid onto her bill for that evening. Now, the way I see it, the bill for the labor and delivery should already have been generated and marked PAID with that money and anything extra should have been billed later. If something happened and April did not give birth, then they would need to refund the money. It’s that simple. What is happening now is that Baptist is seeing a way to milk two young parents out of much needed funds and this is not just wrong, it’s bad business.

What I am asking from all of you is for your support for these two as well as what can they do in this situation? Can they report them to the better business bureau? Who should they talk to regarding this? Do they need a lawyer? What are their options? Any support you can offer would be greatly appreciated. If you have time to go read Chris’s blog and offer him support there, I know he and April would appreciate it so much.

What Baptist Hospital in Nashville is doing is not ok. A deal is a deal and you get what you PAY for, not what someone else decides you get. What awful customer service!

10-year old Ashlynn Conner commits suicide

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . November 14, 2011 . 5:40PM

This is my kneejerk reaction, so I don’t know if this will be a well-thought out post that elicits the response of “thank you and I appreciate what you wrote.” I am ok with this. Right now, I keep repeating to myself, and over and over, “This is not ok. This is not ok. This is not ok.” I’m angry and no, this is not ok.

My son, AJ, is 10 years old. He is in the fifth grade.

Ashlynn Conner was 10 years old and in the fifth grade. Ashlynn’s mother reported that, last Thursday, Ashlynn came home from school and asked to be placed in homeschool because other children called her fat, a slut and bullied her constantly. Ashlynn’s mother declined, as most mother’s I know would. Unlike most mothers I know, she did not press the issue further. The following morning, Ashlynn’s sister found her hanging from a scarf in her closet.

I’m about to get judgmental and self-righteously angry. If that kind of behavior bothers you or you want to play the “no blame” game where the lives of children are concerned because the people who knew her are being punished enough right now, you should probably stop reading.

Ashlynn’s mother, Stacy, notes that Ashlynn had come home crying from school two weeks ago because kids were taunting her. She states that she “thought her kids were strong kids” implying that kids that can’t handle bullying are weak and that her own daughter, who committed suicide, wasn’t strong because she couldn’t handle what was coming at her because Stacy’s “guidance” should have been stronger than the constant barrage of nastiness coming at her at school. I want to challenge that statement with perhaps her daughter didn’t feel supported in any environment.

Stacy noted that kids both at school and in their neighborhood bullied Ashlynn and called her ugly and she hopes that Ashlynn’s story will prevent other kids from being bullied. What stopped this mother from preventing her own child from being bullied? What allowed her to step back and let kids in the neighborhood and in her school overtake adult sensibilities and prevent her from protecting her child in her learning environment, at the very least? How does allowing the death of her child to protect others absolve her from how very little she did to protect her child?

I understand Stacy is hurting. Never, in anything she tells the press, did anything she say indicate to me that she took any measure to protect her child. It takes a lot for a child to come to a parent begging to be removed from a school environment. I don’t pretend I know what kind of child Ashlynn Conner was. I don’t know if she was a dramatic child who overemphasized everything, but I highly doubt that there were no signs that this child was struggling, especially considering her mother admitted to them. There are national laws preventing bullying in school systems. Where was this child’s teacher? Where was this child’s school staff? Where was the communication between them and the parent? You can try to justify to me that a teacher has 30 students, but not every teacher in this child’s day had no time to notice what was going on if she was being called “fat,” “ugly,” and a “slut.”

Someone explain this to me, because I don’t understand why no one is being called on the inattention to her cries for help or the inaction by any adult in the life of this 10-year old child. On a personal note, my son left his last school, on the last day of school, with his school tshirt covered in black marker thanks to two bullies in his class. I immediately contacted his principal and informed him that the teacher was notified and she did nothing. I also let him know that she’d been notified that these two children had continued to bully my son throughout the year and she’d promised me that she was “taking care of it.” I was aware of the school bullying policy and the national laws regarding bullying and that he was welcome to call me to discuss it. That teacher was not asked back to teach this year.

This year, my son started school and one of those two children was in his class and immediately started the same issues. I contacted the teacher and stated that I would like a conference with her regarding this. Within 30 minutes of school starting the following morning, both boys were in the guidance office and the issue was fixed. I can’t discuss why the other boy bullies, as it has to do with his own personal issues, but he does not bully my son or the other children at that school anymore. I stepped in when his guardian wouldn’t due to her inattention or unwillingness because I have to protect MY child.

Being an interactive parent is one of the most important parts of parenting. There is no excuse for not being an interactive parent. I have as many irons in the fire as anyone I know, and if you read this blog, you understand why. I am as involved in my son’s life as I can be, even on the days where I don’t get home until it’s time for him to go to bed.

Not every parent has the proper skills for parenting. To me, that is not a get out of jail free card when you fail your children. It does not mean that you use your story as a warning to other parents to absolve yourself. It means you buck up and take the punishment when you fail them so miserably that you’ve caused neglect through inaction or death through negligence. Where were the school counselors? Where was the mental health help here?

Absolutely, use Ashlynn Conner’s death as a warning to other parents, but don’t let this slip into just another story we forget next week. Use it to promote better policies and procedures in school. Force interaction between staff and parents. Use it to promote outreach to parents on protocol when their child is bullied and for the sake of all this is good, parents and teachers, bullying is ZERO TOLERANCE. Don’t toe the line with it. Little bullies grow up to be big bullies.

Edit: Another 10 year old girl, this one from North Carolina, has hanged herself. Jasmine McClain hanged herself on Monday after being bullied badly in school and, apparently, on Facebook (it’s possible that the sheriff just noticed kids coming forward to comment on the abuse on Facebook). She had left her school for a while to escape the bullying, but returned a month ago. Her mother says she was “unaware that Jasmine was so tormented.” Again, in this situation, I have no idea how someone claims to be unaware after removing her child from school and only allowing her back last month. I’ve already backed my opinions up in the comments, though, so please read those if you would like to fricassee me for being upset with the mother in this case. If parents and school administration are not prompted at this point to take a hard stand about bullying TODAY, AT THIS INSTANT, then we as a society need to force the issue. ENOUGH. No one is allowed to claim ignorance about this anymore. No one is allowed to blame others. We must address this and it must happen now.

Also, I saw this while I was reading last night and I thought to myself, “If this is what our special needs kids are dealing with we need to flush out our schools completely and start over.”

Edit: 11/20/11 Excellent information on what a parent whose child is being bullied can do. I found this on Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which is an amazing website. Please go look around on there. They have warning signs, a pledge to stop bullying, and a few other things that are tied to this specific topic. Plus, they are a good site to have on hand with the rate of suicide in our country.

Edit: 12/16/11 Jerome Sattler, considered a founding father where school psychology is considered because he writes the books that are considered the “bibles” for the profession, has done a great public presentation on bullying/cyber bullying that I highly recommend. You can find it here at the psychology page for San Diego State University where he is a Psychology Professor.

Occupy Wall Street is stupid and pointless

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . October 9, 2011 . 5:48PM

I think occupy wall street is stupid. That’s going to bother some of you. I am sorry for your hurt feelings but here is the truth as I perceive it: I am doing 2 internships, work a job that pays next to nothing for a lot of effort, am doing a dissertation, am a full-time student, a part-time blogger (which pays enough to keep the blog going and get a few products to review or give away), am a full-time wife and mom and have a husband who hasn’t had a job since April. So to tell me about struggling is futile.

I’ve been out of my mom’s house since I was 20 (12 years now) and I’ve never been on a government program or expected someone to pay me to do nothing. I am absolutely struggling but still working my butt off for a better life. THAT is what it means to live in this country. The hope and chance to make it despite the difficulty. It does not mean I get a handout because I was born in this country or because someone else makes more money than I do. I pay my taxes and I give when I can. Struggling is part of being an adult. Yes, I would like to see our economy change. No, it shouldn’t happen that we all get freebies because life is hard on the dimes of people that have more than we do while we do absolutely little to nothing to earn it.

If you haven’t seen the list of demands from the Occupy Wall Street people, you are in for a treat of epic proportion:

The first demand is that minimum wage be bumped up to $20 an hour. Gosh, we should pay the people who can’t get my order right at McDonald’s or those who didn’t bother finishing high school, the same amount of pay that an entry level engineer might make? You know, the person that had to pay for at least 4-6 years of college education? Uh-huh. Unicorns and rainbows, my friends.

Another demand? Let’s get rid of health insurance because it takes money away from those of us who are health professionals. As a health professional, I don’t personally take health insurance because of the nuances of health insurance and letting a bunch of people who have no business looking through your personal stuff look through it in order to “authorize” your visits to me. However, let’s consider having to pay every single visit out of pocket. In the Nashville area, a single doctor’s visit runs $125-$260 a pop. I can say this after being on crappy COBRA insurance for six months that is bleeding me dry and having to meet a $2500 deductible before they pay anything. My doctor’s visits? Not covered. This means that if I want to go, I pay out of pocket. You accept these demands and you understand that you are going to pay out the wazoo next time you have a respiratory infection. Some of you are prone to them. What if you get a bad rash that just won’t go away? A nasty case of poison ivy? Yep. $300 out the window PLUS whatever the steroid shot costs. See what I’m saying?

Free college education is another demand. Who is going to pay the people that teach you? As an adjunct, I’m not going to put the effort into teaching you for free. I don’t have time. And if everyone has a college degree, guess how much those are valued now? Guess how many people are going to sit their butts in college indefinitely and take out limitless student loans for living expenses?

All these requests for freebies and I’m wondering WHO IS GOING TO PAY FOR ANYTHING? Who is going to pay the $20/hour? The government? The government gets its money from the citizens who plan to sit on their butts doing nothing or getting a free education which will be paid for by…no one because no one will actually be working.

Outlaw all the debt? Awesome. I’m down with that, but how many companies will be going under because of that which means how many more of you will be out of jobs and how much more will our nation be in debt due to the government loans that won’t be paid back?

I’m already bored with this. Seriously, if you are buying into this, you don’t really understand how the system works. Feel free to read through the demands and keep insisting that this is the way to fix everything. Feel free to keep protesting a flawed system. I’ll protest that one with you. But how about using all that free time you’ve got and the brain power you are wasting by coming up with real solutions instead of something that is inherently flawed and would only zap what little resources we have left, eh?

Thanks.

One of the remaining tax-paying citizens who isn’t making much but is still trying

Edit: 11/14/11 I just wanted to note that Occupy Wall street protesters are now upset with Jay-Z, who was attempting to “support” them by creating “Occupy All Streets” T-shirts. However, he chose to do this by embracing capitalism and charging for the t-shirts and then making the large error of not giving any of the profits to Occupy Wall Street. The Occupy Wall Street Protesters saw this as a huge slap in the face and embraced capitalism and demanded some of the profits. Unfortunately, they did not earn them in any way other than by creating the idea, which they didn’t patent. Jay-Z pulled the t-shirts, didn’t give them any money, OWS chants “we are owed this” and the entitlement continues. In all fairness, Jay-Z probably should have given them some of the money. However, had he done it, it would have contributed to the entitled nature of the movement and would have left us without the irony of them demanding money from the capitalist venture. I can appreciate it.

Another Edit 11/19/11: This week, Occupy Nashville protestors invaded Donald Rumsfeld’s book tour dinner in Nashville calling him a war criminal and disrupting a $125/plate dinner. A friend of mine asked if I expected anything different from Occupy protestors and I said, “This is Nashville. We are better behaved folks than most and I EXPECT MANNERS. I expect people to follow the rules of peaceful protest or get out of my city. We are known for being a genial people and if you don’t want to follow the rules you can get out.” I think that what the Occupy Nashville people did by going into Donald Rumsfeld’s dinner and calling him and war criminal was tasteless and tacky. I am vehemently against the Occupy movement and I am disappointed in this kind of tactic. There is a difference between peaceful, non-violent protest and something like this and the things I’m seeing in Oakland and the other areas where things are getting violent. I’m disappointed in us as a people. This doesn’t feel like a freedom and power to the people thing…it feels like an entitlement and attention thing and I’m over it. See their triumphant self-congratulatory after-party here.

Verizon Wireless has poor customer service

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . June 25, 2011 . 10:07PM

I know you read my title and you are questioning me already. What? Verizon Wireless? But they have awesome customer service! Everyone loves them!

Not everyone. Some of us think Verizon Wireless can die in a fire.

It takes desperation to get to that stage of thinking, my friends. Let me explain my situation.

In February of 2010 I got the Droid Eris. I enjoyed that phone a lot. It was cute and man could that thing zing along. Unfortunately, my Eris had a sickness. When I would type on it, it would scroll to the left and stay there or mix and match my words. It did this on all models and it finally became a known issue and around Christmas of 2010, Verizon offered to replace my Eris with the Droid Incredible.

Keep in mind I pay money every month for an extended warranty to make sure that my phone works.

From the beginning of my time with the Droid Incredible, the phone would randomly reboot. I didn’t notice it but once or twice a week because my phone generally stayed on silent. When the random reboots started taking place in the middle of my phone calls, I decided to start seeing if there was a pattern to the problem. None was found. I left the ringer and notifications on and realized that the reboots were taking place at least once within every 12 hours. This was unacceptable to me and I called Verizon.

I explained that, in my job, it is important that I not inadvertently hang up on clients who may not be ready to deal with my hanging up on them and then not being able to call them right back because my phone is busy saying, “Droid!” and rebooting. They sent me a refurbished replacement Droid incredible. Within 12 hours the phone had rebooted again. I called Verizon back.

Over the course of week I spent over 10 hours on the phone with Verizon reps who generally put me in tears with their lack of understanding and down talking to me and went through 4 phones. Few of them made decent notes on my account and I was forced to re-explain my situation every single time I called. I also had to talk to two reps on every call (Tier 1 and then a Tech). I made 3 trips to Fed-Ex, a 20 minute drive, to either pick up phones or send them back. Finally, an understanding rep sent me a different model. Before I agreed to it, I asked her to look to see if there were any known issues with that phone. “Nope, there are none!” she cheerfully stated.

She cheerfully lied.

When I got the phone, a Samsung Fascinate, I was excited. No random reboots here. I was pleased. I loved all things about the phone and I thought that I could finally relax.

This was until I went to work the next day. I rely upon my GPS to get me everywhere. I use Waze to show me accidents or hazards on the way there and I also sometimes have to go places that I’m not familiar. I need my gps because I’m honestly not good with directions.

Tonight, I called Verizon and talked to Charles. Charles ran me through some fun tests and listened when I told him I’d tried everything I could find on the net (remember, I like this phone–I liked my Incredible, too) and checked his own known issues where he confirmed that “yep, this is unfixable unless you want to do things outside of what I can help you with.” Yep. I know. Rooting is the only known fix for this and I wasn’t about to void the warranty I pay for every month. He was very nice and offered to replace the phone with a different phone. I considered it, but the phone he wanted to replace the Samsung with also has known issues with rebooting. I am not wanting to get into that particular bag of nuts yet again. I politely declined and told him I’d try to stick this out a bit longer.

Two hours later, I went on my evening walk. For those that don’t know, I try to walk as often as I can and one of the things that helps me the most is my application for Cardiotrainer. What I didn’t realize is that because my GPS always says “still searching,” my Cardiotrainer wouldn’t log my workouts at all. This was a dealbreaker. I walked home in disgust and immediately called Verizon. Charles had politely offered so surely this wouldn’t be an issue for me, right?

Wrong. Remember how I told you how I was treated with the Incredible? Here we go again. “I’m sorry, since we sent you the Fascinate, I can’t send you another device.” What? Charles said you could and had your rep been honest in the first place, we could have avoided all of this in the first place. “I don’t know what Charles told you, but he didn’t indicate that you went through anything technical nor do his notes indicate that he offered to switch out your device.” Well, we’ve already noted that reps don’t write anything except the bad stuff in my file, so color me unsurprised. How about when I told her how I did a factory reset and, because I’m clearly a lying liar, she asked me in a smart tone, “Oh? How do you do a factory reset.” I said, “Really? I’ve done these with every phone I’ve had. I’m not new to this. I don’t have it in front of me so it’s going to be hard for me to remember the steps very well but…” and then I went on with the steps. Thank you, tech, for implying that I lie because clearly my new phone isn’t NEW ENOUGH for me. Even though I said at the beginning of the call if “someone could fix this problem in this particular phone I would like to stay with this phone.” Hey, you’re a clever cookie. You got me. I was so jonesing for something else that I didn’t do everything in my power to keep this cool freaking thing so I could get a phone that frankly is a smaller and a little heavier than I wanted.

Also color me unsurprised that yet another rep is willing to work with me on fixing a problem that I shouldn’t even be having.

Verizon, you place your reputation on excellence in coverage and customer service. I’ve received neither of those in my entirety in this contract. What I know is that you are wasting my time and your money by sending me defective devices and giving me the runaround when I call you on your behavior. Fix the devices, fix the problems and send me a phone that works and you won’t hear from me again.

What’s sad is that I’m a throwaway customer to them, even though I’ve been a loyal Verizon customer since 2003. 7 years is a long time. Longer than some marriages. After all the pushing you did on me last week to go ahead and upgrade early, can I just say that I am incredibly thankful that I was smarter than that. Why on earth would I re-upp a contract with a company who treats me in a way that puts me in tears after a phone conversation? Who feels like it’s ok to waste 2 hours of my time a night when I’m working on my dissertation with their nonsense instead of just doing the right thing?

Verizon, I’m done. You and I are breaking up. At the end of my contract, we’re through. I’d sooner get a pre-paid junk phone than deal with awful customer service and phones that don’t work. You’re no better than Sprint when dealing with your customers. You have a lot of growing up to do if you want to stay at the top. Just remember it doesn’t take much to fall.

You know what happens when you assume…

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . March 14, 2011 . 3:20PM

One of my least favorite sayings in the world is, “Well, you know what happens when you assume, right? You make an ____ out of you and me!” This immediately makes me feel like making the other person really sad. Typically, the conversation is initiated by someone who has been wronged by the other person in some way. For example:

Person A: “Hey, you were late. I assumed you’d be here at 1:45 because the play started at 2.”
Person B: (In snarky tone) “Well, that’s what you get for assuming. You know what happens when you assume right?”
Person A: (blank stare and extreme self-control stops them from making the other person a sad person)

Essentially, what has happened here is that Person B has abdicated responsibility for his or her actions based on a snarky response that he or she believes is clever but really shows exactly how very little person B knows or understands about him or herself as a person. It also indicates that they have no respect for the person they are talking to and that they consider themselves far more clever than they really are and have no excuse for what they’ve done.

Why do I say that they don’t understand their personhood? Well, from the time we are infants, we observe the world around us and based on those clues (assumptions!), we grow and develop. Without social learning we would have no idea of social customs, culture or social norms. How often do you see generally sane adults making faces at babies? Why do they do that? Because babies, who imitate, will do it back…and frankly, it’s just adorable. Infants pick up on the assumption that if they make those silly faces back at that crazy adult, the adult will reward them with a smile or a clap or a loud noise. It’s how we learn, people. Some of those assumptions that we’ve made, at some point or another, were facts. And, to be honest, the majority of the ones we make as adults are pretty truthful, as well. Not always, but a good majority of the time.

So, unless you plan on going around calling perfectly adorable babies ____es, please stop using that cliched phrase and start taking responsibility for your business.