And you thought Golden Corral was bad - part II

Read Part I here.  (You know you want to.)
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When the new manager of my grandma's retirement community said that whoever took the standing order for meal delivery should have contacted me when they decided there would be no more standing orders, I said, "You and your wife put the standing order in--," and he yelled, "NO WE DIDN'T!"  I was done.  So I just said, "I'm filing a complaint against you with your company. In the 9 months my grandma has lived there, I have never been treated like this by anyone." And he yelled, "You know what?! GO AHEAD!" And then he hung up on me.

Tree Guy, Nature Boy and friend, and I were on our way to dinner and a movie, but it was 7pm and my grandma hadn't eaten, so we stopped and got her some food on the way.  I took it to her room, then met my mom and husband in the managers' office to take care of bidness, because my grandma needs to eat!  And the huge amount of money she pays them each month includes all 3 meals every day!

And this is when it REALLY got nasty.

Mr. Anger Management was out of the office, so we went in to talk to his wife.  She started off by saying she hadn't been in the office during my phone call with her husband, so she wasn't a part of it.  (I'd heard her feeding her husband lines during the phone call, so I knew she was lying.)  I started explaining what happened with the meal mix-ups to make sure we were all on the same page.  When I got to the part about her husband yelling, she butted in to say, "Well, I could hear YOU from all the way across the room, so..."  My mom said, "Wait.  I thought you weren't IN the office at the time."  She didn't like being caught in a lie. 

(And I DID raise my voice--to tell the manager not to yell at me.)

But I wanted to get to the point, so I said, "The bottom line is that she didn't get her meals yesterday.  Your husband told me he'd been checking and--."  And she bitchily said, "AND WHOSE FAULT IS THAT, MISSY?!" 

My mom (GC Brawler herself), in her best white-woman-with-soul voice, said, "Oh no!  You do NOT condescend to any of us!"  No yelling.  Just some assertive boundary-setting.  With a Clint Eastwood glare.

So the woman threatened to call the police.  And we were like, please DO.  (Knowing full well that complaints about poor service do not constitute a crime.)

She called 911 and told the dispatcher that we wouldn't get out of her office.  My mom and I said in unison, "You never asked us to!"  We left the office at that point and took a seat in the lobby, waiting patiently for the Po-Po.


Sometimes you've just got to stop and ponder the ridiculousness of certain situations.  Let's. 


Absurd Fact #1:  A legitimate complaint about a meal delivery mix-up for an 86-year-old woman with terminal cancer at a retirement community somehow turned into a 911 emergency call for a domestic disturbance.  Because apparently this manager finds service complaints so threatening to her person that she needs someone with a background in criminal justice involved.  And the thing is, there were no threats, much less actual violence.  (If we're going to get the cops involved, we should have at least got a couple of punches in.  I'm just saying.)

Absurd Fact #2:  Someone called the cops on me and my mom. 

So we had this discussion:

Mom:  Well, I guess we're the first mother/daughter duo to get the cops called on us.

Me:  Nah, I'm sure there are plenty of Jerry Springer guests who've had that happen.

Mom:  No, I mean in our family.

Me (thinking for a minute):  Yeah, I think you're right.   

The crazy thing is that all of this could have been avoided had the managers said, "There must have been some miscommunication.  We'll fix it."  Instead, they yelled, hung up, and prevented us from making a new food plan for my grandma by calling the police instead of having a rational conversation to work things out.

In summation, these managers are nuts.

Not one, not two, but THREE police cars pulled up, y'all!  It was like The Dukes of Hazzard up in there! Only my mom and I couldn't jump in the windows of the getaway car (which happened to be Shrinky Dink's van) because Tree Guy, Nature Boy, and Nature Boy's friend had already taken off in it to go to dinner.  (Which makes sense.  Because the possibility of jail time for me and my mom shouldn't interfere with a good meal.) 

I met the first officer out front and calmly told him my side of the story.  He was understanding and told us that regardless if it's independent living or not, since they agreed to deliver the meals to her room, it's still on them if they changed things and didn't notify us.  (Sounds reasonable to me!)  Then he went inside to get the manager's side of the story.  When he came out he told us that our best bet is to call the parent company of the retirement community and file a complaint.  He said we can also call Adult Protective Services, but that because the meal delivery was an oral agreement, and the retirement community doesn't have any documentation about it, it's likely we couldn't prove anything.

The End.  He didn't ask for our names, our numbers, or for ID. 

All that drama just to get a couple meals delivered each day.  Those managers are just lucky we can't afford bail money right now.  Of course, I already have this poster ready for these situations...

On the upside, I haven't paid my grandma's rent yet this month.  We're paid up until the 7th.  Best believe we're moving Meemaw out of that mofo as soon as we can, rental contract be damned. 


P.S.  Man, this blog has totally ruined my political aspirations.