Instead, I went to the doctor

Yesterday afternoon our Empirical call center held what they call an “All Fingers” meeting.  This is similar to all-hands meeting, only smaller.  Like an all-hands, we get a combination of announcements, pep-rallying, silly contests, awards, and—just occasionally—useful and important information.  Meetings like this always give me the itch; I suffer them only because I have to.

As it fell out, yesterday I had an excuse not to go.  I’d made an appointment weeks ago to see my allergist, and I sure wasn’t going to cancel that.  I needed to see him to get my allergy and asthma prescriptions reviewed and renewed.  He had good news:  my lung function has improved to 81% of normal, so he reduced my Advair dose, altogether cut out the Singulair that didn’t appear to be doing a thing for my polyps, added in Nasonex to see whether it would help the nose stuph.  The reduced Advair dose is also good financially, ’cos it’s the single most expensive medication I have, a Stage III formulary member that costs me $68 per refill.  He also sent me off with lots of samples, so between what he gave me and what my family doctor gave me I don’t to refill Advair for almost a year, and it’ll be several months before I have to fill the albuterol rescue inhaler.

Meanwhile, the All Fingers went on my absence.  I didn’t worry over it.  Any REALLY important announcements would be repeated in follow-up email the next day.

This morning a couple of co-workers came up and started congratulating me on the award I got at the meeting.  Waitaminnit—what award?  What are they talking about?  One of them said “oh.” and both fell silent, looking embarrassed.  Finally someone else explained that the division’s senior manager had “presented” me with a customer service award at the meeting.

This was the first I’d heard I was even being considered for an award.  A little later I IM’d my team leader to ask WTH these guys had been talking about and he said, “Oh, well you got a Silver Star award.  I thought you knew.”  I told him I was always the last to know, and nobody ever told me anything.

This afternoon one of the managers came by and gave me the formal award package, including a suitable-for-framing citation (with my name misspelled*), an antiqued-silver star lapel pin to wear on my employee badge along with the bronze star I’d gotten two years ago, and $95 worth of American Express gift cheques (similar to traveler’s cheques)!  Like traveler’s cheques, these can be used anyplace that takes American Express, so it’s a rather more generous and useful present than a mall gift card, for example.  I’m thinking about what I’d like to do with them.  If I can at all, I want to use them as a proper present rather than having to drop them into household expenses.

*  I went over to see the senior manager’s admininstrative assistant at break time this afternoon, and she fixed the spelling and reprinted the citation.

The bleu cheese stove bolt works clockwise.  Fnord.