An End of the Pavement Production

At dinner Tuesday night, Myra announces, “If you listen to the words close enough, all songs are about love.”

“Really?” we ask.

“Sure,” she replies, and starts listing off songs ranging from “I Put a Spell on You,” by Jay Hawkins, to “Purple Haze,” by Jimi Hendrix to “Heart Attack,” by Demi Lovato.  Robert and I spend a few minutes calling out song titles, only to have Myra prove her theory.  We decided that even “Look Down” from Les Mis qualifies, because Valjean loved his family and didn’t want his nephew to starve, so he stole some bread and ended up a prisoner.

Robert leans forward and asks Myra, “So why do you think that is?”

“Because love is the secret of life,” is Myra’s instant response.

Actually, reverse that.  At work yesterday, the kudos came before things devolved straight into silliness.

“Thanks Samantha.  Your competence and professionalism is always appreciated.   John.”

A bit of background:  last week before the New  Year’s holiday, one of the (many) projects I was working on was a private-money loan being funded by multiple lenders to a local business.  While all loans are a complex process, when you add multiple lenders to the mix the complexity levels up.  This was not particularly difficult loan – just a matter of getting all the pieces to fit together, being prepared, and then waiting for everyone else to do their part.

Things came together earlier than originally planned, and I was able to get the documents recorded with the County Auditor, the delinquent taxes paid before month-end, and the underlying lender paid off Thursday before the holiday weekend began, but just barely.  There was no time to finalize the loan or get the original documents sent out to the long-term escrow holder, so first thing Monday, that’s what I did.  As is my habit, I updated the lenders with signed-around copies of the loan documents, along with my instructions to the escrow company.  SOP as far as I was concerned.

Shortly after closing my file and moving on to the next project on my desk, I receive the message quoted above.

You know, a simple sentence of acknowledgment now and then is all I need to keep going sometimes.  I’m very lucky in that I often get positive feedback from my boss; but when the clients notice, that really generates the warm-fuzzies for me.

But lest I get too big a head about being so professional and competent, the universe reminds me that I’m still me, no matter how hard I try to be Mrs. Perfect.

My comeuppance occurred mid-afternoon yesterday, when my boss buzzed me to ask me to  get a letter out for him.  This was to accompany a package being sent FedEx so there was a small time-crunch to prepare the letter before the courier picked up.  No problem.  I inserted the dictation tape into my transcriber and I swear this is what he said:

“This is a letter to John Doe, Patient Processing Specialist, at XYZ Company in Texas…”

Now even before I listened to the text of the message to know what the subject of the letter was, I knew that “Patient Processing Specialist” was probably not this fellow’s job title.  But rewinding and listening  several more times didn’t change the words my brain was registering.

Since by then Boss-man was on the phone and I couldn’t just ask him what he actually said, I finished the letter, marked it draft, highlighted the suspect address line, and returned it to his in-box.  Knowing there was a deadline looming to finalize the letter, as soon as I saw he’d hung up the phone, I checked in to get his edits on the letter.

He read the letter and laughed.  The recipient of the letter is a Document Processing Specialist.  Which made perfect sense given the context, even though I’ve never before encountered the title (but Texas – they do everything a bit different there).

However, as is probably true for all writers, everything is story-fodder.  I now find myself compelled to find a use for a Patient Processing Specialist in one of my novels.  Feel free to co-opt this prompt yourself, if you can find a use for it.