Gratitude

I feel good about myself when I'm donating blood and platelets, so it's an internal motivator, but boy oh boy did that internal motivation suffer a setback this afternoon at my local American Red Cross donation center. I felt like a training dummy that newbie phlebotomists practiced on; the whole team of Red Cross workers there came to take a look at my arm and assess why the needle wasn't operating correctly, which meant every single time a different person had to check out the needle, move it either backwards (sliding it out of my arm) or worse, forwards (INTO my arm) to see if it was actually in the vein or not. It didn't necessarily hurt as much as when the needle went in because they didn't have to break the skin again, but imagine someone just moving a needle around in your arm.....SEVEN TIMES!! It's uncomfortable and I'm in constant distress of whether it will infiltrate, and I could feel my arm bruising up for later. They kept asking me, "are you OK?" and I was conflicted whether to tough it out or give the honest response (which sounds a bit like a wimp but o well) of, no I don't really appreciate having my arm be used as a pin-up toy for you guys to do experiments on, why don't you just pull out the needle and go back in this time? All this would be OK if the phlebtomists (hard word to spell by the way, and MJ doesn't want me to call them nurses because they're not really nurses) were apologetic and soothing and feeling like they were on my side, but they made me feel like I was the problem! I had been there 20 times previously and this had never happened! It's not my vein's problem! The first phlebotomist who did the insertion of the needle was so embarrassed about the situation she just went away, didn't apologize, and never made eye contact with me after that, which made it worse. I feel like the protocol should be to own the fact that this was abnormal and at least somewhat of a screw-up on their part, and just make me feel better about it. Nope; no customer service, when the needle finally operated normally they just let me sit there and went off into the corner to talk amongst themselves and be on their phones. I had wanted a blanket in the middle of the donation because platelets can make me feel cold, but no one was even around to check if I wanted one, like I was some sort of pariah at this point. I got angrier and angrier, and to top it all off at the end after letting me down and mercifully taking the needle out of my collaped vein in my right arm, nobody even said thank you for my donation when I went to the recovery area to get snacks......they just talked amongst themselves like I was an extraneous person and they had much more important things to talk about. Maybe I'm whining a lot, maybe I'm getting older and becoming more crochety, but it sure seems like gratitude is lacking in even the most basic situations. I am showing my gratitude to the world by donating blood; I'm not getting anything out of it, the free snacks and free T-shirt (sometimes) isn't enough to compensate me for my time and energy getting there! I'm a father to a 4.5 month-old angel of a baby and I'm carving time out of my free time to give Red Cross their most valuable resource, platelets, meanwhile jeoparding my pain levels and the safety of my arm while I could stay at home doing almost anything else, yet all I get are cold shoulders and nonapologetic glances like I don't exist, and acting like I'm the problem. It's a reflection on most of society too, at least from what I see; there are definitely some employees who are good at customer service and customer relations, but without great incentive to be nice to people I guess the Red Cross workers don't really care to show any gratitude. Even the Subway guys from Nepal at the bottom of my building greet me by name and crack a smile! Those "sandwich artists" don't get paid much to do that job yet they understand that it doesn't hurt to be nice and that the customer likes to be treated nicely. What is so hard about that to understand? On the flip side, now maybe I should show some gratitude at all the other times I've gone and been treated decently... it's not always like that, so I should cherish the times there's a good conversation, the employee actually looks like they care about my well-being, etc....