Hi.
You might remember me from a few weeks ago. I was very stressed out about surgery, my husband returning to school and what it would mean for his current job and our only income at the moment. I was also stressed about getting my son seen and evaluated for ADHD. I vaguely remember other things like wanting an iPad 2, which I still don't have.
Today I am very tired. It has already been 2 weeks since surgery, which seems to have gone well. My husband took off some days from work, which we can't actually afford, but was really needed. I am able to move again, play with my kids and off pain medication. That is not why I am tired. I am tired, I am wondering what my relationship is with my family, should I have more of a relationship with them or is what I got far too much?
I know everyone has family issues. Everyone has people with issues, both mental mostly medical and those that are from bad choices or behavior. It seems lately my family is troubled. If you are my family and your reading this then you know about recent arrests, general association with the wrong crowds, bad relationships and I mean violent in every way, bad health, preventable deaths, financial troubles, mostly all the bad things.
So why so tired? A personal crisis and a set of family crisis. Monday was a rather bad day. But it all started last week. Last week an older, but still young man in my family past away and was buried on Saturday. Saturday night a pair of my cousins went for a ride in a stolen car. One hangs on for life the other is expected to live, recover fully, I don't know. It is hard being alienated from my family because I found out about the crisis with my cousins Monday evening about 5pm. That alone was rough, be ware of family messages posted on Facebook, they may bring awful news. So the personal cries also happened just before 5pm. My husbands work van broke down. He is the owner of the vehicle and no the person he works for does not care that the van does not work, he is not going to help us fix it or provide a temporary work vehicle, so now my husband can't work.
I stayed at the hospital a while Monday night, not knowing what was happening or what my role should be I sat in the ICU waiting room. It was reported that I was the calmest person there. Not certain that was true. I think I might have been the most distracted there, possibly that was confused for calmness. I returned home late last night and for the fourth night in a row had trouble going to sleep. My eyes are puffy, dry, heavy, dull, lifeless. My reaction time is no existent. I remembered to take my baby to his wellness doctors appointment this morning, though we were late and the doc was annoyed. I stopped by the hospital since I was kinda close after the doc appointment, and found that small children are not welcome in ICU. I waited around awhile, but I did not find any cousins or aunts in the waiting room this time so I did not see my cousins though I want too. I hear Star is doing better, but has not been told her brother is in bad shape. And he was when I saw him late last night. He seemed too young to be so gravely injured, yet strangely did not seem to have more then a mere scratch on his arm.
I tried to sleep this afternoon when I returned. My husband is rather upset and stressed about the work vehicle issue. I can't get more then a few harsh words out of him today. I tried a few minutes ago to start a spaghetti dinner and was told he did not want spaghetti. I asked about some drumsticks, which I was told to never buy again because he can't tell if they are cooked all the way. So I stopped making the dinner and asked what he wanted but never got an answer. I started writing this. This made him angry. He started making the spaghetti dinner I was going to make after slamming around the dirty dishes.
So I am tired. Wonder if I will sleep finally. Wonder if I should be closer to my family, should they have my telephone number? Do I belong in an ICU waiting room or far away in my usually isolation? Just tired. My eyes are burning.
Showing posts with label Morality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Morality. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Soap Box on Individual Responsibility
So I am sitting on my couch. The TV is on and there is another commercial for an injury lawyer; then the news returns and there another story of someones stupidity, of some preventable injury or death. Everyday. While I have not traveled the world, I am certain theses things are not only American happenings. What I am about to say is going to be offensive to many people and someday I might wish I never wrote my opinion about how people have a duty to do the right thing, not that is not just a Scouting message. Yes, my kids do participate in Cub Scouts and I was briefly a Girl Scout, even selling yummy cookie.
Today I read an update to the death of a little boy due to tainted alcohol wipes. My heart hurts for the loss of these parents, they should not have had to go through the terrible heartache or the agonizing misery of filing a lawsuit against Triad Products. Their loss was enough. The terrible fact of how their son contracted a deadly bacterial infection would have been crushing enough for me, but they are doing the right thing by standing up and letting us know what terrible things this company has done. They are right to hold the company accountable in both the court of public opinion and the court of law.
The update to the story states that FDA inspectors knew about the issues this company had with sanitation, sterilization, orderly records, and maintenance of manufacturing equipment as far back as 2009. That looks really, really bad to say the least. Worse is that the government did not issue "official letters" or file paperwork to stop production of products. Yes, FDA has the authority to write you a formal letter saying you need to correct some issues for the safety and health of all mankind, but they did not. The government regulator at the FDA noted that the company promised to correct the known issues.
Of course the company did not correct the issues. If they did I would not have anything to write about right now. What happen? Corporate greed. At least that is my opinion that is what happened. Should we be surprised? If you say no we should not be surprised, I think you are wrong! Do you remember the corporate greed scandals of Enron, Arthur Anderson, Halliburton, Firestone Tires, World Com, or AIG; did we learn anything about individual responsibility during any of them? Certainly, in each case there was at least one person who knew about the atrocities and did absolutely nothing to stop it because it would look bad on a balance sheet. These people who wanted more money for themselves and their "investors" did not do the moral thing and it cost people lives, financial security and the trust of future generations.
Lets face it, if you go to Business School, management in particular, you are taught to maximize the bottom line and that if you fail to do it, there are 10 others waiting outside to take your job. Yes, Business Schools teach that. They teach us that business is ruthless, cut throat and full of gold and pretty spouses if we rise to the task. Of course your pretty spouse will leave you if you stop bring in the gold. At least that is what you are told will happen in business school. As a result of all this bad philosophy taught in Business School, managers do really bad things, immoral things, things not just Christianity says are wrong, but all religions I have ever learned about. Greed and Envy and Pride can be really terrible things if you let them.
So back to Triad Products.... Yes, the managers had a moral obligation to do the right thing. They had the responsibility to make certain its products were "sterile" and safe. After all that is why people and hospitals buy alcohol wipes labeled sterile. So the manager failed to do the moral thing, many times because he was concerned about the bottom line, the gold he takes home and the trouble of loosing a pretty spouse. Here's the thing he would not have lost all the gold or the wife if he had done the right thing.
Why did I label this a Soap Box on Individual responsibility? Because the manager is not the only person with the responsibility to do the right thing! After all, manufacturing plants still have lots of humans running around. Machines do lots of the work, absolutely! People are there to clean the facility, fix the machines when the break, the radiologist in charge of nuking the products to kill germs, the worker in charge of quality control and shipping manager who gets the final product out to you the consumer. That means that there were no less than 5 separate people who knew about problems with their products. The person in charge of sanitation should have know proper and safe methods for ensuring the products produced by Triad would not become contaminated with terrible things. The maintenance worker had the responsibility to stop manufacturing if the products were not sealed correctly or being labeled correctly by the machine. The radiologist in charge of nuking the products to kill the germs that could be on the product had the responsibility to know when they were using enough to kill germs and when they were using too much. Nuking products is actually common, most of the fruits and veggies we eat are nuked before they get to the stores to prevent deadly contamination. What responsibility did quality control have? Well a whole ton! They had the responsibility to make certain all the previous jobs were done using the best practices available 100% of the time! If they walked into the manufacturing plant and people were having a buffet on manufacturing floor, then they needed to stop it and sanitize it! If they walked into the manufacturing plant and noticed a machine was not operating properly, they had the responsibility to get it fixed and check the products to see if quality was affected by it. If they sampled their products and found issues with bacterias or viruses they had the responsibility to have the product trashed and they had to have the Radiologist make adjustments. Finally, the shipping manager had the responsibility to trash bad product and recover bad product that had already shipped. Each individual had the responsibility to say this in not right, let me do the right thing. And guess what?! If they had blown the proverbial whistle, they could not be fired or demoted or otherwise punished or intimidated, because we know lots of lawyers would like to take their case so they could cash in on punitive damages.
Now I must ask, knowing all those other people also had the responsibility as an individual to do the right thing; Is it the governments job to do the right thing for us? I say no. Yes, I think the government should have done more, but it is not their job to do the right thing. The government work is there for when we, as individuals repeatedly fail to do the moral thing, the right thing, to stop terrible preventable things from happening. We don't need more government regulations or regulators, we need more people doing the right thing.
Today I read an update to the death of a little boy due to tainted alcohol wipes. My heart hurts for the loss of these parents, they should not have had to go through the terrible heartache or the agonizing misery of filing a lawsuit against Triad Products. Their loss was enough. The terrible fact of how their son contracted a deadly bacterial infection would have been crushing enough for me, but they are doing the right thing by standing up and letting us know what terrible things this company has done. They are right to hold the company accountable in both the court of public opinion and the court of law.
The update to the story states that FDA inspectors knew about the issues this company had with sanitation, sterilization, orderly records, and maintenance of manufacturing equipment as far back as 2009. That looks really, really bad to say the least. Worse is that the government did not issue "official letters" or file paperwork to stop production of products. Yes, FDA has the authority to write you a formal letter saying you need to correct some issues for the safety and health of all mankind, but they did not. The government regulator at the FDA noted that the company promised to correct the known issues.
Of course the company did not correct the issues. If they did I would not have anything to write about right now. What happen? Corporate greed. At least that is my opinion that is what happened. Should we be surprised? If you say no we should not be surprised, I think you are wrong! Do you remember the corporate greed scandals of Enron, Arthur Anderson, Halliburton, Firestone Tires, World Com, or AIG; did we learn anything about individual responsibility during any of them? Certainly, in each case there was at least one person who knew about the atrocities and did absolutely nothing to stop it because it would look bad on a balance sheet. These people who wanted more money for themselves and their "investors" did not do the moral thing and it cost people lives, financial security and the trust of future generations.
Lets face it, if you go to Business School, management in particular, you are taught to maximize the bottom line and that if you fail to do it, there are 10 others waiting outside to take your job. Yes, Business Schools teach that. They teach us that business is ruthless, cut throat and full of gold and pretty spouses if we rise to the task. Of course your pretty spouse will leave you if you stop bring in the gold. At least that is what you are told will happen in business school. As a result of all this bad philosophy taught in Business School, managers do really bad things, immoral things, things not just Christianity says are wrong, but all religions I have ever learned about. Greed and Envy and Pride can be really terrible things if you let them.
So back to Triad Products.... Yes, the managers had a moral obligation to do the right thing. They had the responsibility to make certain its products were "sterile" and safe. After all that is why people and hospitals buy alcohol wipes labeled sterile. So the manager failed to do the moral thing, many times because he was concerned about the bottom line, the gold he takes home and the trouble of loosing a pretty spouse. Here's the thing he would not have lost all the gold or the wife if he had done the right thing.
Why did I label this a Soap Box on Individual responsibility? Because the manager is not the only person with the responsibility to do the right thing! After all, manufacturing plants still have lots of humans running around. Machines do lots of the work, absolutely! People are there to clean the facility, fix the machines when the break, the radiologist in charge of nuking the products to kill germs, the worker in charge of quality control and shipping manager who gets the final product out to you the consumer. That means that there were no less than 5 separate people who knew about problems with their products. The person in charge of sanitation should have know proper and safe methods for ensuring the products produced by Triad would not become contaminated with terrible things. The maintenance worker had the responsibility to stop manufacturing if the products were not sealed correctly or being labeled correctly by the machine. The radiologist in charge of nuking the products to kill the germs that could be on the product had the responsibility to know when they were using enough to kill germs and when they were using too much. Nuking products is actually common, most of the fruits and veggies we eat are nuked before they get to the stores to prevent deadly contamination. What responsibility did quality control have? Well a whole ton! They had the responsibility to make certain all the previous jobs were done using the best practices available 100% of the time! If they walked into the manufacturing plant and people were having a buffet on manufacturing floor, then they needed to stop it and sanitize it! If they walked into the manufacturing plant and noticed a machine was not operating properly, they had the responsibility to get it fixed and check the products to see if quality was affected by it. If they sampled their products and found issues with bacterias or viruses they had the responsibility to have the product trashed and they had to have the Radiologist make adjustments. Finally, the shipping manager had the responsibility to trash bad product and recover bad product that had already shipped. Each individual had the responsibility to say this in not right, let me do the right thing. And guess what?! If they had blown the proverbial whistle, they could not be fired or demoted or otherwise punished or intimidated, because we know lots of lawyers would like to take their case so they could cash in on punitive damages.
Now I must ask, knowing all those other people also had the responsibility as an individual to do the right thing; Is it the governments job to do the right thing for us? I say no. Yes, I think the government should have done more, but it is not their job to do the right thing. The government work is there for when we, as individuals repeatedly fail to do the moral thing, the right thing, to stop terrible preventable things from happening. We don't need more government regulations or regulators, we need more people doing the right thing.