Life Off-Label

Whatever it is you do.

I know that in some fields it’s easier to do than others. It’s easy for me to see that if I make a mistake in a pharmacy, the consequences could be detrimental, and even life-threatening. And that’s what will always keep me on my toes. But for some, say the person working in a call center or the person standing at a cash register day in and day out, it’s not always easy to see why your job matters so much and who it makes an impact on.

But I want to remind you that no matter how insignificant you may feel, the consequences of every action you take ripple out and will ultimately impact someone. You may not notice it, but it does.

The other day, I was driving from Oklahoma City to Fort Worth, a three-hour drive that I’ve taken many times before, but this particular time my car battery light came on, my check engine light came on, and my car started slowing down while I was driving on the highway. I’ll later find out that one of my belts broke, but at the time I knew I was in a situation where my car would no longer be drivable in a few seconds. I pulled over to the side of the road, and called Allstate’s Roadside Assistance for a tow truck. While on the phone, the lady on the other line (we’ll call her Betty) called a towing company for me, gave me the phone number to call them in case I needed it, and told me I should expect them within an hour.

So, there I sat. An hour passes and I don’t see a tow truck, but I give them the benefit of the doubt. After about an hour and a half, I call the towing company to confirm someone is on the way and make sure they didn’t get lost, and they inform me that Betty hadn’t faxed them any of my information, so they didn’t know where to get me. I’d have to call Allstate back to make sure the information gets sent to them, and I gave the towing company my location so someone could be on their way. I ended up waiting a total of three hours for a tow truck thanks to Betty’s mistake. An already stressful situation was made a lot worse, especially considering it was the middle of a summer day in the south and, as my luck would have it, one of the few times I didn’t have a bottle of water with me.

I try not to blame Betty too much. I get that honest mistakes happen. I also get that it’s hard for someone to feel a lot of sympathy for a mere voice on the other end of a phone call while sitting in a cubicle, making about $10 an hour, with problems of their own in life to deal with. But I wish more of the Betty’s of the world realized that the care they put into their job is just as important as the care a surgeon or scientist puts into theirs. Had the engineer who designed my car parts done a better job the situation could have been avoided altogether. Had the towing company called Allstate right away when they didn’t receive a fax, I could have been helped sooner. Had the sheriff who drove right by made a quick stop to make sure I was okay, I wouldn’t have felt so worried about sitting there for so long in the heat. We all rely on each other, and it’s important for all of us not to forget that.