They say that at this time of year Santa makes a list and checks it twice. Santa is a wise man with a better work ethic than most people in South Florida. If Santa lived here, “naughty” and “nice” would be reversed in a New York minute.
Living in South Florida requires that you get yourself into the mindset that nothing will ever be done correctly or on time, so you learn to adapt. For example, when you are seated in a nice restaurant you learn to do an inventory of flatware and napkins and salt shakers so you can alert the server before the food arrives. At the drive-thru, you do not leave the window until you check your order and taste the soda.
Issues with poor service or non-existent hospitality industries are facts of life in South Florida; I’m resigned to them and I generally deal with them with good-natured resignation; I mean it”s not like these people are curing cancer; rather, it’s the rampant incompetence in the professional class that really concerns me.
Case in point: I took my 89-year-old mom to the doctor because she had developed the alarming habit of fainting at inopportune times. Her doctor has always kind of irked me because he wears long-sleeved shirts with French cuffs. I mean really, what kind of doctor wears French cuffs to work? The doctor was looking at me, not my mom. “What do you think is causing her to faint?” he said.
I framed my answer carefully. “I was kind of hoping you could tell me,” I said. “Unless you think I should do a Google search.” The doctor was silent for a long moment. “That’s what I’ll probably do,” he finally said, as though wondering why I didn’t just do it myself in the first place and cut out the middleman. Annoyed, I was ready to pack up my mom and go, but she had fainted.
Doctors who are slightly south of “competent” still get to make life and death decisions, but even lesser mortals are often just a trifle lacking. When we recently refinanced our house, the loan officer at the bank was startlingly stupid; I am sure he began selling loans mainly because he lacked the intellectual acuity to sell copy machines and the personal integrity to sell used cars.
The loan officer sent us a “Good Faith Estimate,” which presented us a monthly mortgage payment consisting of five digits — before the decimal point. Apoplectic, I looked at the numbers, saw what he had done and called him. “You do realize,” I said, “that there is a huge difference between a 30-year mortgage and a 3-year mortgage?”
“I’ll have to check,” said the officer, “please hold.” After an inordinate time, he came back. “So I was off by a digit,” he sniffed.
I wish I could say these are isolated incidents but no such luck. I would be remiss to leave out the CPA who works with my middle sister and me. Apparently he has never worked with a set of siblings before and this confuses him, with predictably awful results, like when he used my check to the IRS to pay her taxes. “I don’t know why you don’t just file a joint return,” he said defensively. I tactfully reminded him that she is my sister and not my wife. “Really?” he said, as though this were not his fault, “you have the same last name.”
Likewise, could I ever forget the prominent downtown probate attorney who missed a deadline to file some vital paperwork with the state? “My assistant was on vacation that week,” he explained. He should partner with the dentist who forgot to offer me novocaine. “Didn’t I give you any?” he asked as he peeled me off the ceiling.
In South Florida, I’ve come to accept that you cannot take competence for granted, and among the professional classes my uneasy compromise is that I only deal with those who display the least amount of incompetence I can tolerate. And in the meantime I check everything. Twice.