Thursday, December 3, 2009

Those aren't pillows!!

The other night, just because the times they are a-changin', we went to the large hall at the Sheraton in Towson to hear a presentation about our doctor. We happen to have a really good, fair, honest, learned, patient and well-trained doctor in Dr DeLoskey, and it was with some trepidation that we went to the meeting, because it was about a change in his practice. We were afraid that he was going to switch over to one of those boutique practices where you pay an annual retainer to the doc for the right to be one of his few patients, and then you have greater access, more thorough exams and visits, and other benefits. Nice, if you're Bill Gates, which I clearly am not. And that's how we wound up with Dr DeLoskey, when our previous doctor went to that system. Turned out that Dr D is going for a modified version of that plan; you can go for the big deal or stay one of his regular patients. I told you the man was fair, didn't I? So that's not even what I wanted to write about.

The doctor has hooked up with a company that arranges for practices of this kind. Not a bad idea; why should he add business management to his daily list of chores, the rest of which tend to be more in the medical end of things? But the people who accompanied him to the dais, and the man who runs the company and spoke at great length about the virtues of this plan, that's what is on my mind.

I know that this sort of thing would appeal to many people, going from town to town, every night another hotel room and every evening another hotel ballroom, selling products. This is a perfectly legitimate operation; I'm not saying there is anything even remotely shady about it all. But I thrive on consistency, and I am the King of all Homebodies. Not for me the travel, the highways, the hotels, the chain restaurants for three meals a day. And not to spend evenings here at the Lazy 'C' Ranch with Peggy, hooting at the news, hollering at the ballgames, having fun at dinner, hoofing around the neighborhood, would be too big a price to pay for that sort of work.

If you can do it and you like it and it's congruent with your life, it's all yours! Not putting it down. I just couldn't do it. No Del Griffith, I.

1 comment:

Ralph said...

I had a couple of jobs loke that very early in my Peace Corps career, in my 20s. I was a recruiter for about 8 months, which job entailed going from college campus to college in the Carolins, Kentucky and Tennessee for a week at a time. I came "home" Friday afternoons for the weekend, when I could do laundry and get ready for the next trip. The other job was running "stagings," the 3-day orientation sessions for trainees just prior to their departure. They were held in major gatewway cities: Miami, DC, Philadelphia, San Francisco.

I enjoyed jobs for a total of about 2 years, then they got old. It's ideal for somebody who's young, relatively rootless, and healthy (lots of rich restaurant food and tons o' booze--that's the fun part of being on the road) and I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. But I sure wouldn't do it again, either.