There are still a few things that concern me these days, and I need to reflect on them out loud, so here I am again, taking up some of your valuable time, dear diary.
I need to know what the Lean senseis had to say about the fact that this province of 1.1 million people has to have three and a half major health administrations. We have the Health Quality Council, the Saskatchewan Association of Health Organizations, and then the Ministry of Health and the junior ministry of rural and remote health.
I don’t know exactly what all of these groups do, and I expect that’s deliberate on their part. I do know SAHO took $5.7 million of Sun Country’s $140 million last year and I’m wondering what Sun Country received in return other than a buffer between them and the ministry?
If the provincial government needs to cut back this year … well, just saying. Maybe the health ministry needs to start acting like sports leagues that implement salary caps to keep the crazy franchise owners from destroying themselves.
And while I’m on that topic, don’t you think our politicians are waaay too intense these days?
Maybe it’s because they are under such close scrutiny with all these social network types tracking them 24 hours a day as if they’re as important as Darian Durant or Kim Kardashian.
I recall when politicians were allowed to have a little fun and do a little vocal jousting with the opposition and the public critics. Now they have to be so politically correct they rarely have the opportunity to go off script and say anything sincere. Our premier comes close to being able to do a little off-the-cuff texting and tweeting and verbal exchanges, but the rest of the pack take on the deer-in-the-headlights look if they’re asked to comment on anything other than what they’re prepared for.
Third concern.
Do you think our cash register operators these days could make change if their registers didn’t tell them what they needed to give back to the customer?
Counting back at the cash register has become a lost art. It’s not the register operator who is lacking, after all, they also have to accommodate access and credit cards as well as coupon manipulations and all kinds of other check out gyrations these days. I do not long for my good old days behind a check out counter or cash register. Besides, I think we, the panting public, are getting pretty rude and I don’t know why. We tend to lose that mean streak over the holiday season, but we soon return to true form in mid-January. I blame the weather and lack of daylight hours. But really, we need to show a little more respect for one another. Hey, I had an encounter with a cheerful tow-truck operator a couple of weeks ago that turned my rather glum worldly outlook and woe is me frame of mind into a “hey, life’s kinda alright and aren’t we all a little bit cranky or at least a little bit crazy at times,” moment. I know I’m a self-described cynic because that’s the job, but I was reminded that we’re not required to be in that mode 24/7 and a few smiles and bad jokes can go a long way when you share them.
So I guess the message today is … don’t worry about anger management, just quit giving others a reason to be angry.
