Skip to main content

flies in the ointment

Ecclesiastes 10:1 (ESV)

Dead flies make the perfumer's ointment give off a stench;
so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor.

Side Note: The KJV translates perfumer as "apothecary", which can also mean pharmacist. Growing up I thought this passage was referring to bugs in your medicine. 

Yesterday toward the end of my work day I received a phone call that made my heart drop to the pits of my stomach. One of my precincts (I oversee 8 polling places) had an irate voter that was refusing to leave the premises and I needed to get to that place as quickly as possible. Thankfully the phone call came (as I was pulling in the parking lot) that the voter had finally left. I headed back to finish the assessments I was doing when the call came, but my heart was hurting for my workers. No one likes to deal with an irate person, especially at the end of a very long day. And when that person is irate over something errant and irrational, it only makes it worse.

So imagine my surprise when I received a call back from that precinct saying the voter had returned, after closing, and apologized to all the workers. He had gone home and re-read the newspaper article where he had gotten his "facts" and realized He had misread the paper!
Despite the absurdity of it all and the fear/horror as well as frustration those poll workers faced, I was a little bit impressed the guy came back to apologize. That is not something we see very often. Actually, in eight years of working elections, I don't think that's ever happened. While this the first situation I've ever had escalate to the point we were one step away from calling the police, there are countless situations where we've listened to people fuss or rant over things that are incorrect or that we have no control over. I wouldn't wish yesterday's scenario on any poll worker. But it was quite pleasant after hearing "the voter came back as we were closing the polls" to hear the soothing words "he went home and read the paper, realized he was wrong, and was coming back to apologize."

While that dude's choice of cologne still stinks, at least now there's a whiff of pleasantness about him.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

things we do for love

Saturday we had a baby shower for Bobby's niece. As I was making the mints, Bobby asked what else was on the menu. After I recited off the litany of items, he responded with "No peanut butter?! This shower is for Hannah! What's she going to eat?" (Hannah has had stomach problems over the years and has been unable to tolerate many foods, but peanut butter has been her staple.) Despite my assurances that she would enjoy the foods we were having, he was adamant that I needed to make peanut butter & jelly sandwiches for the shower. Even though I protested that NOBODY took that to a shower, he persisted, and informed me I could make them dainty with my little cutter. And so I did. To my surprise all but 3 were eaten. Who'd a thunk it?
9 comments
Read more

get your house in order

My grandmothers were very clean people. My mother thoroughly enjoys cleaning, though she doesn't quite hit the same level my grandmothers were on. I don't enjoy cleaning, but I do like things to be clean. I've almost given up on neatness. One thing that they all instilled in me is the crazy concept that your house must be in order before you go somewhere big - like a vacation or something. After all, you could die in a car crash or have to go to the hospital, and then people would go into your house and find it in a terrible mess. Who wants to be remembered by that? So up until this past year, I would sometimes be up almost all night not only trying to get things packed up, but also trying to totally clean house as well. Or should I say, make the house presentable? The Chinese had a horrible superstition that my mother and grandparents would have enjoyed. Spring Festival (the Chinese New Year based on the lunar calendar) required EVERYTHING to be cleaned top to
6 comments
Read more

Wait...it's almost March?!?

 10 more months 'til Christmas. This last month has been an absolute blur. Cleaning at Mrs. Bryan's house, cleaning at our house, lots of thinking and brainstorming and rearranging, appointments upon appointments, sinus infection/allergies, Bobby's surgery, meeting with surgeon and finally agreeing to future outpatient surgery for me, ongoing updates from my parents, garden tilled and snow peas, potatoes and beets planted (and yes I left several rows empty between the potatoes and beets for something else to go later as a buffer), chickens are laying, we may have a broody hen..in FEBRUARY!!!, we have two roosters that need to disappear, lots of family have been in from out of town to assist with the sorting and cleaning at Mrs. Bryan's house, and somewhere in the midst of it all I've found time to pay bills and catch up on a few emails. While I no longer feel like our house is a disaster zone, it is still overwhelming. Years ago a friend posted a quote by Martin Lut
Post a Comment
Read more