“I’m here to see my mom”
There are three or four different receptionists staffing the front desk at work every day from seven am to seven pm. Often they can cover each other’s lunch breaks, but sometimes there’s only one on the desk. In that case someone from Marketing or Activities will cover it. If none of us are around, the Business Director or the head of Care will do it. Front desk helps my department out all the time, so I like to help them out too when I get the chance.
Front desk has to answer two kinds of phones and manage two separate alert systems. If the phone on the left rings, you answer with the name of your community, “Front Desk, _____ speaking, who are you here to visit?”
Sometimes people will answer “My mom,” especially if they’re from out of town or don’t visit often enough to know the policy. We can’t confirm if anybody lives here, and we can’t give out resident’s names. So they really do have to say who they’re here to visit, or we can’t let them in. It’s sort of funny, because it makes you sound jaded or world-weary about the idea of people visiting their mothers. Listen, buddy, I see a hundred of you guys a day. We’ve got a lot of mothers in the building, after all.
Since I only cover front desk once in a while, I don’t know as many relatives by sight as the regular front desk staff. Mostly people understand, but there are a few who get really upset about not being recognized.
I feel bad about that. You’ve got a lot going on, managing your parents’ lives, and now you’ve got to wait in front of a building you enter maybe three, four times a week until someone new can click you in.
Worst part is if you’re in a standoff like that and then someone else with a key fob walks in the door. Door’s open anyway, now. They don’t need you. Well, come on in anyhow, I guess.
Never happen again
Covering front desk, you get to run little errands more often. Once a month we have a foot doctor who sets up shop in the computer annex for the day. Residents will make appointments with him and come downstairs instead of having to travel all the way to his office.
Sometimes people forget they made an appointment, so he’ll stop by front desk and ask for one of us to go upstairs and get them. Last month it was Constance.1 Constance was a nun for over forty years.
“Oh, I’m glad you reminded me,” she said. “At least now I’ll have beautiful feet.”
“That’s worth having,” I said, “especially if you’re discalced.”
She turned her head to look at me, slow, and then she smiled, with real, mild but real, mild but definite, surprise and pleasure. Surprised and pleased she was, surprised and pleased to be surprised, pleased and suprised to be pleased.
Well, I couldn’t have been more pleased with myself, either. How often in life do you get a setup like that? A nun, on her way to a podiatry appointment — never happen again. Never get a setup for a joke like that again in my life, not if I live to be ninety-five, which she happens to be now.
I overheard Constance and Marisol in the elevator on Mother’s Day last year. Marisol asked if Constance had any plans for the rest of the day.
“No,” Constance said. “I don’t have a mother…I’m not a mother…Some of my nieces are pretty nice, though.”
How can I help you?
Like I said, if the phone on the left rings, you’ve got to buzz people in through the front door.
If the phone on the right rings, you just answer it regular: Name of the building, Front Desk, Name speaking, How can I help you?
I hope the phone doesn’t ring too much when I’m covering front desk, because unless they’re asking a question about medical transport or upcoming outings, I can’t do much besides write a message down on a Post-It for when the real front desk gets back. I don’t know most of the systems they use and I don’t know how to put in a work order, which is how most things in the building get seen to.
You’ve got ants? That’s too bad…I’ll leave a note for Maintenance.
You want to know who’s on duty tonight? I’ll leave a note for Care to call you back.
You want to order room service? I’ll fill out the kitchen request form, but I have to wait for front desk to get back before I can deliver it.
Your TV isn’t turning on? Are you Xfinity or Comcast? I’ll leave a note for Maintenance.
You’ve got to be careful about TV stuff. Anything with phones or computers or devices of any kind. They’ll ask “Are you any good with technology?” and you’ve got to just say “No” right away. If people think you can help them with their phones, you’ll never get anything else done again.
No, I’m no good with computers. Never seen a phone before in my life. It’s a little shameful, pretending like that, but I don’t care. I’ve got a lot of other things I need to get done.
Someone called once because I dropped my work key on a mountain trail on my bike ride to work without realizing it. She saw the name of our building on the side of the key fob and called to give me her home address so I could go pick it up that evening.
Last month Malcolm R.2 called while I was covering front desk for lunch.
He said, “Danny…I’m calling about the birthday luncheon…in regards to the RVSP….the answer…is…‘No.’”
Michael3 called once just to say, “Danny, everything you’ve heard about me is true.” I’d never heard anything about him, though.
Pendant alarm for Room ___
If a resident’s pendant alarm goes off, you’ve got to radio Care over the walkie-talkie system and make sure they copy. The system will beep this flat little beep sound every four seconds until someone gets to that resident’s room, solves their problem, and then matches their half of the Care pendant to the pendant the resident’s wearing. The first beep is half a tone higher-pitched than the second beep.
“Beep beep…beep beep…beep beep.” It’s always going off.
Which is as it should be; the noise ought to irritate you into paying attention, in case someone’s in real trouble. It only gets really rough when the wall unit starts beeping too, because it’s not supposed to beep, and that sound is twenty times worse than the everyday beeping. Then you have to call the number listed on the wall and talk to someone from the fire department.
Fire department comes out a few times a month at least. They’re just as friendly as you think they’re going to be. The paramedics, too. They crack a lot of jokes but the jokes never seem stale, which is no easy thing to pull off.
The good stuff
Working front desk is a lot of fun, though, for the most part. You get a rolling chair and you have a lot of systems to manage, so you get to roll back and forth answering phones and sounding efficient.
Also a lot of the front desk staff will keep mints and gum and sometimes individual bags of Cheez-Its in the side drawers. You have to ask, of course, but a lot of the time they’re happy to share.
Plus everyone walks by, signs in, says hello. The machines to sign in give everybody a lot of trouble. They like you more because you’re a person, and the machine’s no good, and if it’s really bad you can always say “Don’t worry, I’ll sign you back in.”
When people die, they leave by the front door, too. The General Manager says that if you welcome people through the front door when they get here, you ought to see them out the front door when they go. She said that at the last town hall meeting and everyone seemed to appreciate it.
I think I have a good job because at the end of every week I’m real happy to go home, and at the end of every weekend I’m real happy to be back.
[Image via]
Not her real name.
Not his real name, either.
You get the idea.
"When people die, they leave by the front door, too."
After my dad died, my stepmom (horrible) sent me back to the care home he'd been living in to retrieve a blanket we'd forgotten. I'd seen his body that morning, by choice, but I absolutely did not want to see him wheeled out. I sat in the parking lot for five minutes before I went in, absolutely terrified. It's strangely one of my worst memories of that whole day.
Anyway, the timing worked out, I didn't have to see the stretcher, and the person at the front desk who handed me the blanket was incredibly lovely to me. They all were. Thanks for the work you do.