Yesterday morning started off with a lesson in patience – tempered
with some humor.
It started with an early morning email from a man
on Social Security who lived in Massachusetts, asking if we had facilities
in his state. So I gave my usual response: no we don't have facilities in your
state but we have many people from other states who come to Arizona. He’s
welcome to join them.
But instead of saying no thanks, he wrote back, saying that
I must be "stupid" to think he might want to relocate to Arizona.
Well, that early in the morning his answer inspired me to
write something to the effect that our Board of Directors would like nothing
better than to go to Massachusetts and build a facility just for his
self-centered ass.
The conversation went downhill from there. He called me a
whole bag of mofos. He said Arizona was nothing but a bunch of Mormon
rednecks. And that I was lucky I wasn't in Massachusetts because we'd be shut down. That I was running a cult that was living off the sweat of
alcoholics.
Also that he was
reporting us to the IRS so they could pull our funding. Which didn't scare
me at all because we get no funding from any anyone anyway.
Finally
though, I had to get about the business of the day so I told him that no matter
how angry he was he was welcome at TLC.
After all one
of our specialties is turning angry alcoholics and addicts into sober
productive members of the community. And who knows? This guy might just become
one of them.
