Some folks have decided that others, who don’t like change, are experiencing metathesiophobia. That is the phobia that causes people to avoid changing their circumstances due to being extremely afraid of the unknown.
I’ve concluded that there are perfectly good reasons to be wary of change. One is that it actually may get worse. I’m been pondering this in part because of two pieces of mail I received on the same day.
The first pice notified us that our lawyer is changing law firms. Do we want to stay with the lawyer in the new firm or stay with the old firm and get another of their lawyers? Since we went with the firm BECAUSE of the lawyer, I assumed we’ll stay with the lawyer, but my wife wanted to know more details before ultimately coming to the same conclusion.
The other mail was from the company that processes my reimbursements for payments I make for health insurance. They are being taken over by another entity. Will it be the same level of service, as promised? Time will tell.
Here’s an old work story. We used to access a product on CD-ROM that was vital to our audience. The company announced they were going to migrate online, which seemed fine. Unfortunately, and I’m trying not to be too librariany here, they did not index the online product very well. This meant one could look up a given company but not find their competitors by SIC (a business code).
After we, and doubtless, MANY of their customers, expressed their distress, the company made changes, but it took about a year before it was as robust as the CD-ROM version.
Medical
As it turns out, Chuck Miller and I must have had the same ophthalmologist. As he noted, they moved from downtown to a location less convenient to me. Moreover, they also stopped carrying eyewear, so you have to go somewhere else. NOT an improvement.
My dentist actually was in the same building as my eye doctor. They moved out off of Albany-Shaker Road. I can get there first thing in the morning by taking two buses but would have to wait four hours to get home. Fortunately, they have a second location, in Albany, that will take 15 minutes to get to. Unfortunately, my dental hygenist of about a decade and a half is at the remote location, but the new (to me) person works well.
Doesn’t matter
My time with Time Warner Cable was not great. Now that it’s Spectrum, it’s arguably worse. My credit card had expired, but I got a new one with the same number, just a new expiration date, and CVV. I gave Spectrum the info, which they applied but failed to put on file. The short story is that I have received past due notices for the past two months by phone, cellphone, text, and snail-mail. I’ve called each time. Will it FINALLY be rectified?
Also, I know two people who worked for a fine regional bank. It was taken over by a national bank; if you’ve seen The Music Man, you know which one. The processes of the larger organization were, er, less than robust, as news stories in recent years have indicated.
Satisfaction
As I noted, getting the iPhone 8 has worked out. Frankly, it’s better for other people. One friend was distressed that they had to actually email me photos – the horror, the horror – can now text them. In fact, this photo was texted to me recently. It’s one neither my sisters nor I had ever seen before. That’s my grandfather McKinley Green holding me, probably at Ross Park in Binghamton. I haven’t changed at all.
A Bowie song; I won the Hunky Dory LP from my college radio station.