Editor’s Page: Labor of Love

One summer in my late teens, I temped at a giant medical billing company for a short stint before eventually finding more suitable work painting houses. There wasn’t a ton for me to do at the totally anonymous company that rhymes with Zest, so I filled the time in other ways.

My favorite pastime was sending patently ridiculous emails to the security team at the front desk. I espoused conspiracy theories about how there was a lot of evidence the company added a new healthy vending machine for the sole purpose of spying on its employees, wrote New Yorker-length essays on ways security could protect staff in the event the many geese that lounged outside the building went feral and launched a concerted attack on the cubicle dwellers inside, and insisted upon an insane amount of assurances that my magnetic badge wouldn’t prevent me from having children later in life.

At first the security team got a kick out of my schtick. Horace, the gruff head of security who bore a strong resemblance to Abe Vigoda, would often say, “Damn, you’re crazy blondie*, you know that, don’t you?” But I was a little too committed to the bit, and the friendly security team’s seemingly endless patience started to wear thin. Eventually, they would audibly groan every time I approached the desk with one of my questions. Then one morning I went into work, checked my email just like I did at the start of every day and was instantly humbled by a message I received from that same security team. A high-priority email addressed to all headquarters included a video on a repeating loop of a golden Honda Civic rolling backward across the parking lot, narrowly missing cars until it crashed into the curb at the end of the lot.

Overlayed on the rolling car video in big, bold Comic Sans font was a simple question: “Who is the genius who owns a 1998 Civic but doesn’t understand how to use the parking brake ?” Pockets of laughter would reverberate across the sea of cubicles as, one by one, my coworkers read the email.

The inventiveness the security team showed in getting back at my immature behind was award-worthy. After all, this was the late 90s. There was no TikTok, no intuitive easy-to-use editing tools, so it took a significant amount of tech prowess to create the looping clip as well as director-level marketing and communications acumen to maximize the potential of the joke.

I saw the same level of ingenuity, fun and even humor in this year’s crop of OR Excellence submissions. Take Kaiser Permanente Rancho Cordova, for instance. The facility earned an Honorable Mention in the Financial Management category for their fiscally prudent decision to move to multi-use drops. But the eye center also made a splash with the creative and quirky photo they submitted. Even our world-weary Managing Editor Adam Taylor, a man who has seen it all, was impressed. When he hounded the facility for a photo, he received an email promising an “engaging photo for you to make a show-stopping impression.” He thought they were overselling it, but as you can see, they weren’t.

Putting together this awards issue is a logistical challenge to say the least. It’s Friday evening at 6:47 p.m. as I write these words, and we still have a ways to go before we can pass the file to our printer. Adam, Senior Editor Joe Paone and I have basically lived at our laptops this week, sacrificing sleep, and as you can tell by this rambling Editor’s Page, a bit of sanity in the process. But it’s well worth it in the end, because sharing your stories truly is a labor of love. After all this time at the magazine, your dedication to superior patient care still never ceases to amaze me. On behalf of Adam, Joe and myself, and in the words of the great AC/DC: “We salute you!”

* In the 90s it wasn’t uncommon for impressionable young men to bleach their hair and spike it in the style of Sugar Ray’s Mark McGrath, but dear god it was unfortunate. OSM