Time to write a bit about an experience I had last week with Salmonella and Buenos Aires public healthcare. From dehydration and sharting the bed to falling asleep on the toilet, it was a good one for sure. ( Please note this was my experience and I'm sure many will be thinking I just had a bad one, maybe but here it is) Just a bit of a rant that i had to get it out.

It started out a beautiful 40 degree BsAs day, thought i would meet up with some friends at the park who were long boarding around. When i arrived i saw that a man was renting skateboards and rollerblades for 15 pesos an hour(USD 3.25). I grabbed a board and joined my friends skateboarding around for about an hour. The 40 degree heat started getting to me so we stopped and had a roadside steak sandwich at a Parilla. Skated a bit afterwards until i was so drained i headed home. When i got home i was welcomed by a few friends going out to a big club in Puerto Madero. Ended up partying until 6 A.M. When i woke up the next morning i felt great, a little sore from the skateboarding which used a few muscles i haven't used in a while. About an hour passed by when i was sitting in the living room talking to my friends and i started to freeze! Im thinking shit how did i get a fever this bad in just seconds?! I told my friends i was obviously feel bad and stumbled to my room where i crawled up into a ball and tried to go back to sleep. As i was laying there i thought shit i didn't drink any water in the past 24 hours of heat and partying so i ran to the kitchen downing as much water as i could thinking i was going to collapse any second. Everyone is now worried checking up on me every 20 minutes or so , it was like having 20 mother's, quite comforting. 

My fever finally resided and i went to sleep the next day same thing high low fever fluctuating with the hour. My stomach started to hurt like i had a little gremlin inside chewing on my insides. The bathroom followed shortly after. This happened about every 20 minutes. Two days passed until i found myself sitting on the stairs feeling better contemplating going to the  hospital before the fever kicked back in. I told a friend and she said "Lets go!" ill go with you. Note it's 1A.M. and she had work i said no and she insisted. we stepped outside grabbed a taxi where my stomach started to hurt again.
"Hospidale Publico" she said and we were on our way.

As i jumped out of the taxi i realized this was going to be something else. About 40 homeless men were sprawled outside the hospital floors and to the entrance. I entered and the man asked me if i had any documents all i had was my NYS driver license. He took it wrote some info down and told me to wait in the other room. Man i thought i had a huge waiting line with about 30 people sleeping in the waiting area. 10 minutes passed and i was called. Homeless people! It reminded me of a bus station in Argentina more than a waiting room.  I went into "Triage" where she asked me what was wrong and thats it. I went into the room with another older gentleman. So it starts the man is talking with the nurses when his makeshift examining table flips over and the old man falls. He gets back up shaken but not injured. I was watching everything like a hawk, the nurse had put on fresh gloves and then was touching the bottom of the guys sandal to comfort him. Not changing their gloves they proceed to stick three IV needles in his arm before getting it right. Now im getting nervous, telling my friend if they try to start sticking stuff in me i'm outa here! As they start filling their work station with goodies for me someone starts banging on the door to get in. 

They walked slowly to the door thinking it was a mad patient or homeless person trying to get attention. As she creeped the door open there was a man having a seizure on the floor in the waiting room. i got up to leave the room so they can help him. I came back 10 minutes later and saw a puddle of blood on the floor in the waiting room where the man fell and thought o man he must have hit his head hard that's a lot of blood. They then kicked out my friend and stuck a thermometer in my armpit no plastic or anything. Then they start breaking two vials of something brown and pouring into a bag of saline. At this point i realized this was for me. I tell them no! and ask the nurse to change her gloves. She gave me a dirty look and did. Then i'm arguing with them to figure out what they were putting in my body. A doctor cam and said " He doesnt want help ok forget it and started walking away. I said sternly "No i just want to know what it is first"? oooooo he said and explained it's a substance to stop the vomiting and saline water. Once she changed the gloves i said ok and let them go to work. I sat there for 10 minutes before realizing they never let the pinch on the IV go so it was doing nothing. Not to mention she forgot her thermometer in my armpit. I mean i walk in a hospital and the IV is in before even knowing if i have a temperature?! 

I let out the flow of the IV myself. When the IV was finished about 40 minutes later they came back to switch it with antibiotics. As she hooked up the antibiotics she dropped the bag without checking it or purging it she connects it. I noticed a small drip coming from the bag and realized that when she dropped it it split the bag so it was filled with air. Now my attention is at the top of the bag which was pouring Antibodies into me faster then hell because it had a hole in it. At the top it was bubbling like a shaken can of soda. The end comes along and all i see it air! Knowing it was more than my bloodstream could handle i grab the tube and pinch it. Called the nurse ten minutes later she comes by and sees me holding it and trying to take the bag down off the rack. She takes the IV out not even noticing if she changed her gloves and left the room. 15 minutes later she comes back in and says why are you still here. She never told me to leave! 

She had left a prescription on the table that i didn't notice and just walked away. It's now been about an hour and a half since the man had the seizure. i open the door to leave and what do i see on the floor. The same puddle of blood sitting there with no clean up crew in sight. I walked outside grabbed a taxi and got home when my stomach started hurting more than ever. I proceeded to walk from my room to the bathroom about 20 times before finally residing on the toilet itself. Not knowing if this stomach ache was from the Anti vomiting medicine or what. I woke up on the toilet a few hours later and finally started feeling better walked to my room as the sun was coming up just starting to think about all the things that happened  in a 2 hour hospital trip. Amazing. 


Oh i'm fine now, and yes i will be eating the roadside parillas again. I can't help it!

    How I implemented text messaging into Comeclean.it , and how at first was a convenience that turned into the core of the business. Comeclean.it was a laundry delivery business I had started November 2010 in Brooklyn.  When I had started I was on a shoe string budget and was acting as a independent contractor for a local laundromat.  Having no real laundry or delivery experience I knew I had to base the business on what I knew. People.

    I knew I needed to build the brand around customer service after having previously seen the Yelp reviews from my competitors. Most of them had bad reviews for lack of communication and hidden fee's.  So how could I communicate with these people in an effective way that will really open their arms to my brand. So I thought how can I make this as painless as possible for people and how do they communicate normally with friends not business' ?....Text messaging!

   Now, I'm not talking about mass texting your client base like some text happy club promoter shoving the message down their throat. No, more of a casual customer service tool to gain feedback and spread the word like wild fire. 
    
   When I first started implementing txt I have to admit my expectations weren't to spread the word but more to care for and engage in real conversation with my customer's. My client base was still small at this point and I thought anything could help separate me from the competition. 

   After about two weeks of texting pick up confirmations ect. I received my first Yelp review, and it stated :
" Last Night, 6pm, having cocktails in the village with friends.
Friends: Faye who are you texting??

Faye: Oh, just Gary- my laundry guy. Totally normal.

Yes, Gary, my laundry guy, was texting me to let me know my dry cleaning was ready and we were discussing when I'd be home to receive it."

    That was it! Texting gave her trust in me by genuinely engaging her in a manner that only friends and family would do before.  I am now her friend, not Facebook friend or Linkedin friend, but a friend she could casually ask questions to with prompt response.

    After further analyzing it I realized how this could also spread the word faster then any cut throat ad could ever. Now the 5 people that she was sitting around having cocktails with were also instantly interested in what she was doing with her phone and what the heck she could possibly be talking about with her laundry delivery man.

    Now knowing this I targeted my text messages for confirmation and such for a time I thought my customers were more likely to be around their friends and family. From 5-7 pm most of  my text messaging was done .  Asking my new customers how they heard about me I realized my conversion rate for every 5 conversation's I would get a new customer. Simply amazing. 

    As time went on my client base got much much larger. Now it was time for the naive customer service fanatic to scale his doings in a structured and similar manner, keeping up what he started. It wasn't easy i'll tell you that, averaging 2600  business related text messages a month was no small task and for sure was 90% of my work.  

   End conclusion really caring is scalable and now in all of my future endeavors an absolute necessity.  I parted ways with Comeclean.it in the end of september this year. 

   For anyone looking for an edge in a competitive market in an extremely competitive time. Don't rule out Text messaging or any other means of building real relationship's with your customer base on a genuine level, because thats all it was genuine.

   



    

Hi everybody, if you haven't met me yet my name is Gary Misner and I'm your laundry delivery man. Some of you may be saying "okay so why would i want to read about you?".  The answer to that i do not know, but if your interested in me as i am interested in all of you, let me tell you a little about how Comeclean.it came about and what my feeling are about it thus far.  About 3 months ago I decided to open a web-based laundry pick up and delivery service. I figured it would bring more laundry to the new family laundromat "Spin City", and would give me something to do in the mean time. I love business and even more building them. So i built a business model bought a website and boom comeclean.it was started. How is it a business you ask. "Aren't you just like the chinese delivery guys". Well on the surface it may seem that way. "How is it a business, what is your product?". My answer: customer service, period. I am set out to make doing laundry the easiest. That is by catering to everyones needs. Let's call it a "laundrierge" service. I admit when I first started this business it was about money, and yes i still have to pay rent but quickly i'm realizing this is turning into something much deeper. Comeclean.it gives me the opportunity to meet new people everyday, and i can honestly say thus far all of my customers are great ones and have a sort of bond with each and every one.  In fact if one of them called me at 2 in the morning and asked me to come pick them up from the bar so they didn't have to drive, i would be there in a second. So is comeclean.it a business or culture slowly developing in Williamsburg for people who don't have time or interest in doing their own laundry. Time will tell but I think this year is going to be a good one. As for my customer base now you guys rock! I look forward to getting to know everyone. 

Thanks!
Gary

Finding myself in an awkward situation i didn't know why or what it was about the beautiful read head in the corner of the room, i just knew it wasn't right...(Back Left Under Exit Sign)

It started the second I walked into the room and saw her. Delivering Happiness Happy Hour in the Trump SOHO was the event. A beautiful read haired paled skinned woman starring directly in my eyes. In any other case there would be nothing wrong with this, but this occasion was entirely different. As I looked into her eyes I didn't see what everyone else was seeing and it gave me an uneasy feeling in my stomach. As guys started flocking to this girl I couldn't resist to stand there and stare, I told my friend Holly  that this girl is up to something no good. I said these guys all around her dont even see it but I think she's looking for something other then a date. This hunch went on all night, was it a bullshit or intuition. How do you judge the difference? If i let the left side of my brain run the show that night I would have found myself fighting over her with every other guy in the room. After telling too many random people in the room my feeling I eventually wrote the intuition off as an insecurity I was having, having nothing in common with the people in the room. After the event she faded in my mind and 2 weeks later the USA  charged a women with espionage. There she was on my T.V.! I couldn't believe my eyes . I mean was it really her? The next day I got two emails from two sepperate people with this artical attached to it.   http://roadturn.com/reflections-on-life/anna-chapman-a-bad-bad-girl/ saying "A Russian Spy At DH Launch Party?". Now "gut feeling", what is it and how do we seperate it from fear, irrational thinking?. You dont. You dont have too because it's an emotion. When you think something is not right we've all learned very young that 99.9% of the time something is wrong. So why do people fight there intuition. Why do you question your gut when you get a feeling and try to rationalize it? My guess is because it's convenient. Stop rationalizing things and act on gut feeling's more, they will take you were you want to go and guarantee happiness. I truly believe In anything other than investments your gut should always have a say. My gut is my boss, when it feels good I feel good and vise versa. If you think your job is a dead end, guess what it probably is. If you think your girlfriend is cheating on you guess what she probably is. In any case your intuition always runs supreme. Listen to yourself and you will stay happier and healthier. Stop rationalizing all of the feelings you have because they might be inconvenient at that time. Live!


P.S. Do What You Really Want To Do period