Communication

I have what Andy always called a “straight job” – the kind where you get health benefits and paid vacation and a 401k.

The closest Andy came to a straight job was working as a staff producer at Sire. He worked for a company, and he got a paycheck. I don’t know if he had health insurance or paid vacation but I don’t think his work hours or colleagues were similar to mine in any way. His other jobs were writing music, which he started when he was 7 years old, and briefly as a young adult, driving a cab in Boston and being a tour guide in London despite not having been to London before he started giving tours.

In my jobs I’ve worked with a lot of great people, but none of them were Jerry Lee Lewis or Madonna or Brian Wilson or Warren Beatty.

There was one area where I could relate to Andy. My boss (if you’re reading this – hi Jane!) made me keep my beeper on during a 2-week vacation in northern California, because our Univision sales team was selling ads for the World Cup and they needed me to be available in case they needed new new rating estimates (and therefore new price estaimtes for the TV ads).

Andy also had to carry a beeper. His was not to get the best pricing for TV ads, but because Dr. Eugene Landy (Brian Wilson’s psychiatrist, or as Dr. Landy called himself, Brian’s partner in business and life) required it. Andy was expected to answer the beeper at all hours. One day he went golfing and left the beeper at home and some stuff ensued. I will save that story for another day, but it involves a barbed wire fence and the Malibu hospital.

My point today is that I have a straight job, and the straight job is working in consumer insights. This means I work with my colleagues to run focus groups and surveys and online communities to understand what consumers expect from companies.

Time and time again, we see that consumers want good communication, transparency, and empathy.

As I work through all the tasks around Andy’s hospitalization and death, I am finding some examples of good communication skills, yet far more examples of people and institutions that do not seem to have even considered how they should communicate with others.

Let’s start with the A+ institution: Social Security. First off, their phone system has an option for reporting a death, which puts them light years ahead of any credit card company. For each of those I had to take a random guess at which option best fit, because none of them fit, and then wait to be transferred at least a couple of times before I got to the right person. And most of the people were kind but every single one of them reverted to their script at the end of the call, with a cheery “Have a great weekend!” or “I hope you enjoy the rest of your day!”

The Social Security reps get gold stars all the way around. The woman I talked to when I called in was so kind – starting the conversation by telling me how sorry she was for my loss – and being patient and helpful as she gave me the information I needed, and she continued to be patient and helpful every time I asked her to clarify something that anyone else could have followed if they weren’t overwhelmed by (a) grief and (b) all the tasks that must be done after your spouse dies.

And when I went to the Social Security office on Monday, the guy at check-in directed me to a kiosk and the first question was if you are there for yourself or on someone else’s behalf, and I wasn’t sure how to answer. I told kiosk guy that my husband just died and I wasn’t sure if I should use my husband’s Social Security number or mine. He said to use mine.

So I did, and I answered the questions and the machine spit out a ticket with a number on it.

I sat in a chair and waited. I thought about how much smaller and quieter and nicer it was than the one in Los Angeles where I went to change my name after Andy and I got married.

The office in Burlington felt like a doctor’s waiting room. The office in Los Angeles had felt like a bus station in a crappy part of town at 2 am.

I heard a couple of numbers called, and I looked at the screen where they showed the numbers, and then at my ticket, and I started crying because sitting in the Social Security office to become the representative payee for the boys instead of Andy made his death feel more real than it had felt before.

I cried quietly. I didn’t think anyone noticed.

A short time later, the check-in guy walked towards me and motioned me to come with him.

My number had not been called. I was just taken to a representative.

I don’t know if it’s because I’d made an appointment in advance or because he wanted to make things a little less awful for me, but it felt like this was an exception to normal procedure.

He walked me down a hallway lined with small workstations: a station behind plexiglass for the workers, and a section in front of each desk with 2 chairs for visitors, with each area separated by cubicle walls.

I was seated in one of those visitor chairs, and the woman behind the plexiglass was so, so kind. I told her about Andy’s diagnosis and how his death followed quickly, and about the discharge we weren’t ready for but needed so he could see the oncologist, and about how the oncologist appointment did not end with treatment, as we had hoped, but with a transfer to hospice care. I was teary eyed through much of our conversation. And so was she.

I had expected a painful experience, but I walked out feeling better because of her empathy and kindness.

Today I had an opposite experience.

Today I dealt with the asshole manager at my local Barnes & Noble who initially refused to hold a few copies of today’s NY Times for me, because it is against policy, even though I told him I wanted copies because my husband’s obituary was printed in today’s edition and he had died suddenly and I wanted these as keepsakes for our 13-year-old twins and could he please make an exception, and I lived a half hour drive away and could not get there for at least an hour or so.

And he said no, wihtout a trace of empathy in his voice, he would not put papers aside for me, even when I offered to pay in advance, because he could not take my payment over the phone and he would not make exceptions for this rule about setting newspapers aside for a customer. He said I could call Phoenix Books or The Crow Bookstore (I told them I frequent those places and neither carry newspapers) or Shaw’s or Hannafords (and I told him they only carry the Sunday NY Times) and he insisted any of those would have the daily; and after I confirmed that none of them did, I called Barnes & Noble back a second time, and I recognized asshole manager’s voice immediately.

He caved the second time after I asked if I could at least get one copy of the paper , and he said I could get one copy. And he claimed he had only said no before because I asked for 5 copies, though he never offered that he could save fewer copies for me. Then he agreed to hold 1 copy. And if he had been remotely kind during the experience I would have been pleased that he ended up saving 2 copies for me, but instead I am not sure I will ever go to that Barnes & Noble again, and I say that as someone who knows how important both indie booksellers and B&N are to the publishing industry, and as someone who worked as a bookseller at B&Ns flagship store on Union Square in NY, and as someone who has a premium B&N membership.

I spent the rest of the day gathering photos and ephemera to copy for Andy’s service in Burlington on Sunday; and putting together a playlist for the service.

Digging through Andy’s iTunes, I realize there are so many amazing unreleased songs: not just the Wilson-Paley sessions, but also instrumentals he has used for score over the years (Pangea aka the Rudy Casoni Theme being my favorite); a bunch of girl group songs by the Damselles; some songs he’d worked on with Grey De Lisle; and a handful of gems with Andy singing. He has so much music that should be out in the world, and I hope I can make that happen.