Doing the right thing

When i was attending a seminar in Tulsa in February, I stayed at the Marriott Renaissance Tulsa Hotel and Convention Center.

During my stay, Tulsa experienced one of the worst blizzards they had seen for many years. After about the third day, the snow had stopped and there was lots of activity clearing the parking lots and surrounding areas. On Thursday evening, I had walked to a store nearby. On my back through the parking lot, I slipped on the ice, fell and broke my left wrist.
The Hotel staff was very helpful. They got ice to stop the swelling, called an ambulance and took exceptional care of me. They took an incident report and provided me the contact information for their insurance co, Travelers. Since I was headed home the next day, the hospital thought it best to see a Dr. in Austin to evaluate the treatment. To shorten this story, the repairs, took surgery, metal plate and 11 screws.

I contacted Travelers and they informed me that my fall would not be covered because of the weather. I am fortunate enough to have insurance which covered a good portion of the $22,000 medical bills but I was out of pocket a little over $1,300.
Not wanting to get attorneys involved, I decided to contact the hotel directly and was put in touch with Tim Lewin, the General Manager. I explained the situation and asked him to maybe speak to the Insurance company to consider covering my out of pocket expenses. Tim took this upon himself to help me. He took it to the corporate office and while the Insurance company “could not” pay, the hotel itself did send me a check. This was greatly appreciated and just wanted to acknowledge what good customer service is all about. Thank you Marriott Tulsa.

Thoughts on count down clocks

When I knew I was going to retire, I found a count down clock where I could set the date and then watch the years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds click away towards that date. I remember when it went from 1 year to just months, then from months to just days and finally only hours. On the last day we had a gathering in my office and we all watched as the minutes ticked away and then with only seconds left, there was the chorus of voices 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0! A message flashed on my screen.”Retire”.
A few seconds later, my Outlook popped up with a meeting message that said “Retired”.
But a strange thing happened with my count down clock. It kept right on counting. 13, 14, 15, 16, 17….
What that meant for me was that there will be milestones or events in our lives that we anticipate (or dread) and that moment will arrive as scheduled.
But then life goes on. And then just like that, you can count the seconds, minutes, hours, days and years that we get to enjoy life, our friends, and all the blessings that have been bestowed upon us. Maybe that’s a new way to look at the saying “Count your blessings”.