Time once again for another installment...

of As The Assisted Living Facility Turns.  In today's episode, we begin in the dining room, where many of our stories originate.  It is lunch time and the menu calls for barbecue chicken, penne pasta, peas and a dinner roll.  Rainbow sherbert is slated to be dessert.

One of our residents is not happy with the lunch menu and refuses to eat because we are served "too much American food".  While this resident was born in another nation they spent almost their entire life here in the U.S.  More importantly, within the last two weeks, "ethnic" meals have been served regularly.  Stir-fry chicken and vegetables.  Tacos.  Quesadillas.  Fajitas.  So the complaint lacks veracity, but with things involving perspective, it is all about perception rather than reality.  The President could have pulled out the last three weeks of menus and circled the "non-American" meals, but it wouldn't have accomplished a thing except to make this resident more frustrated.  So the President just let it go.

Then another resident once again began claiming that their expertise due to working many years in hospitals (but in a non-medical capacity) enabled them to determine that one of the other residents really belongs in a nursing facility.  One of the factors involved in their perception is that they've been hearing complaints from the staff about the struggles they have in lifting and caring for this other resident.  The President will deal with that, once enough time has passed between this resident telling him that these staff members were complaining, so it doesn't get traced back to that resident.  Plus the President doesn't want to be getting the staff into trouble.  Just to get them to stop complaining about one resident to another.

The President however, is tired of hearing this crap from this resident about how this other resident belongs in a nursing home.  So he, gently and patiently informed this resident that it isn't their place to make that judgment.  That it is up to a resident's physician to decide where a resident belongs.  Nursing home, retirement home, assisted living facility, wherever.  When the resident tried to argue that "well, their family could move them" the President pointed out "the family doesn't want to move that person.  Now if their family doesn't want to move them, their doctor isn't trying to have them moved, it isn't any of your business if that person is here or at a nursing home.  It isn't impacting your life, so let go of it.  You'll never change it anyway."  Don't know if the message sank it, but it will be repeated until it does.

Construction in the lobby has it blocked off for the most part, requiring everyone to walk around behind the front desk office space to get to and from the dining room.  No one's sure what will be there when they're done, but it sure was noisy during today's lunch.