Kirk Kaiser Speaker 1
Mickey Eberts Speaker 2
Art Huber Speaker 3
Danielle Young Speaker 4
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Glad you could join us on FM After Hours, the ultimate podcast for all things facility management. We’re here to take you on a journey into the ever-changing world of fm. Don’t forget to check out our gracious sponsor, remediate your trusted partner in fire and life safety, compliance and Granger for the ones who get it done. And with that, let’s dive in.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
All right guys, welcome back to FM after hours. I’m Mickey Eberts, and I got the whole crew here. This time. I got Kirk. I got Danielle and Arch back from his hiatus. So welcome back.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Where were you, by the way? First of all, I want to ask our viewers to stop sending me the complaints about me not being there and how lame the whole thing was without me. So just stop now. I’m back. I came back in order to make sure that it wasn’t the same situation. So here I am
Speaker 4 (00:47):
To
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Appease the people and we’re just glad you’re here.
Speaker 5 (00:50):
Yes,
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I’m sure. Alright, so I’ll start out with, let make sure I don’t forget this. Thank our sponsors. So remediate in Granger, two great sponsors. Thank you for helping us. Thank you for those that are listening and commenting. It’s fantastic. And I didn’t realize art was so good at this. He’s really
Speaker 4 (01:10):
R in.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
So what we thought about today, because we’re coming up on the holidays and we’ve actually been all over the place. Traveling have been separate. So we’re just going to catch up, see where everybody’s been, maybe tell some Christmas stories, some stories that we find that think are entertaining for you guys about our past. So Kirk, I don’t know, normally I kick it to you to
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Let’s kick it right back to you.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Kick it right back. Okay.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Alright.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
So before we started, Danielle asked us, she said, Hey, does anybody have any Christmas stories? So I said, I have one, right? And the title of the story is it’s a shitty Christmas. So this was a long time ago. I first went into healthcare, I don’t even think I was in management yet. I might’ve been a technician. And I was young and I wasn’t married. And so healthcare, PTO is a big deal. You get a lot of PTO and people get excited about Christmas. And so I volunteered to work Thanksgiving and Christmas every year because one, I think you got double pay. So I’m like, yeah, I’ll do it. So I’m there, it’s Christmas day, I get a phone call, I answer the call, Hey, we’ve got a problem in surgery. So it doesn’t matter what day it is, you still have to be very conscious of the fact that you need to keep your surgery up in case there’s some sort of emergency, right?
Speaker 4 (02:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
So I go, I dress out because when you go into surgery, you have to wear scrubs and booties and a mask. And now you’re not doing what a doctor does. You’re not scrubbing your hands, but you got to be clean. So I go in and I look up and there’s brown stuff leaking out of a pipe in the ceiling. So when you’re on call, you’re there to answer basic calls and you have other people, or I’m sorry, when you’re working during the holiday, you have other people that are on call. So first thing I do is I make the call to the plumber, I need you to come in, we got to check this out together. So he gets there about an hour later and I’ve got a bucket underneath it. I’ve got it all corned off. I’ve talked to the people that I need to talk to.
(03:26):
Hey, don’t use this section of the or. He walks up and he says, this ain’t good because it was cast iron drain pipe. And you could just see, once we got up there and had a flush, you could see the crack was just starting to spread. So essentially about an hour after he got there, we figured out we’ve got to take this whole pipe down and it is probably 50 feet. I don’t want to exaggerate. So we did, we cut it out, it was full of shit. It is just messy. Then the pipe starts falling apart. And so I’m on the phone with him. I’m like, oh dude, this is terrible. I mean, we got, and then now the next thing you got to do is how many people’s Christmas are you going to ruin, right? Because how many people are you going to call in? And the guy, and we made the decision, we can fix this temporarily. And we did. We got some PVC, we got some couplings and got up there, got it fixed, helped the EVS crew clean everything up. And it is gross though. It was terrible.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
It was a Christmas miracle that you got to fix though. See what it is. It’s terrible. All that
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Black pipe.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Oh my gosh, what I said when he called me, I said, Merry Christmas, click. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
He probably did. My daughter has her first house she bought, and it’s an older house, and they have just the black biron underneath, right? It’s like, don’t even touch it, right? Because man, you touch it and crumbles, it crumbles, right? And she’s like, oh, we’re starting to get a little bit of it. So it had completely severed underneath her house in a crawlspace. And basically for two months, everything they were putting down down the sink was filling up this crawlspace. She literally had plumbers come over and like, Nope, nope, nope. They just oped her. Right? Gone. It’s not me. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Alright. So now I got another one that ties to that. This is at home. So we lived in College Park, Georgia. We had this old house
Speaker 5 (05:38):
And
Speaker 2 (05:38):
It had cast iron waste pipe. And I told this story, right, the Christmas story. So I’m like, I’m getting rid of this. So I go into there and cut all this pipe out, drag it out, and I’ve got a plan to put it together. I think you actually helped me come up with the plan, the design for how to do it. And I’m going to go back with PVC and I’ve told my family, do not flush the toilet. Don’t, because it’s just going to come down into the crawlspace. Right? Well, Tommy, you guys all know him. We work with him. I’ve been friends with him forever. Tommy,
Speaker 4 (06:15):
Tommy,
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Tommy,
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Tommy, Tommy.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
You know this is going to be good, right? He comes over to the house, he brings his daughter Shelby, who’s my goddaughter now backstory with Shelby, at least they’re going to kill me. So when she was young, she had a reputation for stopping up toilets. Her poops would be so big. You are. She would stop up toilets, right? Oh my. She shows up and I guess I’m under the thing working. I am not connecting the dots. I got new people to tell. Well, she had to go. So I’m under the house working, laying on my back, putting this pipe together, and I hear the toilet flush.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
Oh no.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
And so I end up, I do a mad crawl because it’s only two and a half feet tall. So I’m crawling out of there and I get out of there. But lo and behold a big old right in the,
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Oh no. It
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Was
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Like
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Damnit. Well, you just got even with her. No kidding. You owe Shelby a little Christmas present this year.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
That’s awesome. So we’ll have another viewer now.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Yeah. At least for this week’s episode, going to be Shelby. Shelby. I hate vampires going to be up there. That’s right.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yeah. It was awesome.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Well, our family, for whatever reason, has a tradition of doing things like that on the holiday.
(07:39):
I mean, we all get together. I mean, it used to be when we were all in Michigan at one time, and everybody, six kids, 14 grandkids, all went over to somebody’s house for the holidays. And of course, all those people in a place that doesn’t have all those people, something like almost always plumbing would go haywire. So we would spend most of our, either it’s, Thanksgiving would seem like the most dramatic one because you got to have food and you tell people don’t put things down, that’s garbage disposable. But they do anyway because they’re trying to get in. So all that kind of stuff would happen on Thanksgiving or maybe Christmas. But boy, it seemed like our family always was my and my brother-in-law. And we were always crawling around somewhere, fixing pipes, reconnecting stuff on the holidays. We can’t get parts. So it’s a mess.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yeah. What time of the year was it when you took the load bearing wall out of your house? That wasn’t
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Christmas, the course. It was summertime.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
My God. So art lived in a McMansion?
Speaker 3 (08:43):
No,
Speaker 2 (08:43):
He did. I mean, it was swanky.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
So Christmas is at his house this year.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Oh man. Right. And I knew him for a while, so I knew him before he was important and he had all that money. So when they moved to Wichita, they got this massive house and it was really cool. And I’m still poor. Right? I don’t know. Help me, please. Right. But I remember specifically, I think I was at Home Depot and he calls me and he goes, Hey man, do you have a house, Jack? Oh no.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
What did you do? I mean, nothing big. Not big. And you need a house, Jack. There was this big room in my basement. I’m as new to this house, and we’d only been there probably a year, so it was probably summertime. And trying to do something was this guy had a shop in the basement. It was this huge room that had no finishes in it. It was just a concrete floor. And there’s this wing wall that came out into the middle of the room and just was sitting there
Speaker 1 (09:46):
For no reason other than
Speaker 3 (09:48):
Supporting the house. Just the two by fours at the end of the wall. So you take out this wall and there’s nothing there. And then there’s these three, two by fours together. So I probably, I’ll take ’em out and see what happens. Well, I took them out. No, take out and see what happened. Wow. So I took it out. And about a day later when I’m calling him, a crack started forming a wall, but oh shit, this is a load-bearing structure, so I want to jack it back up and make it level. Well, that isn’t the end of the story. Come on.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
Oh no. His whole house collapsed.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
No, no, it’s almost that bad. But nothing ever happened. The house house is fine. I just put the structure back. But to get it back, what is his answer to my, do you have a house, jack?
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Well, I had a high lift jack because I had a backup truck. Four wheeler, big wheels on it. Right. So I’m like, hell, I’ll bring it over. We’ll see what we can do.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
If your wall was sagging that low, you’re in trouble.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
I was only sag that much. But we’re going to use this jack to lift it back up and put a support in there.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Yeah, a little more than that. Probably Jack would support
Speaker 3 (11:00):
A bit more. Hey, it
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Was
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Working
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Until the Jack exploded. Oh, no. Oh, it exploded. Metal pieces
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Went everywhere. We had this four by four under the jack and then up to the ceiling, and he’s sitting there jacking up Ching. He’s like, so I jump on him. The whole thing blows. Oh my. The Jack goes flying. The four by four goes flying across the room. And you know how much house Jacks costs?
Speaker 2 (11:32):
30 bucks. 30 bucks.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Yeah. So I went to Home Depot, got a house jack for 35,000 pounds or whatever. It’s all better. Awesome.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Okay. I got another one. I love this. This is Shelby again. Okay.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
Oh no,
Speaker 2 (11:47):
This is Shelby. You are going to know her. Alright, Tommy. So I think I’m in Wichita at the time. Tommy’s in Atlanta. He wants to sell his house, but he’s got some work he needs to do. So we always did stuff together. So I go to Atlanta, we did one of his garage, what’s it called? The support, the jack and the king studs on the edge. It was rotten, so we had to cut it out. We put a temporary wall in, put a new header in, no problem. And it was a real tall house on one side. It was probably, I don’t know, 45, 50 feet on one side. And he needed to replace some siding that was rotten. And Tommy’s scared of heights, so he can’t go up the ladder and do it. I say that when I want someone to
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Work me to.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Yeah, exactly right. So his job is just to hold the ladder. So I climb up the ladder and I get about halfway up to where I’m going and I look over because he’s got a privacy, he had a pool in his backyard, and by this time, Shelby’s like 17 years old, and she has two of her friends. It’s a summer day and they’re laying out nude. Now, keep in mind, I was there when she was born. I babysat her. I climbed down the left down with friends. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. That’s gross. So by the way, not gross. They were beautiful. I was like, I got to get out of here. So I climbed down. I look at time and I’m like, we’re going to lunch, man. And he goes, we just ate breakfast. I’m like, we’re going to lunch, man. We just ate breakfast. I got to get this done. I’m like, climb up there. So he goes up and looks over and he’s like, okay, we’re going to
Speaker 4 (13:34):
Lunch. We’re going to need to reschedule this.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
And then it was like, call your wife. Tell him to put some clothes on. So it was hilarious.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
Well, one of the things you need to know about Mickey, because he’ll have stories about everything in his life, because anytime he’s involved in something, stuff happens. That’s true. I mean, it just happens. It follows him. I mean, I have story after story of just I go to a ball game by myself. Nothing happens. I do go to a ball game with him. Something happens. It’s incredible.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
I don’t even remember the story. So you’re going to have to tell it.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Oh, you don’t remember North Carolina?
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Yeah. What happened in North Carolina though?
Speaker 4 (14:18):
See, it doesn’t even face him at this. Point.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Point. Yeah. I mean, we went to the
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Basketball
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Game. Basketball game. I remember. How did that happen?
Speaker 2 (14:29):
I don’t remember.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
We’re standing out there. We went to do a assessment of a hospital in North Carolina, and it happens to be the Georgia State’s playing North Carolina there
Speaker 2 (14:42):
That
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Weekend, which we didn’t even know. And we’re staying in a hotel and some buddy walks by, Hey, you want tickets? And it was like, oh yeah, that’s right. Yeah. And okay, the backstory of this is right when Mickey, and there’s a long story to get to this, and I’m not going to tell you the whole story, but this is when he was in a quandary about whether he should ever get married or not. Oh my gosh. And Toy is with us. Toy is our licensed electrician, and the three of us are doing this assessment for this North Carolina hospital, and we’re doing this report and all this kind of stuff. And we had just spent the day at the hospital and do you want these tickets? So we’re having this serious conversation and Mickey’s there saying, I have this, what should I do? I mean, my girlfriend now, his wife, she’s going to break up with me because I don’t want to get married and I don’t want to have kids and all this stuff. And he’s whining. And typical man. Well, not just that, but you have to know Emily.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
I mean she, she’s like a good woman fully. She’s got a master’s degree, she runs a cardiac clinic. I mean, it’s like, what are you thinking?
Speaker 2 (15:58):
And here’s the other thing too that I’ll add, especially that far back. I was pretty much a knuckle dragon Neanderthal. Right. I hadn’t
Speaker 3 (16:08):
What’s changed?
Speaker 2 (16:11):
I’ve matured. He’s evolved. Oh, evolved. I’ve matured. He’s reformed a little, so I was lucky for her to be even talking to me.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
But
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Go ahead. So
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Basically Toy and I sitting, were having a serious conversation, and then some guy’s offering us basketball tickets. And I think we almost got in a fight at the basketball game. We were the only ones there wearing gold for Georgia Tech. Right. I mean, everything else was this powder blue crap that you had to sit in this arena. So we’re the only ones cheering for the wrong team. So luckily he’s there. I just kind of duck and toy is as big as he is. So it didn’t matter. I had two bodyguards with me. And we’re sitting here having a serious conversation, and both of ’em look at him. Have you lost your fucking mind?
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yeah, he did. And the truth is, she had already broken up with me, so it wasn’t, she’s going to break up. She had broken up with me deprive. It just happened. I’m like, oh man. That was pitiful.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
He wouldn’t get married.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yeah. Well, it worked out. Thank you for your advice. And if toys out there listening, thank you for your advice Toy. And I’ll tell you a quick story about Toy. Toy was an electrician. We worked at a hospital in downtown Atlanta. It was a very rough hospital, toy’s missing half of this finger because one day he went to leave, he got in his truck in the parking garage, and somebody tried to mug him and stuck the gun in the car and he just reflexively pushed the gun up. And I don’t know if the guy pulled the trigger or the gun went off and blew his finger off.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
Oh my God.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Talk about workman’s comp.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Yeah, no joke.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Yeah,
Speaker 3 (17:51):
No, he was a great guy too. He was very spiritual. And again, he probably used words he would’ve never used when he had to address Mickey that day.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Yeah. Do
Speaker 4 (18:02):
You have any stories? Oh,
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Plenty. Tell
Speaker 4 (18:04):
Me everything.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Gunshot one for, we were in business for two years, and so we were just really getting going. And we had some work at the Cleveland Clinic, and so we sent one of our guys out there, and it’s like people either know how to travel or they don’t. And so we sent a guy that didn’t really know how to travel, and so he got off the highway and was going to take the back roads. And you don’t take the back roads there. Yeah, exactly. Next thing you know, he’s calling the police. His windows were shot out. Oh no. And then the police get there and they’re like, what are you doing here? When they stayed until they could get a tow truck, they shot a tire and it was this whole freaking, but it’s just like, I mean, for those of us that travel, if you travel, you are going to have stories there. Oh yeah.
Speaker 5 (19:00):
If
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Fans are butts about it, man. I mean, I have thousands of travel stories, but personally, never been mugged, never been shot at, never been. So I feel fortunate than that.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
I’ve been mugged multiple times. Traveling.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
What? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Yeah. It follows him. So this wasn’t that long ago.
Speaker 5 (19:23):
What
Speaker 2 (19:25):
I think it was when I was at Fire Door,
(19:27):
I traveled to Atlanta. So I told you guys, we lived in College Park, which is right near the airport. There’s a road called Virginia Avenue. My house, the old house I had was five blocks away. Well, you’re supposed to fill up your car before you turn it into the airport. So I get up, eat breakfast, pack my bag, jump in the car, that’s the gas station. I stopped to fill up the gas station, fill up the car, and so the pump is behind me, and then there’s my car, and then there’s the sidewalk on the street. As I’m filling the car up, two guys are walking and something’s not right here. So one guy goes this way around the car toward the front of the car, the other guy goes toward the back of the car. And I’m not a tough guy. What I did was I ran at the first guy that was closest to me and bumped into him and knocked him down. It scared the second guy, he took off running. So nothing happened, but they were going to mug me.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
That’s scary. Yeah. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
We had another time that this will take a couple minutes, but it’s worth it, I promise you. And this is buckled in 30 minute story, abbreviated it too. So we were going to an ashy show, and so we rented A-V-R-B-O. There was five of us going. And so we were flying there and I got delayed and I was supposed to be the first one there. And thankfully I wasn’t. The guy that showed up goes and goes to the house and is punching in the key. And this guy opens the door and he’s like, come on in. He’s like, well, what are you doing here? And he’s like, well, we rented the house. And he’s like, oh, well, it’s my uncle’s house. And he didn’t tell me that someone was coming, right? He’s like, well, come on in. And he grabs his suitcase and literally throws it in the door, right? He’s like, what is going on? This sounds
Speaker 4 (21:32):
Like the beginning of a psychological
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Thriller. Oh, it is so crazy. So he sits there and he’s like, well, let me go. And he’s like, he goes, come on in. And it’s probably nine or 10 o’clock in the morning. And the guy comes over and he’s like, do you want something? He goes, I’m just eating some, some noodles. And he literally sticks us and he grabs two plates with his hands, sticks noodles on. He says, do you want some noodle? So our guy’s starting to root out a little bit. So he calls me up and I’m on the airplane, so I got delayed. So when I land, I get all these voicemails. I don’t know about this. VRBO you got. It’s really weird. And it’s all, so finally when I ended up landing, I get ahold of him and he’s like, yeah, this guy, he’s disconnected all the, it is just super weird. He disconnected electronics. So the security cameras, that was the, and all this stuff. And so I’m like, I go, here’s the number of the place for the owner, right? Because they give you that information. And
(22:32):
So I’m like, I’m on my way. So I jump in and jump in a cab and start making my way that way. And he calls up the owner and the owner’s like, no, that’s my house. And I don’t even have a nephew. Are you kidding me? And he’s like, get out of there right now. And so completely vacates this house, right? It’s like they call the cops and the cops come and they can’t find the guys, the guy’s hiding in the house. And in the end literally couldn’t find the guy. And so the cops leave. And so we’re sitting there and he’s recounting this whole story to me now. And this is a couple hours after that. And lo and behold, the guy goes walking by the window singing and down this little side street. And then he’s like, that’s the guy recalled the police. The police got it. It was just this huge African brick ordeal. Oh my gosh. I mean, so just crazy, crazy, man. That is crazy, man. Wow.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
You got lucky there, buddy. He
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Got lucky. He was the first
Speaker 2 (23:35):
One there. Yeah, that’s true. Good thing your flight was delayed, right?
Speaker 1 (23:39):
I just like, exactly.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Dang. How about you, Danielle? Come on.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
I have some stories actually kind of based around a holiday time from when I was in recruiting, the things that I would hear people tell me when I was trying to hire them. There was one guy in particular, I think I was trying to hire for Philly, I want to say it was Philly. And I asked the preliminary questions, can you pass a background check? This requires you to be drug free and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he’s like, yeah, no problem. Now this was in person, so in person hiring event. So I have this person in front of me and interview went, okay, he would’ve probably been basic entry, basic level. And as he stands up, two joints fall out of his pocket. And so I used that opportunity to be like, were you holding those for your friend? And he was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can still pass a background check though. And I’m like, well, what about a drug test? And he was like, then he tried to get me to look over here as he’s reaching down to pick them up as if I hadn’t already seen them fall out of his pocket. Oh
Speaker 5 (24:45):
My gosh.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
And I go, we’ll be in touch. So I have so many stories of just insane situations that people, especially when you get into background and stuff that I’m like, how are you even, what’s happening here? How did you make it this far in life? What’s going on? But to piggyback on some of the stories that you were telling about the younger ones in your life, one day I had to text my dad and ask him for a toe strap, but I spelled it TOE instead of TOW. And I still, this was 10 years ago, I’m still, he’s like, oh, you need a toe strap?
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Toe strap.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
And he sends me emojis and memes and I’m like, okay, dad, I get it. It’s fine. Can’t pull one over on me. Now I work for a construction company. Right? That’s
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Awesome.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
I had a guy, this was in Atlanta. I’m trying to remember to leave the names of the hospitals out, but you were the director, see if you remember this. So I was interviewing for a general maintenance technician. So I get this resume. This guy has a master’s degree, so you don’t get people with master’s degree, interview him for $14 an hour jobs. So I want to interview the guy. So I sit down and interview him, and I love this guy. When I got to the, can you pass a background check? He had been in prison for 20 years.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
You had plenty of time to get the master’s degree.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
I think it was, maybe it was involuntary
Speaker 3 (26:36):
Manslaughter or something like that. Yeah. It wasn’t, I’m kind of remembering, but it was not something unserious.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
No, no. The other person died,
Speaker 3 (26:47):
But
Speaker 2 (26:47):
It happened when he was 14 years old or something like that. And I love this dude. So I’m like, I want to hire him. And he’s like, you lost your mind. You can’t hire this guy. Those are sometimes
Speaker 4 (27:02):
The best workers though
Speaker 2 (27:04):
It, I’m like, no, man. This guy, I believe in him. We got to give him a second chance. And he was like, are you trying to get me fired?
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Well, this is where we had that session where we did some TikTok questions and we answered them. And you get into this situation and you were talking during that where as a CEO, you can make those kinds of decisions, but your rank and file manager, your middle managers can’t make those decisions because you have this evil HR department sitting next to you with these list of rules and regulations that they say you have to follow. And one of them is you don’t hire felons. Now, we’ve had this discussion multiple times after this because people are supposed to rehabilitate,
Speaker 4 (27:54):
And
Speaker 3 (27:54):
If they rehabilitate, shouldn’t you be able to give ’em a chance? But companies don’t have that written in their policies to allow you to do that. So it’s this really weird conversation you get in about. So how do they ever survive if they are like this guy a good person now? And I just make a story, but what if this guy’s involuntary manslaughter or whatever was not really his fault, but it just happened and he had to serve his 20 years, he served his 20 years he came. How do you make that good for this individual who’s trying to do good now?
Speaker 5 (28:30):
Yeah,
Speaker 3 (28:31):
It’s a weird, and we’ve had that conversation multiple times.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
And to add onto that, it makes it even more difficult because we were a hospital, so there’s different, my gosh, things because this particular hospital got a bunch of money from CMS, but also got a bunch of money from the county. So you’re subject to even more regulations.
Speaker 5 (28:50):
But
Speaker 2 (28:50):
That’s an example where if it was today and it was at remediate, I would’ve hired the guy. Now there would’ve been stipulations because we can’t send people with records into hospitals. We can’t do that. But there are other things that the company does that is in the background,
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Be in warehousing, you can be in whatever fulfillment.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
I would’ve done it. Right. Because I do believe that, I mean, I don’t talk about my past very often, but my dad was in prison most of my life now. He never rehabilitated. He needed to be there, but not everybody’s that way. Right.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Well, I could pretty much guarantee you if half the stuff I got caught for it would not be pretty exactly
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Right
Speaker 1 (29:42):
When I was a youth.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
That’s true. When I say I was a knuckle dragon in the interal, I mean it, right. I did a lot of dumb stuff and I just, lucky enough, I didn’t get caught. So yeah, that’s a little bit of a downer story. I probably should have told that one.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
Well, let me get a little bit sappy. You’re talking about the holiday stuff, right? Oh
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Gosh.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Because in hospitals, and we had talked about this ad nauseum, they don’t close. And you talked about being on call. And one of the things that I enjoyed the most, because my family all celebrated on Christmas Eve, and that’s when we always did things with all the people I told you about earlier, get together and they do all the celebration was Christmas. So we always had wherever I was, and we were usually a religious hospital, sometimes Catholic, other parochial type things. So Christmas was a big deal, so people all wanted to be off, but it’s a hospital.
Speaker 4 (30:42):
So
Speaker 3 (30:42):
We would always have, almost all the administrators would come in on Christmas Day and serve whoever’s working the meal. And that was one of the most fun things I ever did in my entire career at hospitals, was coming in and showing those people that we cared about them, that they had to be here taking care of these sick people,
Speaker 5 (31:00):
And
Speaker 3 (31:01):
We got to come in and take
Speaker 5 (31:02):
Care of them
Speaker 3 (31:02):
And do something for them.
Speaker 5 (31:03):
And
Speaker 3 (31:04):
We’re taking time out of our lives because we realized we’re part of them. That was always great. I mean, that was the best thing we ever did. Well,
Speaker 4 (31:11):
I will say coming from, I was also a CNA for 10 years, and so, oh,
Speaker 3 (31:15):
I didn’t know
Speaker 4 (31:16):
That. It’s kind of how I got my start in healthcare to be honest. But growing up, my mom and dad moved down here to Kansas City and my sister went to college. So I was set in a place by myself for a couple years. And so some of my favorite memories around the holiday time when I couldn’t go back home was going and picking up shifts, and not only seeing the team that you work with coming together to be available for your patients and your residents, but to be a part of the special moments of the families coming in for the patients and then being available for ones that didn’t have family coming in. It’s such a special moment to be able to be a part of somebody else’s family when you’re away from your own. So I always tried to take that mindset going into the holidays that I may not be able to be with my family, but I’m with somebody that may potentially need me. So let me just add onto your sappy, because that’s what I just did, but I just thought that was so cool because being part of healthcare in a time like the holidays and you have an opportunity to make a difference, just do it. You could be making a huge impact on somebody else, right?
Speaker 3 (32:26):
Because two ends to that spectrum. It’s the staff you’re talking about that you’re in there with supporting. But then there’s a whole bunch of people in that hospital
Speaker 4 (32:33):
That may be alone
Speaker 3 (32:34):
That are either alone or this is their holiday, they’re sick, some really critical things going on in their lives,
Speaker 4 (32:40):
And
Speaker 3 (32:40):
They’re in the hospital on Christmas. Or take your pick, Holly Christmas is a big one and we’re dressed up for today, but you got two groups of people, the sick ones and the healthy ones in there kind of working or dying, whatever the case is. People have tragic accidents on holidays and
Speaker 5 (32:59):
It’s
Speaker 3 (32:59):
The worst time of year. And so it’s a lot you can do by being part of that in a healthcare organization. Exactly. I mean, that’s where I list spend my career, so that’s all I know.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Yeah, that’s good stuff. I have sappy stories too, but I’ll cry, so I’m not going to do it.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
Well, has anybody got any big plans for the holiday season? Are you going to do anything fun and festive or is this it dressing up in ugly sweaters podcast and recording a podcast?
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Yeah. No, this is it, right? This is everything on Christmas of this podcast.
Speaker 4 (33:28):
We’re all going to sit around and watch the episode together. That’s right.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
I will put up an unbelievable amount of decorations outside my house. I love,
Speaker 4 (33:37):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
My kids love that. I’ve got those massive totes of lights and snowmen that light up and angels that you hang Santa Claus nice
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Coming by.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
Yeah, and I’ll run. I mean, I live on 14 acres, and so we’ve got a lot of street frontage and I’ve got fencing, so I’ll run lights all around the fence.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
Oh, I love that. Nice.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Heck yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Yeah. And the sad thing is, I was talking to somebody else today, my daughter Ella is 17, my son Elvis is 14. So it’s different now, right? I mean, they’re excited, but it’s not like when they were little kids and they tear through the presence in five minutes and
Speaker 4 (34:24):
I still tear through my presence and I’m not 17.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Well, now you try to figure out what to buy him.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
What?
Speaker 2 (34:32):
What’s your gift? It’s like, here’s a gift card.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
That’s honestly your best bet with that age group.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
My in-laws are coming into town, so that’ll be fun. So I mean, we’re just hanging out
Speaker 5 (34:45):
And
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Relaxing. So that’s in Thanksgiving. I actually, I have no idea what we’re doing at Christmas. I do what my wife tells me.
Speaker 4 (34:54):
How about you guys? Anything fun?
Speaker 3 (34:56):
Well, this is where the sappy part would really get bad. So I’m going to cut it really short because I’d have him in tears and me in tears if I started talking about some of the stuff that we have in common,
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Especially
Speaker 3 (35:08):
Over Thanksgiving and then Christmas. It’s kind of a very somber time for my family, my wife and I short. Part of that is we both lost children. So that time of year gets bad sometimes. And so what we do is we do something like in Thanksgiving, we go somewhere where we can forget about things. And Christmas we just go away. My daughter and I and my wife will go place in New Mexico where there’s, believe it or not, there’s guns. And we shoot clays and we do stuff like that.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
Nice. That’s beautiful. That’s beautiful.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (35:48):
Wow,
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Man. I became a grandpa, right? Oh, that’s so cool.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
I didn’t know that.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Really? So I know. I don’t look it.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
No, you don’t. It’s crazy. I’m so jealous. I look 75 years old. You’re over there, you’re going the other way. What’s that movie? Benjamin Button.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
So I will say, everybody talks, it’s sort of like people talk to you about being married, but until you’re married, you don’t know. It’s like people talk about being a parent until you’re a parent. You don’t know what it’s like. So everybody’s like, you’re going to totally enjoy the grandparent deals. And I’m, in my mind, I’m just too young type deal. I don’t feel like I’m having a good time. But I will say it’s all true. It is without a doubt. Unequivocally one of the coolest things. And it is, I don’t know. It is been a total blessing joy. And so that’s fun. Now, like my wife loves Christmas. She is like you on the outside. She does that on the inside of the house. I’m like, do we really need more Christmas stuff? Right? Always. That is the answer. Right? I stopped asking. It’s amazing. I mean, I think we’re at 30 totes of, I mean, it is unbelievable, right? Yeah. Yeah. That’s cool. You
Speaker 3 (37:11):
Need a whole room in your house to store it all, don’t you? Your
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Garage? Yes. Or an extra garage. I want to just send a picture so you can see this, right? I really am. It’s unbelievable. But I’m like, it’s all good. But it’s funny, it just Christmas starts taking on a new deal where with a grandkid, and you’re like, huh, alright, this is fun. And it’s reinvigorating and it’s like when you were little. And
Speaker 3 (37:37):
So
Speaker 1 (37:38):
That’s been a fun new deal.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
Well, my grandkids are in Michigan still. We always make something where we bring them all together. A couple years ago, we all went to Mexico,
Speaker 5 (37:50):
Stayed
Speaker 3 (37:51):
In the VRBO, the whole family and did the beach and all that. And then this year we were going to go to Colorado Springs and we’re going to do all the sightseeing stuff, little Pikes Peak and all that kind of stuff. So that’s this year’s Thanksgiving time. So I mean, that’s how we do things. So I can see my grandkids. I mean, it’s one of those things where you say, Hey, you’re all coming to here. Here’s the plane tickets. Get on a plane and come. And you just have to show up. And that’s the best of the best, getting those grandkids together. That’s
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Good. So one of my passions is the outdoors, right? Hiking, hunting, fishing, everything.
Speaker 4 (38:23):
No, you don’t say exactly.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
And so I made the mistake last year of booking a hunt in Mexico from the 15th to the 22nd. I’m in my mind, I’m like, I’m back for Christmas. Right? Yeah. I won’t do that again. So now we’re going down to Silver Dollar City and seeing all the Christmas lights, and I’m super excited. I mean, it’s fun, right? I’m like, I just pushed those to January now. That’s right. You still can get ’em done. It’s a different time, right? Yeah. But just not December.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Right? We probably should start wrapping this one up. We’re right there at the time. All right.
Speaker 4 (39:01):
Well, thanks for hanging out guys.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
Yeah, thanks. That’s awesome. Good stuff. Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Thank you for hanging out with us on FM After Hours. Make sure you follow us on all of our social media platforms for your regular dose of Facility Insights. As always, a big shout out to remediate and Granger for their gracious sponsorships. Catch you next time on FM after hours.