Discouraging Day

As you know, we started the day yesterday with an ecall false alarm. The rest of the day didn't go a whole lot better and was probably the first time that we seriously questioned our desire to continue with this job. It turned out to be a 19 hour day when it was all over.

Aside from the normal routine of a conference call in the AM to review the day's planned sales activities and many fires that we had to put out regarding resident issues, we had another conference call in the afternoon that lasted over an hour. It was to discuss the Accounts Receivable list with the Regional Director who is trying to develop an action plan to collect past due rent from some of the residents. That isn't so bad except that the call was during our busiest part of the day and it got to the point during the last half hour that he was wasting our valuable time chasing overdue payments of $100 or $200 from a few residents.

Then there was the supper time. A half hour into the meal and just as Josie and I were finishing up our coffee and tea service, the ecall alarm went off again. We rushed downstairs (missing supper) to see where the emergency was and discovered that the apartment light wasn't lit wherever the problem was occurring. The alarm was sounding with no indication of where to go to check on the emergency. The only option for us was to go door-to-door at each apartment to see if they were OK. Most of them were in the dining room having supper, so we had to check the ones that were still occupied where people didn't come to the sit down meal. That effort revealed nothing and we were in communication with the Risk Management people from the Region. They suggested trying several different options - including checking all of the pull cords in each and every apartment - to discover where the alarm was being tripped and nothing worked.

There were other problems associated with the failed effort. First of all, we had to shut down the alarm in our apartment so that we would be able to sleep without the alarm sounding constantly. The second problem, while shutting down the system in our apartment, was what happens if there is a real emergency in the middle of the night and we cannot respond as a result of shutting down the alarm system in our apartment. We were forced to take the chance. There will be a technician coming into the community before noon today to fix the system, but in the meantime, the alarm will continue to blast in the dining room where we are not able to shut it down until the problem is fixed.

Nineteen hours after the first ecall false alarm we returned to our apartment for rest. We get to do another full day today and have ecall duty tonight for the whole night until 7 AM tomorrow. It is very discouraging and has us, aside from being dead tired, questioning our long term stamina for handling this kind of schedule. One resident told us that this situation has happened 3 times before. The building is old, the wiring is old and there needs to be a major overhaul of the system. We're hoping that this is just a big bump in the road and things will get better soon...