After surveying a skilled nursing facility, the Surveyor noted that he was missing a page of a facility policy and procedure that he needed to complete the report. The facility staff was called and a message to return call due to missing document was left with facility. A message was left to call the Surveyors work phone number. When the Surveyor did not receive a return telephone call, the facility called again and this time staff hung up on the Surveyor. When he called back again thinking they had been disconnected, the staff responded by saying, "This is not funny, keep this up and we will call the police" and hung up again. Very confused, the Surveyor continued on to his next survey assignment and in the course of the day, called home office to leave a reminder to contact the "rude" facility again. To his chagrin, when he checked his message on the answering machine, the outgoing message on the phone was simply "heavy breathing". Evidently the facility thought the call was from an obscene pervert. The Surveyor then called the facility again and resolved the issue and yes, received the missing page for his file.

While out surveying on a team in Timbuktu, TN, I was left at a business after closing. This was a new area for us and I was a new surveyor and knew not a soul except for the team. We were approximately 2 hours from home and the team was in one vehicle. My team had left to go to Wal-Mart (of course) and had believed the business they left me at would not close until later. Not so!! So I struck up a conversation with the owner and we discovered we had a friend in common in the area. She graciously provided me with a ride to Wal-Mart and on the way there we passed the frantic van members going back to pick me up.

Recently I was attending some training offered by the Building Professional Institute at the University of Texas at Arlington. My first class was "Fire Sprinkler Acceptance Testing". It was a full day class and the instructor was very knowledgeable and was providing useful information.

Now like many of you, I have to carry a pager for my job and I have a cell phone for my personal use. I have carried them so long that I no longer even realize that I have them unless I get paged, receive a phone call, or need to make a call. Therefore I need to be reminded to set them on "silent alert" or turn them off when they would be a distraction. Normal settings on my pager includes "silent alert", but my normal settings on my cell phone are such that the telephone will vibrate only for the first two rings before providing a normal ring tone.

The instructor for this class was not a professional instructor. He had a real job. He forgot to mention turning off pagers and cell phones at the start of the class. Therefore, I did not remember to change my settings.

About half way through the morning session, my cell phone started vibrating. Knowing that it would soon start with the audible alert, I thought I would quietly answer the phone and try to avoid disrupting the class. I picked up the phone and quietly said "hello". The lady’s voice from the other end said "is Bill there?" Not being Bill, I responded in hushed tones "you have the wrong number".

This would not be an interesting incident except that at the same time I was answering the phone, the instructor had just put another slide on the screen and said "this is a _______ sprinkler head". I didn’t really hear him because I was listening to the lady on the other end of the telephone say "is this 817-432-. . .?" Being annoyed with the interruption, I loudly replied after the instructor finished his statement, "no, it’s not!" The class broke out in laughter and the instructor simply said "yes it is". After I apologized to him, he said "we needed a break about now and the timing was perfect".

On my second survey as a State surveyor, Mira Nelson was teaching me the ropes. We went out to an agency for an initial HCSSA survey in a private home located in the country. When we found the agency address, we parked in the driveway, got out of our car, and walked to the front door. While walking to the front door, a goat with some pretty big horns came out of nowhere and took a liking to Mira. He rubbed his horns against her leg and gently nudged her along. Mira got nervous and ran for her car. She opened the car door and jumped in but couldn’t start the car because the goat jumped into the care and was sitting on her lap. I took hold of the horns and guided the goat out of the car. Mira shut the door. We waited for the agency owner to come home so we could do his survey.

When the agency owner arrived, we walked to the front door again only to have Mira chased back to the car by the goat. The goat only got half of his body across her lap this time, but now three baby goats wanted in on the fun too. Two of the baby goats jumped into the care and were jumping around, and the third was trying to climb in when I got to the car. I got the goats out of the car and had the owner lock up the goats so we could continue the survey. Needless to say, Mira needed a cup of coffee to calm down before we started!

The agency passed its initial survey.

During the initial walk through tour in a nursing home, this little sweet looking elderly female grabbed my hand as I walked by. She said "lord, honey, you could fry an agg on that palm."

Another surveyor　and I arrived about 4:45AM to the dialysis unit.　 We had to rush to dress and get there by that time.　 We were very busy all day with observations and reviews. We hurriedly had lunch and back to work in order to finish the survey.

About 5PM we were　organizing our information to do our exit when　　my co-worker　announced that she had a fashion crisis. I looked and she had on one brown leather loafer and one black dress shoe with a small heel.

She asked me if I thought anyone in the facility had noticed. After the exit, we asked the director and she said one of the staff　said to her as we arrived "That Medicare surveyor has got on two different kinds of shoes."　 The director said she told her that there must be something wrong with her foot..........

One time my team was in the south middle TN area and we stopped at an exotic animal farm. The owner was very receptive to sharing his knowledge and was showing our 4-woman team some of his animals. We had one surveyor that was frantically afraid of snakes and another that had never moved faster than a turtle in her life. Well! When he brought out the hugest snake (stub-tailed python) I had ever seen in my life you should have seen 2 of our team members running for the van. The slow mover member ran like Speedy Gonzales and the other member was right behind her. Smoke was coming off their feet! The remaining team member and I stood and talked with the owner and petted the snake that was around the owner's neck.

I worked on nursing home surveys and at times we assigned different team members. One such time, this surveyor that moved at her own slow pace was assigned to my team. Although she was told what time she should be ready to leave the motel the next morning, she still was not ready, talking on the phone to spouse, and ignored a repeated request to "come on". The team leader finally just left her at the motel. She called the office and spoke with supervisor to inform them that she had been left at a town 2 hours from her home. The team leader did return to pick her up after dropping myself and another surveyor off to complete med passes. Luckily, our team leader was intelligent enough to do that because while trying to drive home that night, an ice storm came in and a normal 2 hour drive took approximately 4 hours.

As a new surveyor I had not a clue as to what to expect in this job. Also, I had not a clue in regards to some of the accommodations that we would be staying at. We were sent to a remote area near the Kentucky line. The motel or lodge had no telephones or alarm clocks. The survey team had no cell phones then (not they could have gotten out in the wilderness there). We also didn't have any alarm clocks with us. We were told by the lodge staff that they could wake up one member and then that member would have to wake others up. We devised a system to knock on each others’ connecting walls in substitution of an alarm clock. It worked!!!

While out on a home health survey, my co-worker and I were looking for an address that could not be found after an hour of circling around in the same area. The street had been broken up the interstate system. Although we asked utility workers and a police officer the directions, they were unable to help us. Finally, in frustration we stopped and asked a gentleman that had been walking in the area and probably noticed that we had passed him 10,000 times. He politely pointed to a short street (no sign of course) that was approximately 50 yards to the right of where we had been driving for the previous hour.

An 82-year old Resident who eloped from an Assisted Living Facility was found safe the next evening after spending time with the local mechanic who lived in the neighborhood. The mechanic spent some time with the Resident, bought him some food and gave him a place to rest. When the Resident continued to "hang around" the mechanic gave him his key to the garage office and told him to lock up when he left. When the Resident was still there the next morning, the mechanic thought maybe he should call the police since the Resident seemed to be "homeless". Maybe the police helicopters circling the area tipped him off! When the Resident was returned to the facility later that day in good health and good spirits, all he could say was, "What’s all the fuss?!!" It was an "adventure" for the Resident.