Today I had a conference call with the Florida Board of Massage Therapists to determine if my application for a Massage Therapy License would be approved. The call began promptly at 11 a.m. and I was released from the call at 1:36 p.m. (The call continued but my part was over.) The license was approved, which is what all my friends and family want to know, but I thought the call itself deserved a mention because of just what all happened in the 2 hours and 35 minutes leading up to that.
No, the Board did not spend all that time discussing just my application. The time spent on my application during the call amounted to less than a minute. Thankfully.
Here's a synopsis of what did come before me: The first "tab" as they called it was a decision whether to permanently revoke the license of a person who is currently serving out a 15 year sentence for sexual battery - on a client at the massage studio where he was working part time. They voted unanimously to revoke the license.
The second tab was to revisit a second-time appeal to a denied application for a person who had quite an interesting history in the massage world. The initial application was denied because it was discovered that the person had been practicing unlicensed, but represented herself as licensed. Further discussion showed that she had submitted more than one application, with conflicting information provided on crucial points. Also, she had worked in a massage establishment (not in Florida) with a known history of sexual misconduct. It was also disclosed that the school she attended was never actually a massage school at all. The Board unanimously voted to uphold their original decision. This decision was reached about 35 minutes into the call.
After this, the decisions and discussions became much more muddy. January joined me in the room to listen to what was going on, because it was all just crazy to me. For the next two hours, minus a 10-minute break, they debated back and forth over what seemed to be the same thing, but paused a couple of times for motions. I won't go into what this was about, but I will say it felt like I was listening to a verbal tennis match on acid. Then there was the one board member whose sole purpose in life seems to be to vote opposite of whatever everyone else says.
But there were a number of people who all benefited from the last of these debates because it resulted in the approval of several more applications based on the outcome of that one discussion.
Finally, they got to the easier cases. They said my name, I stated I was present, and they pulled up my file. As soon as the file was open, someone spoke up and moved to approve my application unencumbered. Two people immediately seconded, a vote followed and without pause was approved unanimously.
Hallelujah!
So, I am approved, and should have my license either later today or tomorrow. I'm guessing it will be tomorrow since the call was still in progress when I said "Thank you" and hung up.
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