Well, Excuuuuuse Me!

Yesterday the store I was at recieved a call from a customer who was vacationing in the area. Apparently she had an outbreak of a nasty infection. She had called her doctor in her hometown and the doctor agreed to give her a prescription. HOWEVER, the doctor wanted the pharmacy to call her instead of the usual doctor-calls-pharmacy routine. Why? Because the doctor was too cheap to pay the 0.35$ a long distance call would have called. This happens all the time.

So, even though it was quite busy, I put down what I was doing in order to get this lady her prescription that she did indeed need badly. That is the only reason I would actually do this. I give a crap about my customers. At least, the ones who aren't trying to scam some Oxycontin etc... but I digress.

I called the doctors office, the receptionist answered and said "Can you hold please." I responded that I was calling long distance, so could she please not leave me on hold for too long? The subtext here is that I could call her back if it would be a while. She told me that she was on "another line" and I would HAVE to hold. Yeah, I know, but as a common courtesy, if the hold will be long, could she not say something, I thought? Anyhoo, she put me on hold. I decided I would give her 1 minute to come back. I pulled out my watch and started counting.

Happily, it only took her 37 seconds to get back to me. I explained who I was and did she have a prescription there for the lady? She went to look, found she did indeed have one and read it out to me. wonderful. We are getting somewhere and almost done! I can now go look after the 4 customers that have piled up at the counter waiting for me.

Or so I thought. This telephone answering person (I have demoted her from receptionist you will note) then proceeded to attempt to castigate me for stating that I was calling long distance. I told her that normally doctor's offices call ME, not the other way around. However, given the dire circumstances of the patient, I had made an exception. The phone lady then tried to say that we were all just trying to do our jobs and that she had 3 whole phone lines to answer! Cry me a river lady. Try counselling a patient while another one is trying to interrupt to "just ask a quick question" , the phone lines (all THREE of them) are ringing, the technician wants you to translate a prescription AND your bladder is about to explode because you haven't had time to take a potty break for 4 hours.

I told the woman that in actuality her job was to call me and thank you for your time good bye. I hung up on her.

The sad part is that the doctor is probably a very nice (if cheap) lady. Too bad her front office staff is a jackass.