Deductible

Today I had a lady that has a government sponsored drug plan. This plan calculates your deductible based on your income. Which, of course, I don't know.

I'm guessing shse has a fairly small deductible. Why would I guess that? Simply because the lady clearly has trouble grasping normal day to day facts. Trust me. I had to talk to her for 20 minutes. 20 wasted minutes.

At any rate, she called me from home after wasting 20 minutes of my time while she was in the store. She wanted to know what her deductible was because she wanted some pills. I tried to tell her I don't know what the deductible is. However, I could try to bill it to the drug plan and if her deductible was satisfied, the government website would say so. That's all it tells me though. Satisfied or not. No extra info whereby I could deduce her (or anyone's) income.

She couldn't grasp that. another wasted 10 minutes. Finally she decided to go back to whatever daytime soap opera she watches. Thank gawd

I wish people would realize that knowing their drug plan info is THEIR job. not mine. There is no way I can know what your drug plan deductible etc is. There are so many of them that it is impossible.

And I don't really care. Figure it out!

And There's 10 minutes I'll Never Get Back....

One of the local doctor's offices got a new voicemail system. There are many doctors on this system. When you call, your choices begin. "press one for Dr. Left, Right and Central, Press 2 for Dr. Red, Green or Blue..." this goes on and on. There are at least 3 of these menus you have to go through if you are unlucky and want Dr. Last-On-The-List. I ususally get pissed off and start pressing buttons at this point. After you have chosen your doctor, there are MORE choices.

"If you are a patient or calling on behalf of a patient press one...." This is usually the one I want. At which point there is ANOTHER fucking list. "For appointments press one, for the nurse press 2..." At which point I stab 2 and get her fucking machine becasue she is "away from her desk".

It literally takes me 10 minutes to get through this system just to leave a message like "I can't read the dose on john doe's rx of dammitol. Please call me at 555-5555"

And yet, if the doctor's office has to wait 30 seconds on hold to talk to a pharmacist, it's the end of the fucking world. What a piss off.

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.

Dumb Question of the Day

"I'm out of my Percocets. Can you just give me 10 or so to get me through?"

Really? You really think I would "just" give you some?

Riiiiight.

Where's my daquiri?

I Meant it!

When I asked you to call me before you wanted the rest of you rprescription I meant it! I remember the conversatuion we had. I said, and I quote "This is a 2 week supply. Call me when you need the rest of it. This way we can make sure you don't have a reaction to it. I will order it in special for you then."

What that means is I don't have it on my shelf. So if you come waltzing in looking for it, you're gonna hafta wait till the next order comes in tomorrow. too bad, so sad.

When I say something, it's for a reason, dumbass.

And that's 90 seconds of my life I won't get back.....

Listen up folks. You voicmail message is NOT cute. I don't want to waste 90 seconds listening to your dog bark it's way through "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" or any other "cute" message. Just state what number/person I have reached and leave it at that. I have waaaaay more things that I could be doing that are waaaaaay more fun. Like shoving a pen in my ear.

While I'm at it, big pharma insurance company? Your voice recognition system sucks. It NEVER recognizes my voice. Or my technician's voice, or the cashier's voice. We actually spent a quiet evening playing "can you get the right extension" on your voicemail. What was amazing was that no-one got the right extension ONCE. What a time-waster. Of course, we were looking to kill some time that night, so I guess there is a silver lining.

I am a Technical genius.

It always amazes me how dumb some people can be about technology and computers. And they work with them every day. I could forgive you if you never really touched one, but if you work with a computer and printer on a daily basis, some things should be obvious.

Like when the print quality sucks. The first thing you should do is pull out the toner cartridge to see if something is obviously wrong, right? Nope. What you do is call technical support and hold the phone while listening to the muzac version of "Innagoddavida" for 45 minutes.

I came in for my shift once to the above scenario. So, I pull out the print cartridge. Voila! A label has somehow peeled off the paper and stuck to the cartridge. I peel said label off, do a test print....and it WORKS! Problem solved.

Of course that means the above individual has to go back to work instead of just standing there.....

Then there is the "I can't read the doctor's signature" dodge. Often there is a phone number or licence number. If it is a licence number, then the answer is easy, go to the college of physicians and surgeons website, go to their search engine, type in the number and the doctor's name magically appears. The phone number thing means you actually have to pick up the phone and call the number, but even if it is after hours there is almost always a machine that says "You have reached Dr. Idont Workweekends if you have a medical emergency please go to the nearest emergency room. Please note you need an appointment for prescription renewals...bla bla bla". This means that you still can get the doctor's name from the message.

I often fax in a copy of the prescription to the doctors office when I need clarification of something. Even if it is after hours. Many times there is still someone in the office clearing up paperwork even though they are not answering the phone. And they call me back with the answer even though it is technically after hours. This way I can finish the prescription and not have it hanging over my head until the next business day.

Even if they don't give me an answer right away because there really IS no-one there, it is STILL not hanging over my head. The question has been communicated, now I just have to wait.

Now that is how one uses ones technical know-how to get the job done.