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thebratqueenOn the whole a day to try my patience. Things got a bit better once I got home but - gah! So wanted to shoot people at work today.
And normally on a day when everyone who comes into the office gets on my nerves I'd be willing to admit the common denominator and blame it on hormones. But consider this sampling (note - sampling, as in I'm not even listing all of them) of what I had to work with:
1) Woman who calls because she chipped (not cracked, not broke, chipped) a tooth and wants it seen right now, as an emergency, because she's going to the Cape that afternoon and can't be bothered to come in then (note to future patients: your rich lifestyle and the inconveinencing thereof is not an emergency), when we actually have an opening to squeeze her into. I explain to her that the morning is packed (which is true b/c we were solid with regular patients already, then had a legit emergency patient on top of it) but if she absolutely has to she's welcome to come in and sit in the waiting room until the doc can see her. Once there she spends the time trying to ingratiate herself to me by constantly going on about how she used to work a job like this and she knows what a pain patients like her are - which means she's now not only ignoring the needs of the other patients but she's preventing me from doing my job.
2) Patient who has outstanding balance who we've already agreed to a payment plan with (as the doc's philosophy is he'd rather have little dribbles of some money than no money) who for some reason feels a need to call me up to ask repeatedly if it's okay that she only sends $10 this week. Which is annoying because A) we've agreed to this a thousand times already, such as the last time she sent in ten bucks and B) the conversation amounts to five minutes of "So is that okay" "Yes, it's more than alright." "The doc isn't mad?" "No, it's fine. Ten dollars is more than fine." "So it's okay?" "Yes." "He's not mad?" "No." lather, rinse, repeat.
3) Patient who comes in who has a lost appointment. Now the lost appointment is our fault (or more accurately the doc's as he screwed up the computer while I was on vacation). Basically what happened is backup went kerfluey and a day's worth of information, like upcoming appointments made that day, was lost. So we expect that from time to time we're going to get patients coming in with appointments we don't know about. We're fine with that. Except A) the doc and his girlfriend (who was filling in for me) remembered that this woman called and called her to explain the problem, apologize profusely and ask could she please tell them when the appointment was? B) The woman never called back C) the woman did, however, helpfully inform me that yes she got that message and D) when I then tried to ask the woman what she was in for so I could put it into the computer and, you know, give her the appointment we had the following conversation which lasted eight years but I'll summarize: "So what did we have you in for today?" "The doc can't see me?" "Yes, he can, I just need to know what we put you down for." "Can't he see me?" "Yes, he can. So what did we have you down for?" "I had an appointment for today." "Yes, you did. And you'll be getting that appointment and I'm very sorry for the computer mixup. Now do you remember what the appointment was for?" "The doc isn't going to see me?"
Sigh.
And that was just the morning. And just a sample of the morning at that. For the afternoon, let me give you but one example:
A family. Mom, dad, 9 year old son, 3 year old daughter, two other kids who are about two (possibly twins). The 3 babies, as babies are wont to do, become bored and start tearing up the magazines in the waiting room. Now I get that it would not be intuative that our waiting room would not have toys in it because some adult doctors will still have toys for the kids. So fine. But these kids apparently do not have toys of their own either, or if they do their parents did not bring them with. And I also get that kids will grab whatever they can and do whatever they can to what they're touching because they are children. So I hold none of this against them.
What I do hold against their parents, however, is the fact that the only reason why the kids got hold of the magazines is because Mom herself took them down off of the rack that was out of the reach of children, handed them out to the kids and told them to have fun ripping them up.
Yes, you read that right. But lest you think she's a bad parent, she did admonish the kids that they could only have 1 magazine each.
Why did I put up with this, you might ask? Because Mom also told the kids that if they didn't behave she was going to put them out into the car and I honestly could not tell if she meant unsupervised. I figured a few magazines were worth losing in the name of making sure these kids avoided getting heat stroke or any of the other twelve billion causes of death for 2 year olds in unsupervised cars.
So I think you can see why today I was a teeny bit grumpy.
Better now that I'm home and have had a chance to rest and get away from humanity.
And normally on a day when everyone who comes into the office gets on my nerves I'd be willing to admit the common denominator and blame it on hormones. But consider this sampling (note - sampling, as in I'm not even listing all of them) of what I had to work with:
1) Woman who calls because she chipped (not cracked, not broke, chipped) a tooth and wants it seen right now, as an emergency, because she's going to the Cape that afternoon and can't be bothered to come in then (note to future patients: your rich lifestyle and the inconveinencing thereof is not an emergency), when we actually have an opening to squeeze her into. I explain to her that the morning is packed (which is true b/c we were solid with regular patients already, then had a legit emergency patient on top of it) but if she absolutely has to she's welcome to come in and sit in the waiting room until the doc can see her. Once there she spends the time trying to ingratiate herself to me by constantly going on about how she used to work a job like this and she knows what a pain patients like her are - which means she's now not only ignoring the needs of the other patients but she's preventing me from doing my job.
2) Patient who has outstanding balance who we've already agreed to a payment plan with (as the doc's philosophy is he'd rather have little dribbles of some money than no money) who for some reason feels a need to call me up to ask repeatedly if it's okay that she only sends $10 this week. Which is annoying because A) we've agreed to this a thousand times already, such as the last time she sent in ten bucks and B) the conversation amounts to five minutes of "So is that okay" "Yes, it's more than alright." "The doc isn't mad?" "No, it's fine. Ten dollars is more than fine." "So it's okay?" "Yes." "He's not mad?" "No." lather, rinse, repeat.
3) Patient who comes in who has a lost appointment. Now the lost appointment is our fault (or more accurately the doc's as he screwed up the computer while I was on vacation). Basically what happened is backup went kerfluey and a day's worth of information, like upcoming appointments made that day, was lost. So we expect that from time to time we're going to get patients coming in with appointments we don't know about. We're fine with that. Except A) the doc and his girlfriend (who was filling in for me) remembered that this woman called and called her to explain the problem, apologize profusely and ask could she please tell them when the appointment was? B) The woman never called back C) the woman did, however, helpfully inform me that yes she got that message and D) when I then tried to ask the woman what she was in for so I could put it into the computer and, you know, give her the appointment we had the following conversation which lasted eight years but I'll summarize: "So what did we have you in for today?" "The doc can't see me?" "Yes, he can, I just need to know what we put you down for." "Can't he see me?" "Yes, he can. So what did we have you down for?" "I had an appointment for today." "Yes, you did. And you'll be getting that appointment and I'm very sorry for the computer mixup. Now do you remember what the appointment was for?" "The doc isn't going to see me?"
Sigh.
And that was just the morning. And just a sample of the morning at that. For the afternoon, let me give you but one example:
A family. Mom, dad, 9 year old son, 3 year old daughter, two other kids who are about two (possibly twins). The 3 babies, as babies are wont to do, become bored and start tearing up the magazines in the waiting room. Now I get that it would not be intuative that our waiting room would not have toys in it because some adult doctors will still have toys for the kids. So fine. But these kids apparently do not have toys of their own either, or if they do their parents did not bring them with. And I also get that kids will grab whatever they can and do whatever they can to what they're touching because they are children. So I hold none of this against them.
What I do hold against their parents, however, is the fact that the only reason why the kids got hold of the magazines is because Mom herself took them down off of the rack that was out of the reach of children, handed them out to the kids and told them to have fun ripping them up.
Yes, you read that right. But lest you think she's a bad parent, she did admonish the kids that they could only have 1 magazine each.
Why did I put up with this, you might ask? Because Mom also told the kids that if they didn't behave she was going to put them out into the car and I honestly could not tell if she meant unsupervised. I figured a few magazines were worth losing in the name of making sure these kids avoided getting heat stroke or any of the other twelve billion causes of death for 2 year olds in unsupervised cars.
So I think you can see why today I was a teeny bit grumpy.
Better now that I'm home and have had a chance to rest and get away from humanity.
