Home at last

[thebratqueen]

Back from belly dancing. Class tonight was very good. There were four students in total (one new) and we got a lot of drills and other work done. I know my stomach's going to be feeling this in the morning. =)

Dance class was also good in that there's nothing like exercise to help cleanse the body from whatever emotional yuck might currently be on you. And while we're on that subject...

Thanks to all those who replied with sympathy and such. If I had extra time I'd try to do individual replies to all of you, but I'm way behind schedule on a ton of things so consider this one stop shopping =)

Basically the sitch with the boss is that normally he's a very good boss, but he does have his pointy-haired moments and this week has been all of them all at once. Way back on Monday I suspected something might be up in his personal life. So far I've been able to piece together him and his wife having arguments over how to decorate their house, his ex-wife stressing him out for reasons unknown, his daughters coming over this weekend for Hannukkah (being with his kids has been stressful for him since the divorce), and, if I know his moods at all, probably something else as well that very likely set him off in the first place way back earlier in the week when he was freaking out over interior decorating with the Mrs.

So yeah, something's up and I am sympathetic to the fact that it's outside influences making him go all freaky. Doesn't make me any happier to be the punching bag for it as I was on Monday and Tuesday, but what can you do?

The other problem is that this anxiety on his part is manifesting itself through pointy-haired boss tendencies that he has at the best of times anyway. High on this list is the fact that he self-admitedly has no memory retention. He's very meme-oriented, in the original sense of the word. He can grasp a small factoid about something, but then when you try to get him to understand nuance he's lost. In other words, "A patient didn't show up. Call the patient." is something he can get, but "A patient is missing. I would call this patient except they don't answer their land line and they don't have an answering machine. However, I can page them and they'll call me back." is something he'd be totally lost on.

Don't get me wrong, he's a smart guy for what he does, but I suppose you could say it's like absent-minded professor syndrome. Can do his specialty fine, everything else he's lost on.

Plus money issues freak him out, so can imagine how all of this compounded to make my week thus far an absolute joy as his mind decided to deal with his axiety issues by "taking control" over money issues at the office, ie how I handle the billing and insurance claims. At which point the only thing his mind was going to process is "There are people who have outstanding balances. I don't want people with outstanding balances. I want TBQ to deal with that using steps 1, 2, and 3." Things like I am handling it with steps 1, 2, and 3 are not going to get through, because now we're adding nuance to that factoid of "People have outstanding balances."

This is how we then get into conversations like "You need to call Jane Smith." "I did call Jane Smith, I spoke to her a half hour ago." "No, you need to talk to Jane Smith." His mind was fixated on "Jane Smith needs to be called." and to him that problem wouldn't be "solved" until a call was made. Finding out that he's fixated on the wrong part of the problem in the timeline is a nuance. He can't readjust himself to the concept of a possible new aspect of the situation, eg "Since Jane Smith has been called this morning, I should then give TBQ an action plan of what to do to follow up on the already made call."

(This meme-fixation of his is how I know it's not a hearing problem on his part. Also he hears me just fine when the two of us are talking about other random stuff, like plans for the weekend or TV shows we've seen.)

He can also have a very short attention span, which is why making detailed reports (as a few of you suggested) doesn't work either. Don't get me wrong, I do make detailed reports, it's just that he can't be bothered to take the time to read them.

Case in point today, when he asked me to generate a report of aging balances. Now our system can do this with a click of a button, however the report it generates is complete gibberish to the doc, plus it doesn't contain information such as why the patient still has an outstanding balance, and what if anything I'm doing about it. So in addition to that report I (without being asked) sat down and typed up another report, wherein I broke it down into easy to understand columns and the doc could get a snapshot view of what was going on without trying to decipher the chaos of numbers the automatic report generates.

The thing I handed to the doc more or less looked like this:

Name	Balance	Days Past Due	Notes
John Doe	$100	0-30	Patient was in yesterday claim was submitted to insurance on 12/8/04

I then hand this report over to him and, I kid you not, he reads far enough to get the first name and immediately turns to me and asks "Why does John Doe have a balance?"

Which is the point where I get very tempted to start arguing the logic again, as the temptation to jab my finger onto the spot where I clearly explained why John Doe has a balance is almost overwhelming. I get a similar urge to hit him with logic when he does look at the notes and says things like "You call and leave voice mails? That's unacceptable, you need to talk to a person." because part of me is geniunely curious to know how he thinks I can get a person on the phone when I don't posess the psychic ability to command their limbs from a distance to make them lift the receiver.

(Note for my fellow health care workers: we're not talking about him saying I'm not allowed to leave private information on the voice mails. That part I know. In fact, that's part of the problem because HIPPA compliance means the only messages I can leave are things like "Hey John, it's Dr. _______'s office. Can you give us a call when you get a chance? Thanks!" and mysteriously people who owe money are oddly loath to voluntarily call back the people they owe money to. Hmmm.)

This is why "Okay!" is actually an ideal solution, because what it does is avoid the hole with no bottom that is trying to argue the logic with someone who can't process more than half a thought at a time, plus it moves the doc on because what the "Okay!" signifies to him is that he identified a problem, proposed a solution, and now that solution will be implemented. He can rest assured that he acted as a manager, plus it gives him a sense of having regained some control in a week where his anxieties have probably made him feel like he has none.

So that's what's been more or less working yesterday and today. There's still a pain in the ass end result of this in that because of him feeling a need to manage I'm doing stuff this week that was originally scheduled for next week, and let's just nevermind that I already had stuff to do this week that was already going to keep me plenty busy. I'd take a happy thought in thinking that this means I'm going to be freer next week, but as you know from an earlier post of mine huge amounts of downtime in the office tend to only encourage the boss to do more of this crap, so I won't count my next week chickens until I walk in the door on Monday and see if he's calmed the hell down as a concept.

As for the rest, I'm taking a page out of my dad's work philosophy (talking to him Tuesday night helped immensely) which is that sometimes you just have to accept that your job is going to be absurd, and the more you fight that the more miserable you'll be. Hence my "Okay!". I can either argue the absurdity, or let it flow past me. I'd have the extra work this week regardless of whether or not I argued, as it's not like I was going to win any of the logic arguments, so at least this way I've saved my energy.

I am keeping an eye on how long this lasts, though, because prior to the stupidity of this week the boss and I had a friendly and casual enough relationship that I do think I could approach him with a gently worded "Is everything okay with you?" and perhaps neutrally point out to him (using examples that don't relate to the billing stuff) things that have indicated that maybe he needs to find a way to handle all that anxiety, as it's affecting his work.

So we'll see. In the meanwhile I'm taking a nice hot shower and then going to bed.