Wakela’s World

Ok. I just had it with people today. I feel like crawling somewhere so I don’t have to deal with anyone.

All of the people who came into the center today were insane! The patients on the phone were insane! They were saying stupid things and doing stupid things!

I swear! I was trying to schedule an appointment for one woman and every question I asked her, she would answer with an extremely bizarre answer. I could have asked her what color is the sky and I bet she probably would have said equilateral triangle or something just as weird. I asked her name and I can’t even remember what she said, but by the time I got her off the phone, I was ready to beat my head on the desk. I asked her the name of her doctor and she said “yes”. Um.. ok.. Your doctor’s name is yes? Of course it wasn’t. That is how much people pay attention when you are talking to them.

I just didn’t want to talk on the phone. That is why when Krysta called tonight, I sort of blew her off. Its not that I don’t like talking to her, its just I can’t deal with anyone else today. Ok… Its time to go get some sleepy.

Yesterday was an extremely irritating day at work. It seems that patients were just really getting under everyone’s skin. There are certain things that patients do that really are irresponsible and annoying.

1. Don’t call to make an appointment while driving! You know we are going to ask questions that you will need to get things out of your purse or pocket in order to answer. It is not safe to do this while driving. I have literally had patients tell someone else in the car to “hold the wheel while I get my wallet out of my back pocket”. How safe is that? You can wait the few minutes it will take to get to your destination BEFORE calling us to make your appointment. We will still be there.

2. Don’t call if you don’t know what test you are scheduling! How can you not know what the doctor is sending you for? Don’t you ask questions? You would be surprised how many patients can’t even tell me the part of body that we are doing the test on. Don’t they know what is bothering them?

3. Don’t schedule your elementary school child to have a fasting exam after school and be upset with them because they ate! We find it horrific if you think it is ok to starve your child all day for a test. We schedule tests early in the morning and some tests on saturdays. Please make use of these times. It really will be ok if the child goes to school about an hour late. It will be better then starving them all day! I can guarantee that if the parent needed the test, they would schedule it first thing in the morning.

4. Of course you can’t hear me, the TV is on full blast! I am sick and tired of people calling up with the TV or radio blasting in the background and then have the nerve to tell me that they can’t hear me. Of course they can’t. Turn it down before making the call. You don’t need to hear the song or watch the program that bad. If you don’t want to miss a second of it, then call afterwards.

5. Don’t immediately assume that someone speaks the same language as you do. I live in an English speaking country. Yes the area I live in has a huge population of Spanish speakers. However, we don’t all speak Spanish. Please do not assume that we do. You don’t want to know how many times people will call up and immediately start speaking Spanish. Then I have to tell them that I only speak a little. They actually get upset that I only speak a little. Hello!! I am not Hispanic. My parents are from Canada. My grandparents are from England and Scotland. There isn’t an ounce of Hispanic blood in me. Yes I have learned a little. I made the effort. However, most of these people that call can speak perfect English yet refuse to speak it. I don’t mind the patients who call and can’t speak English. They are usually the ones who will try to work with me the most. They will speak slowly and use smaller, easier words. I can usually help those the easiest. However, we have patients (and even employees of other doctor’s offices) who will call up and speak rapid fire Spanish then get mad because I don’t understand them. They will then speak perfect English, but talk to me like I am an idiot.

6. Don’t get mad at us if you doctor’s office hasn’t faxed anything over. Instead of calling us every ten minutes for an entire day. Call you doctor’s office and either have them fax it directly to you or go there in person and pick it up. We are not responsible for your paperwork. We have a very organized system of keeping track of everything that comes in. However, there are many times when it just never comes over. You are an adult. Start to accept responsibility for your own body and what needs to be done.

7. Know your insurance plan! You won’t believe how many people ask us on the phone what their copay is. We won’t know until we call to verify the insurance. However, when you signed up for your insurance, you were given a book that describes in great detail your benefits. If you want to know that badly (where you are going to curse at us because we don’t know), then look it up in your book. Or better yet, call yourself. There is a toll free phone number on the back of your insurance card that will provide you with all sorts of information if you call. Also you might want to familiarize yourself with your insurance company’s website. They tend to have information like that listed there as well. Plus you would be surprised at some of the interesting things you will find there as well.

Ok enough of the rant. I just really needed to get that out of my system!

There are times in our lives when we wished that we could force everyone to be miniature versions of ourselves or some other format that we would rather prefer. However, if we let people be who they are, they just might surprise us.

Last night at work, Z went all insane. Apparently her 16 year old sister has a myspace profile. Who doesn’t have one now? They are all the rage for teens. Now I had looked at this girls profile. It really wasn’t bad at all. There weren’t any pictures of her that put her in a compromising position. In fact, there was only one picture of her up there and it was a close up on her face in profile. So its not even like you could get a look at her entire face.

However, Z went hysterical. She said that she has already taken her profile down a few times. She called her mom up and had her mom force the login information out of her sister. I think she went completely crazy over nothing. Meanwhile, Z is always surfing myspace in the evening checking out this person and that. Well, that is extremely hypocritical.

What do you think? Do you think she was overreacting or had a valid reason?

Thankfully, today is finally drawing to a close. It just seemed to go on forever.

Today at work was horrendous. I was stuck in the scheduling room with a bunch of morons. Since the manager and one of the two supervisors were out, they decided they didn’t want to do any type of work. Even though company policy does not allow us to have any type of personal music playing, they continued to play it loudly while I was trying to help people on the phone.

The one supervisor that was there just stood back powerless. She lets them run rough shod all over her.

The two nimwits wouldn’t answer phones. They didn’t do anything but play. You would think we were back in high school with a substitute teacher.

I was thankful when it was time for me to go take over the front desk for closing. Unfortunately, the girls who worked it during the early shift, forgot to mention that there were 4 patients signed in on the prior sheet. They had already highlighted someone on the top sheet. So Z and I naturally thought that we were supposed to continue from there. Within 20 minutes of being up there, we were swarmed by people yelling at us. We were trying to do our best.

Oh and as for them doing something for my birthday, I was told by one of the morons that we were no longer celebrating birthdays. We shall see what happens in November. I can guarantee that since she is one of the popular people, they will be coming around asking for money to get a cake. I am just so sick of all the pettiness that goes on there.

As for home, we ordered pizza and got a Chocolate Chipper cake from Cold Stone Creamery. My sister bought me a cute witches mug.

Plus she gave me $40. She said they didn’t know what to buy me. Oh well… Now it is time to go let dreamland overtake the thoughts of the day.

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Now playing: Die My Darling - Needle’s Eye
via FoxyTunes

This book serendipitously fell into my hands. I had been very bored with reading lately. All of the books that are sitting here crying for me to read them, just haven’t been grabbing my attention. Sure they are all books that I would normally devour. However, I was just wanting something different. Something that wasn’t like my normal reading style.

The other day at work, JT (the center manager) was going through the old lost and found drawer. There were things sitting in there since ancient times. She decided to give items that were rather old to the employees. There was quite a bit of jewelry in the find. I am not one to be attracted to shiny objects.

One of the last things she pulled out was a book. She handed it over to one of the other girls. I was crest fallen at this. Out of everything there, that would be the one thing I would cherish. Books are my precious.

Thankfully, VG doesn’t like to read. She just let the book lay there. I snatched it up quickly. The cover was very interesting.

That night, I curled up with the book. It held my interest from page 1. There were two tales intertwining into each other like long lost lovers.

In modern day, you have Harry who is a normal every day antique book store owner. A short stubby man hired him to decipher a journal. Little did he know that his plebian life was about to be turned upside down.

Travel back in time, to bonny ol’ Scotland. James had an incredible thirst for knowledge. His farmer step-father disapproved of his intellect. James finally decided to risk it all and leave his small hut and the only life he knew. Every turn was filled with adventure and intrigue.

I could barely put this book down. Bill Napier wrote in such a way, that I felt like I was right there. I could imagine the boat rocking and being thrown about during the storms. I could picture myself right along with them in the car chases. You never know what twist lies ahead in this book.

This is definitely one to buy.

I wouldn’t believe someone could be this stupid until this happened at work.

One of the front desk girls came over into my office to ask for my help. She said that something was wrong with her scanner.

I went to her desk and noticed that it wasn’t on. I pushed the on button and it wouldn’t come on. The cord in the back was firmly in place. So I did the next logical thing. I made sure it was plugged into the wall socket. It of course wasn’t. I told her it wasn’t plugged in and that is why it wouldn’t work.

Her response was “How would I know it wouldn’t work if it wasn’t plugged in?” My response was “Well, does you TV work if it isn’t plugged in?”

The other girl at the front desk was laughing her ass off at this point. It was completely hysterical!!

Well, I have completely had the week from hell. Work was utterly unbearable. We are still not going to be getting any new employees to help with the increased hours or increased work load. Last week, one of our best employees left. Cristina was an awesome worker. She was great with the patients. She couldn’t afford the insurance rate increase, so she had to leave. This is really sad. They would rather risk losing good employees then to do something about it. The morale at the office is going down the tubes.

Last night I was the closer. I literally was there for two hours by myself. I had to answer phones, register patients, and do the closing paperwork. One lady got mad at me because I had her on hold for too long. I had a patient in front of me that I was trying to get registered. I had no choice. I can’t do both at the same time. How can I talk to two people at once? Impossible!
What happened to the days when employers actually cared about the employees? Don’t any employers remember the saying “Happy employees are good employees” Don’t they realize that once you push a person to a point, they will stop caring about their job and do crappy work?

Ok enough rant for today!

Ok so last night I dreamt that my job was a prison. I don’t mean that I got a new job in a jail. I mean that my current job had bars on the windows and we were there doing time.

I guess that this would be a perfect metafor for the way that I am feeling about my job lately. I still like working with all the people there. Its just that every time I turn around someone is adding a new project to my plate. I already have way more things to do then there are hours in the day. (And I am not talking about 8 hour shift, I am talking 24 hour day!!)

It has gotten to the point that everything that they want me to do, just can’t physically be done by one person. In fact, I don’t think it can be physically done by two people. I am slacking off on so many of them because it is just too much. I am burning out really fast!

They keep wanting me to come in on weekends now to work overtime to get this stuff done. I am getting so burned out that I just don’t want to. It is becoming such an ordeal to get myself ready for work. I have gotten to the point that I just don’t want to go and have to fight with myself to get ready.

Yes, my thyroid is coming under control, but the key word is “coming”. I am still not there yet. They have to understand, that I am one person only! Yes I may know alot of information because I started in the medical field back in 1988. However, I am one who is still trying to get her health back in order.

I love earning the extra money in overtime, but I can’t do it every weekend. They don’t understand that there are many weekends that I will literally sleep from Friday night until Sunday morning because my body is trying to recuperate just from working.

I literally don’t do anything but work, play computer games, grocery shop. That is all my life consists of any more. I haven’t had the energy to go out and do anything in ages.

I am supposed to be reconciling the various PACs systems on a daily basis. I haven’t had the time to do that in several months. I am supposed to be checking the router in order to discard old films that are no longer being kept on site. I don’t have enough hours in the day to do that. I am supposed to be working the incoming faxes to make appointments for them. I keep falling behind because there isn’t enough time.

Where is my time spent? I have to field incoming calls. I have to attempt to get prescriptions and referrals ready for the next day’s appointments. There have been times I have been on hold with physician’s offices for over ten minutes. When you have three rooms to prepare, that can add up to alot of patients. That equals a lot of hold time. I also have to put out minor IT fires that arise. The past few days we have been having issues with the router. That takes me away from my other things. Well guess what! Its not like I get any help if I am away doing that. Then we have the fact that certain doctor’s offices will only call and talk to me. I know its nice for them to have a certain point of contact, but come on already. I have too much crap to do that prevents me from being the logical choice. They need to have an employee who works doctor office hours and only works the phones who is the point of contact.

I hate the way things have become there. I just don’t know anymore. It really is becoming too much for me to handle. Complaining only goes on deaf ears.

Perfect example is Mondays. I come in to work at 7am and leave at 3:30pm. I am stuck at the front desk until 10:30am. So from 10:30am until noon I am racing through all the faxes that came in over the weekend and that morning trying to figure out if any of them already have appointments or not. The ones that do, I put the paperwork in the appropriate place. If not, I put it aside to call the patient’s later. I then go to lunch at noon. When I come back at 12:30pm, I have to start getting things together for the next day’s patients. Here is where the problem arises. Most offices are on service from noon until 2pm. So I literally only have from 2pm until 3:30pm to call the doctors. I can’t work it any other way. I have to do the faxes first so that I can tell if there is anything that I need for the next day from there.

Well, I am doing this while still trying to take incoming calls. The majority of the time, I am only able to do a half assed job. I hate that! That is not the way I work.

If things don’t change soon, I am going to have to find another job!!

Well, this weekend pretty much sucked.

I worked on Saturday. That wasn’t too bad. It was for overtime. The money is ok. I didn’t have to answer phones. I spent the entire time in the back room working on the router.
Afterwards, I ran a few errands for my mom.

On Sunday, I was taking a bunch of stuff out for the bulk pick up and I twisted my ankle. I actually could hear it pop. It has been hurting really bad ever since.

While at work today, I had one of the techs take an x-ray. My doctor had faxed over a prescription for it, so it was completely legit. The radiologist looked at the x-rays and there wasn’t a fracture. I didn’t think that there was, but I didn’t want to be like my sister and walk around on a fracture for a week.

Yesterday was all sorts of whack at work. It was fucking awesome. This was like the best day in a long time.

Yes there are days when we do some strange shit there. Like the time SM decided to climb out through the reception window to save time walking to MRI.

Well, yesterday, it seems that everything was fucking awesome. Some how we ended up having an entire half hour long conversation on farting. It was so bizarre. I still don’t even remember how we got on the conversation, but we did. It was so funny that CM ended up laughing so hard she had tears coming out of her eyes.

At one point, LF & I had this long discussion on how us computer geeks tend to smoke pot & shit. I haven’t done that in ages, but I do know that alot of my friends still do.

Oh!! It is so bizarre! I found out that me, FZ, and LF all hung out at certain clubs in late 80s-early 90s at the same time. That is so weird. Like The Kitchen club when it was still at the hotel, Luke’s old place, The Edge, and other places. That is so wild. We were reminiscing about how wild we were in our younger days.

Well, I certainly hope that today is going to be just as fun & bizarre as yesterday!!!