Thursday, March 4, 2010

Incompetence

May be it's just me. Maybe I only recall poor experiences while shoving the good experience memories to the back of my brain.

Why does it seem like people just don't do their jobs anymore? I hate to call customer service for anything because I always seem to get someone who doesn't know what they are doing. The employees in my doctor's office are always messing up. I once went TWO months without my thyroid medication because I kept being told they had called in my script to my mail order pharmacy that my insurance company forces me to use. Back then the only way to start a new script was to have it called in by my doc's office.

The employees in the office were forever telling me "we don't phone them in" while the pharmacy/insurance company was telling me "the only way to start a new script is for your doc to call it in." The doc's office went round and round about it. They finally relented and gave their word they would take care of it.

A week later the script showed up in my mailbox with instructions to mail it. Grrrr..... that happened a time or two before they finally agreed to CALL IT IN. Then I waited....... and waited... they never called it in. Needless to say by the time I got in to see my doc and told her what had happened she was ticked.

Since then the pharmacy/insurance company came up with a form for us to mail scripts in OR to actually request it ourselves on the net and they will call the doc for us to verify it.

Okay, that was a rant. Let me get to the point.

The point is that people can be incompetent. Ya think?

Here's what happened. My father in law died. The next morning .... CRAP... I need a new name for Adam.... heck let's just stick with Adam... or how about Ronnie? Connie and Ronnie.... Ronnie and Connie... LOL Whatever...

Anyhow, he called his dad's wife to let her know he was available for anything she needed help with. See, Adam/Ronnie had been there when his mom died 10 years ago helping dad through every step. He knew about all the pre-planned, pre-paid details.

When she heard his voice she became distraught thinking he was calling to "harass" her as his brother and one sister had done. That's yet ANOTHER post. Anyhow, once she realized that he was NOT about to do that and that he truly just wanted to offer assistance to her, the relief set in because she really had no one to help her through this. She wanted him to call the funeral home and find out what was going on because she didn't know where to begin.

Adam/Ronnie used to be in a line of work where he frequently dealt with funeral homes. He's now in a line of work where everyone in town knows him and people will bend over backwards for him. Seriously it can be ridiculous. ANYWHOOOO......

When he called the funeral home, not only did they NOT have his father's body, they weren't even aware that he'd died. Now step-mum KNEW which funeral home was to be used so this was a bit perplexing. She had - after all - requested it the evening before at the funeral home.

Adam/Ronnie got off the phone with the funeral home and called the hospital to find out WHERE his dad's body was and to let them know where they were to send it.

The hospital didn't know much. They told him "we released your dad's remains to the funeral home."

"Which funeral home?"

"I don't know...whichever one it was that his wife told us to release him to."

"Yeah? Wellllllll..... HE'S NOT THERE!!!"

Small town. Small funeral home. They KNOW Adam/Ronnie well. They would KNOW if they did or did not have his father's body.

At this point, I don't know if Adam/Ronnie wanted to laugh, cry, or bite someone's head off.

He asked them to PLEASE find out WHICH funeral home they had sent him to and to call back ASAP.

They called back within the hour. Turns out step-mum had granted permission to donate whatever tissue was worth harvesting and that he was at a donation bank place and that they would release the body within 24 hours to the funeral home.

Whew. Mystery solved. Dad had been sent two hours away but he'd been found and everything ended up fine.

And yes, we are laughing about how they lost dad. I mean seriously, if you can't laugh at these things then what can you laugh at?

So now I owe you the story about why step-mum was being harassed and another story has popped into my head. Remind me to tell you about my good friend's dad ............

That's two posts I owe you... this new blog is growing almost exponentially.

Later....

5 thoughts:

PK said...

I have always loved your stories. Now about that new name how about a combination - Aaron?

grace said...

I can't believe they lost Dad! But it is funny, in a sad way.

I say we call him Ferdnand! Or Alberto.

How about Tom?

Frank?

George?

Henry?

Nope....I got it....

HERMAN!
Ok, I'll stop now!
HUGS!

CeeCi said...

I was going to suggest Donnie, or Lonnie. We already have a Ronnie in Blogville (soon to be a new game on Facebook) and some of us might get confused.

It's good they located the body... kinda hard to have a funeral without one. I can't imagine how upset Ronnie/Donnie/Lonnie must have been.

I think the thing that gets me the most about the rampant incompetence is the total lack of respect and responsibility that goes along with it.

*hugs*
CeeCi

CeeCi said...

Calling in your IOU!

Where is you at?

Eva said...

Hey CeeCi... so many posts... so little time. Stay tuned. Soon I promise.