Kara & Michael’s Blog

I been doing me lots of thinking at my new job. I answer phones, schedule appts, etc at a doctor’s office. Let’s be honest, though, mostly what I do is listen to people scream at me. I ask them to repeat their name, they scream it very slowly like I’m somehow both stupid and nearly deaf. I must be stupid because I took a job for the lowest pay I’ve gotten in a year to listen to people scream at me. They’ll probably succeed in making me deaf within a few days. Anyway, while I’m listening to them scream, I do me a lot of thinking. Mostly about the healthcare system.

Here’s the number one problem with the healthcare system. It’s us. It’s anyone who calls up and yells about waiting times or insurance policies or anything else to a receptionist. Call your congressman. Send an angry letter to the people who can actually change the policies that are pissing you off. Take all that anger and all those cuss words and put them in the voice mail box of your senator. You’ll have enough vitriol to get through me and someone else, I’m sure.

WoDM says you have to laugh at the absurdity of people calling up and yelling. It’s the not so absurd part that makes it so easy for people to get to me. I think people have a right to be pissed off if their doctor turns a blind eye to some serious health problem. While I’m listening to you yell, I’m looking up the notes on your file. I think it’s crazy that a doctor would let someone walk out of their office without addressing a bp of 160/100. I don’t think you should need a referral to see a specialist, and I don’t think you should be turned away at a hospital. And I feel like shit telling you we can’t see you because you don’t have insurance or you have insurance through the state. And when I hear myself asking you the questions I have to ask when you’re freaking out, I remind myself of the man I talked to when I called 911 to report my father’s heart attack. I blamed that man for those minutes that felt like forever, for asking me questions I couldn’t answer. But to be perfectly honest, I never once considered yelling or cursing at him, because I knew the whole time that he was a human, too.

The point is, I can’t distance myself from these people. So them screaming at me, it hurts me, it gets to me. I spend all day shaking and wishing the phone just wouldn’t ring. I go to the bathroom like 600 times just to get away from my desk. I sit outside at lunch and try not to cry. And I’m taking my medication.

I have this desperate need to help people – I’ve never been at a job where I couldn’t help people. Hell, half my jobs have been at non-profits where all I did was help people, and it felt good and people were nice when they called because they felt good. I worked at non-profits and I made more money than I am here, but, like they told me on my first day, the pharmaceutical companies buy us lunch every day (my boss, “this is what they call a job perk.” me, awkward silence). Which would be great if it wasn’t money those companies were spending to keep the crappy system in place. And even better if they ever served anything remotely vegetarian.

As a side-note, since this job makes me incredibly homicidal, I’ll probably be attempting to quit it in a reasonable way that hopefully won’t screw up the finances too much.

K.

The contents of this blog entry probably don’t reflect the views of the Webmaster of Doom, Michael.