Add to the Slue

In addition to complaining about whatever I please, recounting stories of minimal importance, extending past the confines of my living room in my quest bore others with my vacation pictures, and a slue of other utterly disconnected and random topics (if one can call them topics), I’ve decided to add “tech blog for the not-so-advanced” to the list, because this dood is SO my hero. Comments are closed on that post so, since I can’t say it there, I figured I’d say it here. Plus, maybe some small percentage of my readers (so a small percentage of my small number of readers would be, what, uhhh…. 0.15 of a person?) will think I WANTED TO KNOW HOW TO DO THAT TOO! NOW YOU‘RE MY HERO!

But anyway, in keeping with the (see above re: disconnected and random topics), let me now take the opportunity to tell you what bothers me. Or rather, since a lot of things probably bother me, what REALLY bothers me.

It REALLY bothers me that, most often, at least when dealing with large bureaucracies and corporations, the only point at which you are provided good service is when you turn into a giant, whiny, entitled brat.

FOR EXAMPLE.

I recently spent a lot of time on the phone with Medicare trying to resolve one client’s account. When I say recently, I mean more like over the course of some five months. And no, I am not exaggerating. And what happens when you call Medicare, because I know you’ve been dying to find out, is that you wait on hold (and…wait…yes…in fact I think I might have mentioned the hold music) you wait on hold until someone answers the phone. And that someone is somewhere in a different time zone and is one of eight bazillion people answering that phone number, none of whom have identification codes or callback numbers so it’s not like you ever speak to the same person twice. And they ask you for information. And you fax it. Except it takes about three days to fax any information to them because they have ONE FAX NUMBER. For all of Medicare. Just the ONE. And then you finally get your information through. But they never “find” it. Or it never gets processed. Or whatever. So you send it again. And then you wait the sixty day processing period because if you try calling (hold music) before the sixty days are up “just to check on it”, you are simply told that it won’t register in the system until the processing people have processed it. And that takes 60 days. And no, they don’t have any incoming phone lines in the processing room of processingness, so you can’t speak with them.

And then, when sixty days have passed, you call again (hold music) to check on it. And they say it’s processed and in the mail and to wait a few more days. And then you call back (hold music) after a few more days. And they say to wait a FEW MORE. And you say no, please send it again. And they say, ok please hold (hold music), but then they come back and say it’s not in the digital system yet so they can’t send it again. So please wait a few days and call back.

And then you wait a few more days and call back (still with the hold music and the going crazy, by the way, in case that pattern hasn’t presented itself to you yet), and THIS person tells you that, oh…no…actually that thing that they said was completed on time (on time being a relative concept when it takes 60 days to process a letter) and already in the mail was just a copy of something they’d already sent and the thing you are waiting for hasn’t been processed yet because instead of what you said in the letter (two and a half months ago) about charge one and charge two, you have to PHYSICALLY CROSS OUT AND CIRCLE, respectively, the charges you’re talking about on the ledger and send it back again because describing the charges by the name listed on the ledger is just too confusing, apparently. So please start again.

So (are you still reading?) you circle and cross out with fury and re-fax (another three days to get that through). And then you call back (hold music) and are told to wait the 60 days for processing at which point you say

(in your head) HOLD. THE FUCK. UP. (and out loud, with only the tiniest edge of insanity) May I please and ever so kindly speak with your supervisor? This dude assures you at least four times that while you can speak to his supervisor, she will have no ability to speed this process along for you, but you insist and so you are asked to hold (hold music) and you wait a full twenty minutes before….

A saccharine sweet lady gets on the phone, apologizes profusely, listens to your saga, asks you to hold (hold music) while she checks out the issue, comes back and says, “Actually, ma’am, I see that none of these charges are related. I will get out a letter to you to that effect this afternoon.”

And you receive that letter later that week.

And would you believe me if I said that that is the SHORT version of the story? The version where I don’t even bother to mention at least five other times that I called (hold music hold music hold music hold music hold music)?

And so MY QUESTION is, people, my QUESTION TO THE WORLD, is how much of a dent could we take out of the national debt if we were to replace:

1. The money spent on wages for roughly ten (I’m being generous here) phone calls, roughly seven minutes each (including data entry), PLUS
2. The money spent on all the phone lines for people like me to HOLD…again, PLUS
3. The money spent on health care for people like me who just might go crazy from the experience

TIMES the number of people who have had this experience (raise your hand)

with

A small fleet of people with half a brain who evaluate and handle (simple…such simple) issues as they arise and in a timely manner without creating a paper trail storm of useless notes that convey no information at best.

How much? I dare you to guess.