MY LIFE - DECEMBER

Friday, December 15, 2000

I know yesterday's entry wasn't very informing aside from telling you that I had a less than stellar day in words that weren't so glamorous. It wasn't so much a bad day as it was a frustrating day though. There was problem after problem and I seemed to be in the middle of solving most of them for some reason. Some things were blown out of proportion and I had a day that was spent on customer service.

My first problem was probably the most confusing one of the day. It involved one of the other techs and how they handled a situation with a customer. Somebody got confused, the tech somehow misunderstood the customer, and the customer was irate and the tech wasn't going to deal with the customer anymore. She came over to me, handed me the bags and the insurance card, and asked if I could handle the problem.

I said okay, except I wasn't quite sure what the problem was until I noticed that we had billed the secondary insurance instead of the primary. That was because we didn't have the primary in our computer, so I added it, billed it, and got the mess straightened out. Then I had to ring the customer out because the tech wouldn't do it and there wasn't another incident with her. She wasn't pleasant, but she wasn't trying to rip my head off.

To this point, I still don't have a clue what initially brought the problem and I really didn't care at the time to find out. I was answering a lot of phone calls and eventually got stuck on a disputed copay call. I told the customer that she should contact her insurance company to find out what the problem was, so she did and she got back to me very shortly.

The insurance company told her we had filled it wrong, that we had used a DAW 2 code instead of 0 on two generic medications. First, let me explain these codes. All generics should be coded with a DAW (Dispense as Written) code of 0. All prescriptions with a doctor-written DAW should be a 1. All scripts that are filled for brand when a generic is available are coded 2.

On generics, a DAW 2 makes no difference at all for the most part, but I was game and I tried to change it to see if that would work.

The price was the same. The customer wasn't pleased with this and told me to call the insurance company and get an explanation from them personally. We were just starting to get hit and I had one of the terminals tied up, but I said okay and called the insurance company. The representative tried to tell me the same thing that the customer had been told, but I shot that down by telling him I had changed the codes and the price hadn't changed.

He switched to plan B and came up with another reason why the price had changed. Something in the customer's plan had changed and that's why the price went up. I said, uh, okay, and called the customer back to try and explain what he had just told me. She seemed skeptical (as I was) over the explanation and said she was going to call back the insurance company to see what she was going to be told this time.

She apologized for taking up my time and hung up. She never called back, so I'm assuming that the problem was resolved.

As for me? I still have no fucking clue what had caused the copay to go up. I was moving on to the next problem. And that's how the day went. I'd answer the phone and have a 20 minute discussion with a customer on something that they thought was wrong. Sometimes they were right, sometimes they were wrong. Then, around 5pm, we were short handed and I was flying around, answering the phone, getting drive-thru, and trying to fill at the same time.

The problems never stopped, I was getting pissed, and it wasn't nearly over. I then got a call from a lady who was very upset that she had paid for her medication and had never received it. It turned out to be something that we were supposed to mix, but the person who had rung her out never said anything to Steve or Elizabeth at the time and let the customer go without the medicine. I got the earful and was more than happy to relay the message to the tech who had rung her out.

I was not happy about this at all. I do not like to have customers screaming in my ear about how I messed up when I had nothing to do with what had happened.

However, mistakes do happen. Things like that will happen. Not everything can be perfect and no one can do everything all the time. Something will break down and that's what happened yesterday. It doesn't make it any easier on the rest of us when things like that happen, but it happens and I just accepted that by the time I was supposed to leave.

I essentially went home, found that no one had written me back aside from one person, and was not pleased by that either. I don't mean to be mean, but I don't like it when I write someone and don't hear anything back for a week or two at a time. I know a couple of people I talk to are busy, but this is starting to get silly. Why am I writing and asking questions to some people when I'm not getting an answer?

I just sometimes wonder why I put so much effort into something without knowing if it actually meant anything. It's a pet peeve of mine, writing people (or calling) and not hearing anything back. I do it occasionally, but I try to write back as much as possible. I'm not always getting online until 1 or 2 in the morning, and by then, I'm wasted and can't think of anything to say, at least anything that could pass for making sense.

So I wasn't happy about that and I wasn't happy about the day I had. I was in a foul mood and didn't really care to write anything yesterday or get really involved with anything that I should've done. I just didn't care.

Today was better, although there were a couple of people I work with who were kind of pissing each other off. It was the Paul and Linda show and I really wasn't up for hearing it. The one thing Paul needs to realize is that he needs to tell someone in charge that Linda's not doing anything or helping out rather than continually complain about it.

I know what's going on. I know she was spending a lot of time talking on the phone. I know she wasn't covering drive-thru or helping on the register regardless of where she was. I know she wasn't doing a whole lot. I don't need to be reminded of this because I see it and I realize it. I've already talked to Steve about it and I'm going to talk to him about it again.

The one thing I worry about is Paul bringing an ultimatum into this. Unless things get better between the two, it's going to come down to either losing Paul or Linda. Paul because he might quit and Linda because she might quit or get fired. It's a delicate situation too. I don't like how Linda does things (or rather, doesn't do things), but I'm not going to let it bother me. This shit gets noticed after time. It will catch her and the only thing he needs to do is worry about himself and let Steve know what's bothering him.

That's not what he's doing though and it's really making him harder to work with. He starts to get cranky and he was really messing things up tonight, which was an obvious sign of stress for me. He wasn't finding things, he was messing up people's names, and he even gave the wrong medicine to the wrong person and then tried to pass it on to me. It was just unbelievable how worked up he gets over things.

I like Paul too. He's a good kid, but he needs to get control over himself and learn that you can't control how others behave. Linda's going to be Linda and it will catch up to her one day.

Otherwise, how he's acting will catch up to him first.

---

I have the weekend off, which is an amazing thing, but I still have to get up tomorrow to take my car in one more time over the CD changer. Then later in the day we have our pharmacy christmas party at a restaurant in Middleburg Heights where most of us will exchange our gifts. I won't be doing so because the person I picked, Steve of all people, is working and won't be at the party.

Other than that, my weekend is a clean slate. I don't have to work, I only have a couple committments, and I expect this weekend to be a nice change of pace. I'm sure I work next weekend though as I work 10-6 following a 12-8 on Friday. Too bad I don't really know what the other three days are. Especially when I work next, Monday. I can't remember if it's 2-10 or 3-11 that I work, so I'll have to call on that or stop in at some point to go over that.

This is weird because I haven't had too many Saturdays off in the last three years. I've had maybe 5 or 6 and that was simply because of vacation time or certain incidents (like the incidents of a year ago). So that will be nice.

Speaking of incidents though, it was a year ago last December 10th when everything went to hell for us at our old house. That was the night where my dad was saying all those lewd and disgusting things that involved my mom, the police, prosecutors, and even myself. That was the night when my dad kicked my mom. That was the night my dad was arrested and led to his stint in rehab for two months.

He's been out for a month or so, but the events from that night stick out in my head. I never went to sleep that night and had to miss work the next day because of the lack of sleep. I remember having to drive my mom to the hospital to make sure the knee that had been kicked wasn't injured in any way that we couldn't see. I remember how scared I was, how much I worried that things were going to deteriorate to a worse condition.

I was worried my dad would do something rash or turn extremely violent on the rest of us. He was using heavy stuff, so it could've happened. I was grateful he never kept a loaded gun in the house because only God knows what he might have done. I was grateful that he didn't come after me because I don't know what would have happened in that situation, how bad things might have gotten.

One other thing my mom and I worried about was the people he had to be dealing with. My dad's racist, so hearing a black person's voice on the phone is not a reassuring thing. We were scared to death that one day someone would open fire on our house, or that someone would come knocking looking for my dad and not be the police.

It was one of the scariest times of my life, something I never want to endure ever again for obvious reasons. It's not something I want to forget either because it serves as a nice wake up call to those who assume I've had an easy life. No one ever thinks that I could have gone through the things I've been through. It's always amazement when I tell someone my story.

I don't want to be looked at as someone who's had it easy because that's not the truth. Some people are just ignorant while others just find it hard to believe that bad things could happen to me. I'm very easy going and laid back, so when I tell people things about my past, they find it hard to believe. I accept that. It's the way things go. I don't take what I have for granted because I've been on welfare. I've been in situations where we didn't have a car, where we didn't have any real money coming in.

I've been at the bottom of society. It's not a nice place, but it's something I'm glad I experienced. Otherwise I'd be like any other guy, and that's not something I want to be known as. I like to think that I'm a little nicer than most guys, a little more sensitive, and more willing to let my guard down and not hide how I feel. I know I'm different personality-wise and I don't mind people knowing it.

I don't like what's happened, but I don't think I'd like to live in a privileged family. I've seen how raw things can get. It's something most can't appreciate because they haven't been there. Anyone who's had a rough childhood can attest to that.

And if you don't like how I am now, then that's how it is. I'm not here to make the world happy. I'm here to live my life and do what I have to do. I'll let the cards play themselves out.