04/05/2007: "I attract 'em like ants to a picnic"

Mindnumbingly stupid situations, that is. I suspect that some of it has to do with my ongoing short temper, but when I ask other people, they see my point. Let me try one out on you and see what you think.

Yesterday I went to my OB, who wrote me a prescription for AM insulin - a 50-50 mix of regular and long lasting. Now I'll be taking insulin first thing in the morning and last thing at night (as a side note, it appears that a third, dinner-time dose is imminent but we will cross that bridge when we get to it. Namely when the OB comes back from vacation in 2 weeks). In any case, he set up the prescription via computer and sent it to the pharmacy, where it would be waiting for me. That was at about 4:10 pm.

When I got to the pharmacy at 4:25 pm (pay attention to these times, they will become important momentarily), I got in line, waiting a few minutes and then surrendered my Kaiser card to the clerk. She glanced at it, typed for a second, handed it back and said, "Wait for your name to show on the board."

Which means my prescription wasn't yet filled. Fine. I have a seat and wait another 15 minutes. It's only supposed to take 15 minutes to fill a prescription. There are signs everywhere that tell you that if it's been more than 15 minutes, ask what's going on. This is due, I know for a fact, to people who would sit for hours waiting for their names to come up only to find out that their name was forgotten or the prescription was backordered or ... whatever. So when the 15 minutes were up (in addition to the 15 - 20 minutes from the time the doctor sent in the order), I got back in line to talk to someone.

At 4:45 I again surrendered my card to a clerk and explained that I'd waited for 15 minutes as instructed but my name wasn't on the board.

"We called you at 4:21," said Little Miss Helpful (title mine).

"I wasn't here at 4:21. I was still walking here from the doctor's."

"Well, we called you at 4:21. This prescription has to be special ordered. It won't be here until Friday morning."

It may have been at this point that I felt my blood pressure rise. "So... why did that clerk over there tell me at 4:25 to have a seat and wait if 4 minutes earlier you planned to tell me that the medicine wasn't here? Was I supposed to wait here until Friday?"

"We called you."

"I understand that. You called me at 4:21." I spoke slowly, for her sake. "I arrived here at 4:25 and talked to the clerk then. And she told me to wait. Which I would have had to do until Friday."

"Yes. The prescription has to be special ordered."

Do not boil over, Kristin. It's not worth it. "My point here... and I do have one...," I continued, "is that I'm curious to know why I was told to have a seat AFTER the computer knew that the prescription was never going to be here today."

You know what she said, right? "Well, we called you."

It was at this point that I ripped my card out of Little Miss Helpful's hands and demanded to talk to a supervisor who understood my issue completely, apologized profusely and instructed both clerks immediately in the proper way to 1) read a computer screen and 2) assist customers.

Ha ha! That's not what happened at all! Did you believe me? You are silly!

What actually happened is that I sighed deeply, took my card and left, grumbling to myself about the futility of it all on the drive home. It's not so much that this was a huge deal, it's just the frustration of trying to point out any sort of inconsistancy. She was never going to get it and it stopped being worth it at about the second "We called you."

**********************************************************

Try this one on for size.

I got a jury duty summons for last Thursday. When I called the night before, the recorded message told me to call back at 11 am to see if they wanted me to report to the courtroom. I hate this. It's a total wasted morning and I think it's rude. However, my sense of manners is not consulted in these matters, so I dutifully called for a substitute because if I had to run out to Oakland on a moment's notice in the middle of the morning, I didn't want to leave people scrambling to cover my classes.

Responsible, no? Reasonable, no? The logical thing to do, no?

No.

I got an email yesterday requesting me to submit my jury duty papers from the courthouse. I responded that I did submit my summons. I was told that no, they need papers from the actual courthouse from that day. I explained that I was on-call and was released at 11 am so, you know, never went to the courthouse. Then it got interesting.

Would you like me to change this to a personal necessity day in that case? queried payroll.

Not so much I replied but in more businesslike tones. I was summoned as you can see, and when I called at 11 am they told me I was excused and that "this completes your jury duty service". That phrasing indicates to me that I did serve jury duty and therefore should be granted jury duty coverage. This was not a personal day, it was mandated by the county of Alameda.

When you're on call you need to report to work and then if at 11 am they require you to report to the courthouse you need to call for a sub then.

Despite the fact that finding a substitute in the middle of a workday is impossible and that, had I been required to report this would have left the office staff scrambling to cover my afternoon classes?

Yes

Does this make sense to you? I suppose it does on one level but on the other, far more responsible level it blows my mind. If I had a job where I only had to worry about my own productivity it makes good sense - when I was in high tech it mattered more what I produced than when precisely I was in the office to produce it. Go to work, work until you're called, leave if you need to. But as a teacher I have to be present at certain times. I can't just run off to Oakland at the drop of a court's hat. I would expect my employer to know, respect and understand that. In fact, I sort of would expect that my employer would encourage me to ensure coverage for my classes so that undue hassles could be avoided.

But, apparently not. So, because the court couldn't make up their goddamned minds about whether they actually needed me or not, I had to take a personal day out of my rapidly dwindling reserve.

I'm trying to blow off the whole thing because it does me no good to get upset about it. But it does bug me and my Libra sense of justice. I think before this baby arrives I will have gotten to the point of simply crawling into a cave so I don't have to deal with people anymore.

Call me when the world makes more sense.

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04/05/2007: "I attract 'em like ants to a picnic"