Talking on the phone: what is it with people these days?
I continue to have somewhat surreal experiences with people who answer the phones these days. And I’m not talking about people who live in Bangladesh or wherever many seem to reside, I’m talking about right here in this country. For example, just now I got a call from an Ear Nose and Throat office in response to a referral, and the woman – who sounded rather young – was clearly a native speaker.
No appointments are available for the next two months; that’s become standard and even six months or more is not unusual. Are there doctor shortages these days? More sick people? Hard to say, but waiting periods have gotten longer.
But that’s not what I want to focus on; it’s the strangeness of the rest of our little talk. She asked me what time of day I prefer, and I answered “afternoons.” She proceeded to offer me an 11:30 AM time that was on a day when I’ll be otherwise occupied, and so I asked for a different day – and she gave me another appointment at 11:30 AM on another day. I mentioned again that I’d said I prefer an afternoon appointment, and she asked what I meant by “afternoon.”
That was the beginning of the surreal part.
I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my voice when I answered that “afternoon” means after noon, and that 11:30 AM is before noon. She then managed to come up with an appointment at 1:45 PM, and added that it would be with Dr. B.
And yet my referral had been for Dr. A, who also had come highly recommended by a friend. Bait and switch?
I told the woman on the phone that I thought the referral had been for Dr. A, and she answered, “She only comes into our office on Fridays.” Which prompted me to ask if there was another office Dr. A frequented. Lo and behold – yes, there was, in a town ten miles away. I told her I was more than willing to go there instead, and she answered that I hadn’t made that clear until now.
“I didn’t know Dr. A had another office until now,” I answered, a fact that seemed self-evident. It was the scheduler who’d known all about the two offices – including knowing that the original referral was for Dr. A – and hadn’t informed me.
Apparently she handled the scheduling for both offices, and easily found an appointment there for me around the same time of day except on a Thursday. The wait was still two months, but there were more choices in that office and so it was easier. And yet she hadn’t thought to mention at the outset that I had a choice between the two very-nearby offices.
It seems as though so many communications that should be – and used to be – easy and straightforward have become convoluted and cryptic. Why?
She sounds simply incompetent. — My husband recently called a radiology office for a specific procedure which had been referred by his orthopedist. The scheduler gave him an appointment in two weeks. However, another, more competent scheduler, who had reviewed the day’s work, called him back late that afternoon to say that the special procedure wasn’t available at the time the first woman had given him. The wait is now five weeks rather than two, but at least they caught their own error.
I’ve also noticed a decline in medical office staff quality. I may be paranoid but I wonder if there is a separate category for Medicare members or Obamacare members. I have been out of practice for years but I do recall reading about limiting Medicare to a certain percentage of your practice. Maybe low income practices pay their staff poorly or, even as one pediatrics practice I knew of, lay off staff members as they reach higher salaries.
This brought to mind a piece written by Florence King, “Here Comes Da Duh.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2004/12/here-comes-da-duh-florence-king/
Kids 25 and below simply have no real experience with phone conversations — they grew up texting. It’s all they know.
It’s why the kids at my workplace have terrible spelling, don’t use punctuation, and have horrific grammar. Schools don’t teach grammar or parts of speech or any of that stuff.
In short, society is starting to really suck on multiple levels.
I firmly believe some of the problems/issues are because they don’t listen. They heard what they want to hear and have a hard time getting past that. I can get very testy when that happens. Sometimes my Wife has to do the talking.
I encountered a wretched problem 22 years ago and the problem was with an orthopaedic practice outside of Syracuse. The young women on the staff needed supervision and discipline they weren’t getting it. I spoke to the doctor on a follow up appointment and told him that five different attempts over five weeks to coax a radiology consultation report out of his staff by myself, the secretary to the PT, and the PT herself had failed to get anything. He smiled at me superciliously and scribbled out one on a prescription pad. A fish rots from the head down.
This was the substantive problem. The formal problem you could see with how they interacted with customers. You hire young dingbats with no manners, you have to drill them until they get it right, or they quit, or you have to fire them for being unsuitable.
Called an office of a local business that has 2 or 3 locations…got a centralized phone person…she had to switch me back to someone at the local office, even though it was that number I’d called in the first place. Pretty sure this has also happened in other cases.
A lot of businesses don’t do a very good job of thinking out their workflow from a customer POV.
The charitable interpretation is that she’s new at her job, and she learns with scripts. A manager of mine from a generation back referred to a corps of women on her staff, one of whom had been hired 20+ years earlier: “they know a lot, but they don’t have any problem-solving ability”.
Michael Towns above at 4:34 PM nails it.
I would add to his list they have almost no ability to make change even if the computer tells them the total. And God forbid if you give them like $4.01 for a $3.26 bill.
Idiocracy, over consumption of electrolytes (Brando).
Competency, which was once so commonplace that it was taken for granted, and even expected, is now the new virtue. Living life in the US has become so easy, that competency is no longer required to compete successfully. I have had the same kinds of experiences, all with young people. It’s not just a lack of experience on their part, though. It’s a lack of thinking ability, and I conclude it’s mostly due to the state of our education system, as well as the easy availability of instant consumer gratification brought on mostly by the ubiquity of the Smart Phone.
Who needs to know anything when you can look it up!? Our kids are now being taught by the product of the ‘Me’ generation, and the things that used to leave our generation aghast are now being aggressively taught by those people, and worse. We are seeing the tree starting to bear fruit. It’ll get worse before it gets better, IMO, because in order to get better, education must be reformed to return to its classical roots: Facts, Reasoning Skills, Creative Thinking, Memorization. Just my two cents of course.
This true account goes back to around 1990, give or take.
There’s an office party coming up. Twenty-something-ish pink collar office worker is going around, asking for pot luck contributions to the lunch. She gets to my desk.
“You can bring a salad, a dessert, or a main course.”
“Okay, I’ll bring a dessert.”
“We don’t need any more desserts.”
“Then, ummm, I’ll bring a salad.”
“We don’t need any more salads.”
(with raised voice, admittedly not acceptable office etiquette — )
“Then why are you giving me a choice when there’s no choice??”
Sort of a betting-on-the-come, from her standpoint . . .
ArtDeco…”The charitable interpretation is that she’s new at her job, and she learns with scripts.”
A lot of employees are *required* to use scripts, even when they don’t fit.
I would only be prudent to give Blondie the last word…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si81OxXiWHw
I have a friend who teaches at a nursing school. The stories she tells me of the ignorance of so many of the students are frightening. My friend is actually concerned that many of these candidates end up matriculating. A task like counting someone’s pulse beats for ten seconds and then multiplying by six to get a rate per minute? Or six seconds and multiply by ten? Might as well be asking them to do integral calculus on three variables.
Telling them the prescribed dosage for a medication and then giving them a scenario where the available amount is greater, and asking them to determine how to fraction the available amount appropriately? Might as well be speaking in Esperanto.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
om,
It’s Brawndo and what else would you suggest? We put water on the plants? Like what’s used in toilets?!
I firmly believe some of the problems/issues are because they don’t listen. They heard what they want to hear and have a hard time getting past that. — shirehome
Interesting. A decade or two ago I realized that depending on the recipient, sending an email message with more than about 40 characters in it was a waste of time. Some people are or were banging through 50 or a couple hundred emails a day.
Anything beyond the first half of a medium length sentence just wasn’t read; or read carefully. So the recipient would guess what you meant from the first line and respond to that. Perhaps our sound-bite twitterized world has degenerated to shirehome’s comment.
This sounds all too familiar to me. Over the last few years, I’ve noticed the support staff at medical facilities has markedly declined in competence and professionalism. I think there are many possible reasons: staff shortages, post-Covid burnout, general indifference (likely in part due to the low pay). Younger millennial and Zoomer cluelessness about phone etiquette probably also plays a role. I don’t know if the person Neo talked to was of that age group, but I’ve noticed that the 30 and under crowd tend to struggle more with phone conversations, likely because they came of age in the smart phone era, with 24-7 access to texting and social media messaging. Anyone born before 1990 remembers when a phone call was by far the most efficient (and the default) form of communication. That is no longer true and the consequences of technological ‘advances’ are playing out in many unexpected areas.
}}} It seems as though so many communications that should be – and used to be – easy and straightforward have become convoluted and cryptic. Why?
Common Sense. Now so rare it’s like a Super Power.
}}} I firmly believe some of the problems/issues are because they don’t listen.
Yeah, this is a constant issue both in the workplace and other places.
I have an issue. I write a moderately detailed summary of the issue, with an experienced eye (I am a former developer and currently a software tester by profession, so have a feel for what is needed to analyze and diagnose the cause of an issue). It’s as concise as I can make it, but also has lots of basic important information I know from experience will be needed…
Inevitably, the first reply I get often has some idiot asking a question that was already answered in the first message.
SMH.
It’s like all too many people don’t even listen or hear or read, they’re just running a script in their head, and they have no comprehension of the meaning of any part of it, they’re just following the script by rote.
I’m sure this has always been somewhat thus, but, before, a large number of peeps had Common Sense, and were smart enough to read anything and parse whatever useful data they could out of it, so most of them wouldn’t ask questions you already answered… they’d skip ahead in the script to any missing part of what it sought.
Not any more.
There is also a really really strong issue with Short Attention Span Theater. Similarly, I’m submitting a “bug report” for a software test, and I list out three or four things, clearly delineating them, A, B, C, D… And I am pretty good at this, by now, because I’ve been doing it for decades, and I’m a fairly good writer and organize my thoughts well.
So the idiot who is out to “solve” the problem — and this has happened with a number of people, so it’s not just a single idiot — constantly asks me something that “B” answered, and, if not, then “C”.
SMH, again.
ONE PARAGRAPH SHALT THOU READ.
BEYOND THAT LIES GANDALF THE GRAY.
😛
}}} A lot of employees are *required* to use scripts, even when they don’t fit.
There is still common sense, where they can fill out known information themselves without bothering to drone at the customer…. See previous message. ;-P
One of my 3 mottos for life is “They call it common sense because it’s common not to have any”. The other two: “Never underestimate the power of ignorance” and “If everyone agrees with you, you’re probably wrong”.
Sigh. Sometimes, I think I am the only one who does his job right.
Just to be contrarian, My wife has had chronic illness over the past five years with severe depression (over a hundred ECTs and now breast cancer), plus a son with similar issues, the medical personnel have been exceptional all levels, especially the office folks, social workers, and such. The office secretaries have been helpful working around the various conflicting problems.
Johns Hopkins Hospital and University of Maryland Medical System.
Especially U of MD.
Another issue / attitude – “An action transferred is an action completed” (dial 6 numbers only to end up recalling the first one), mostly found when dealing with ‘government entities’.
The issues described above happen all too often. With our current education system… it’ll only get worse.
Not sure the “look it up” thing explains the issue.
I can look up the population of Brown County. Don’t have to go to an old atlas or Brittanica or textbook. That speeds up what I’m trying to do with the information.
But there’s no connection to figuring out how to read an appointment schedule.
Is there?
Maybe an explanation.
>>she answered that I hadn’t made that clear until now.
>>“I didn’t know Dr. A had another office until now,” I answered, a fact that seemed self-evident.
Some people — I don’t know whether it’s a generational thing or not — seem to live in their own worlds and also expect everyone else to be living there. They assume you know what they know, even in situations in which that would be impossible. With these kind of phone conversations, I just roll with the punches and keep going toward the goal. If the other person is a friend, I’ll try some reality “counseling”; with a person on the phone, no, just keep going.
I’m afraid “What do you mean by afternoon” would have left me too stunned to continue.
Some people — I don’t know whether it’s a generational thing or not — seem to live in their own worlds and also expect everyone else to be living there. They assume you know what they know, even in situations in which that would be impossible.
Watt:
I’m not sure if it’s the same thing, but I’ve long noticed when I have to consult HR, lawyers, financial advisors — really any sort of advisor — they immediately turn the question to me. What do I want to do?
Which is the ultimate goal, of course, so fine.
However I am usually at the preliminary stage of getting the lay of the land, learning what my options are and what the repercussions of those are likely to be. Instead my “advisor” seems to assume I know all of that as well as my “advisor.”
Maybe these advisors live in their own bubbles or maybe, I tend to darkly suspect, they are trying to push me out the door doing as little work and taking as little responsibility as possible.
When I was stationed in Germany in the late 1980s, I found it odd that the German nationals that worked for the US Army would go to a doctor’s and take the entire day off. They would apparently go in morning, and simply sit there all day until someone would see them. Literally. A doctor’s appointment would take all day. No actual appointment, first come first serve. They saw nothing unusual about that.
We aren’t all that far from that now.
Thank God I’m old.
Waidmann
“I have been out of practice for years but I do recall reading about limiting Medicare to a certain percentage of your practice.” [Mike K @ 3:53 pm]
Unfortunately, it seems that there are very few private practices remaining. Most physians have become employees of mega-health care corporations, where scheduling is oftentimes done by a centralized scheduling service. [David Foster @5:02]
Also it seems that physicians spend less time seeing patients that they use to. My PCP sees patients 2 days per week. She is a woman; is it because of women trying to balance out work and home or perhaps central scheduling only being assigned certain days on which they can schedule?
I’m with Wendy on the “What do you mean by afternoon” response.
So far, I have been lucky in having medical staff ranging from satisfactorily competent to really good, but that is in relatively small practices.
The approach I take with any vendor when I need their service is to begin by assuming there are things I don’t know (the Known Unknowns) that the Voice on the Phone won’t think to tell me (as Neo experienced) and phrase my inquiries accordingly. That helps a little, but there are still surprises. I also end every call with the question, “What should I know that I haven’t asked you?” which does sometimes elicit some useful information.
You really can’t fix stupid, though, and I don’t think we can completely blame the lousy education system for Neo’s scheduler, except for passing her up the line until she graduated from somewhere with an alleged degree in something.
This is not a new problem, BTW, as Steve Allen identified it nearly 25 years ago in his book, “Dumbth.”
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-01-21-ga-566-story.html
I read the book, and in it he is a lot more explicit about the ingredients. Examining particular anecdotes from his show business career (through the 1980s IIRC), he speculated that the basic problem with “dumb” behavior at lower employment levels is the rise of educational opportunities for smart people, who are no longer filling those jobs because they are in careers commensurate with their intellect.
Think: what Jeeves would have done if he hadn’t been stuck by class and tradition in the role of butler.
But the jobs still have to be filled, so the employers have to reach further left along the IQ distribution (not to be confused with Left, but that hasn’t helped matters any).
Of course, this is prior to the final Marxist takeover of the Universities, where even the dumbest applicants can now get a degree in Something Studies.
So that makes the pool for jobs that don’t require a degree even further left, but the jobs that actually do need a degreed candidate aren’t pulling in the really smart people either.
Interesting trivia from the LAT post:
If you don’t know about the Gell-Mann Amnesia Affect, you will find it has a lot of explanatory power for things like “why smart people still vote for Democrats.”
Relevant — and remember this is still 1990, while many people weren’t really aware of the take-over happening on the campuses.
Remember who his audience was.
Allen never really said in his book that people per se are dumber, as in a general decline of IQ, but that people whom he encountered in certain job positions were not as clear-thinking and competent as in the past.
Which is manifestly the case today — just look at the Biden Inc. Cabinet secretaries.
Or read this tweet by Paul Sperry which miguel linked on the SVB thread:
The Peter Principle at work — for everybody in government at the same time.
https://babylonbee.com/news/man-fails-dmv-job-interview-by-saying-he-is-a-motivated-go-getter
https://babylonbee.com/news/panic-on-delta-flight-as-captain-of-female-crew-announces-that-everythings-fine
For another satirical take similar to the video from Mike K (which is hilarious and frightening), here is the Website of Record again (they got a million of ’em):
https://babylonbee.com/video/fired-twitter-employee-applies-for-first-real-job
In communicating with whatever organization I’ve contacted I have found that I have to do all the thinking for them. My plan has evolved to “I’m dealing with a brain-damaged four-year-old who has lost their mommy” and I can report some degree of success, or at least more than assuming they might be a functional adult.
If I present a “canned solution,” packaged and wrapped, it seems to be somewhat more successful than allowing them the development of options on their end. To use Neo’s example, one must begin all conversations with a polite and non-threatening interrogation to gain the necessary information: Neo, you should have asked up front how many locations there were, and instead of “afternoon” specified “between 1 PM and 5 PM” with “this specific doctor” and “before this date.”
What is most disturbing, however, is that the incompetence appears to be moving upward in those organizations and not confined to the newly-hired adolescent on the phone or at the front desk, or for that matter, standing right in front of you. In today’s environment the responsibility for Getting It Right has shifted to the customer and that fact must be taken into consideration.
Unfortunately, it also means that the customer now bears nearly full responsibility for the success or failure of almost all interactions. Consider the potential hazard of dealing with an MD in his or her twenties versus dealing with one in their sixties: as in The Kill House Rules, you are on your own and no one is coming to save you.
Kids aren’t taught anything at home, and all they’re taught in school or at work is DEI. Add to that that it’s now as impossible to fire someone for cause in the private sector as it is in the public sector. Add to THAT, that these medical systems are all now corporate behemoths that are beholden to the insurance agency, research grants, and government “rules.” They don’t care about us, and they just hire to keep seats warm.
My experience as medical office support staff caused me to abandon that whole career path (making the Associate’s degree that I got for it almost useless). Anecdotally, pay is at or close to minimum wage with little opportunity for advancement, there is always more work than there is time and you will be blamed for that, the actual medical staff is too burnt out (or uncaring) and overworked to do the things they need to do so you can do your job, patients are irritable and you’re the point of contact upon whom they can pin all their blame toward the medical system at large, and your peers are also either burnt out and overworked or lazy (because, to be honest, there isn’t much of a difference in your quality of work life if you work hard or hardly work). But, as a desk job, it’s automatically more desirable than retail or food service, so there is never any shortage of candidates trying to get out of THOSE industries, so it probably won’t change.
I’ve had a lot of experiences with medical office personnel that are similar to Neo’s. Amazingly, the last experience I had with the medical system was just the opposite. I received a bill for an exam that has always been covered by insurance in the past, so I knew it was a mistake. It took me three calls and an hour of time to diagnose and solve the problem. I talked to the medical practice’s billing office, my supplemental insurance, and Medicare. Everyone I talked to–including the woman at Medicare!!–was polite, knowledgeable, courteous, and capable. It was amazing. But, yes, they all sounded like they were 30 or older.
I think the phone incompetence is something new, but the “not reading what I put in my first email” isn’t. One of my first jobs (mid-1970s) was working as a secretary in the computer science department of a prominent medical school. I would post multiple notices that said: “Staff meeting Wednesday, March 15 at 3:30 p.m. in room xxx.xx.”
There would subsequently be a steady stream of staffers leaning into the door asking: are we having a staff meeting this week? what time is the staff meeting? when is the staff meeting,” etc.
These people all had bachelor’s degrees or better and had mentally challenging jobs. But they had a mental block on this kind of stuff.
Anecdotally, pay is at or close to minimum wage with little opportunity for advancement, there is always more work than there is time and you will be blamed for that,
I once worked in a hospital medical record bureau that was chronically understaffed. The people in our office who delivered charts to the ambulatory clinics would have been amazed to learn that the clerical staff there were overworked given the standards of our office. At some point in my life I may have had an appointment with a physician where the office staff was scurrying about. I bloody cannot recall when that was. At the orthopaedic practice I referred to above, one feature of my follow up appointment was going to check out. Three clerks were behind the desk. The older one was helping a patient. The two younger ones were jabbering to each other about their nail polish. I just stood there to see how long it was going to take these two to notice there was a man a few feet away from them with some documents they had to process.
The median cash compensation for medical office assistants as we speak is $17.88 an hour and commonly includes benefits. Those jobs have little opportunity for advancement, which doesn’t set it apart from most jobs in the economy. Current minimum wage is $7.25 and hour. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has data on the compensation and employment levels in 825 occupations which encompass 86% of the working population. About 41% of the working population is employed in occupations where the median wage is lower than it is for medical office assistants.
AesopFan,
Regarding Steve Allen and Canada and Mexico:
First, what a treasure Steve Allen was! A talented, thoughtful and considerate individual; co-created the Tonight show, wrote over 50 books, won a grammy for music composition (and wrote thousands of songs)…
Second, regarding Allen’s and your statements about many peoples’ ignorance; the lack of curiosity of some people has always baffled me. It literally takes no effort to “learn” the nations that border the U.S to the north and south. A U.S. citizen will naturally encounter that information many times in one’s life. It seems people consciously make an effort to NOT hear such things, or take a second’s time to process the words when they do.
It always seemed natural to me that I’m living on a planet that contains certain things and works in certain ways, I ought to pay a modicum of attention to what is going on around me. One hears the name, “William Shakespeare” quite a bit. It would then be useful to know who he was and what he did. There are a lot of foreigners who want to live in America. Why do they want to leave their countries and come here? Some people live in nice houses in safe neighborhoods. Some are homeless. It seems useful to know how money works; how to acquire it and what to do with it when one has it. Many people observe different holidays and religions. Why? What are the differences?
It seems many people just live in their current surroundings; a visceral, immediate, non-contemplative existence. I wonder if their minds and/or brains are literally wired differently. Is it nature or nurture?
My physician was forced into retirement at the start of the COVID pandemic and I have been trying to find a new physician since. It is impossible.
I am open to D.O.s, even N.P.s Few doctors are accepting new patients and those that are have six month waits, or longer, for a new patient visit. I finally caved and signed up for one. It was only a 4 month wait! Two weeks before the appointment his office called and said they would have to cancel the appointment, but I could reschedule for 5 months into the future! I said, “Thanks, but I’ll find someone else.” That was 4 months ago and I have not been successful.
When my former personal physician was forced into retirement he was told by the mega-medical conglomerate that “owned” him; “We have a glut of physicians and you are in your ’60s so we need to put you out to pasture.” It does not look like a glut from my perspective.
I had a similar problem with a referral last year. The doctor was part of a practice that had a few locations, for convenience. I only knew the doctor I was referred and assumed the procedure would be nearby. However, that particular doctor only visited the nearby location on Thursday afternoons, and really nearly any other doctor in the practice could perform the procedure. None of this I knew, but the person arranging the appointment did and were not forthcoming with the information.
My wife works in the industry. She knows it is hard to get good people in those roles. Working for doctors does not pay well, because people don’t value healthcare (see Tara above or any number of stories about the the high cost of healthcare and the desire to make it free, you might claim there are good intentions in those stories, but the masses just want free). This makes being a doctor less lucrative and a newer one is a bit more stingy with office pay until established and more financially secure. So high turnover both of doctors and office staff.
Even with that insider knowledge, working with some of these people is difficult. It takes a good deal of professionalism on your part to get them to be better. And it doesn’t stop with scheduling. I’m now having a problem with paying the same doctor. I know how much to pay them, but I don’t know how. I can send them money, but I can’t verify an account to make sure the money is sent correctly. Their call system usually goes to a call service, so I never can talk to a person at my convenience. They’ve never sent me a letter with payment information. I only know I owe them and how much via my insurer. I will just have to stop by their offices to reconcile the account. I guess they are doctors and not accountants, but geez. Maybe if they hired an accountant, they would get better cash flow and financially secure enough to hire good receptionist.
}}} Sigh. Sometimes, I think I am the only one who does his job right.
Nahhh. But remember Heinlein’s dictum:
But remember Heinlein’s dictum:
==
His dictum is wrong. There are extraordinary individuals. But human capital is broadly distributed in a population and non-extraordinary but capable individuals are doing their part all the time.
Like Neo, I am dumbfounded at the number of incompetent people. The reason for the current state of affairs is way too complex but my guess is that government education policies are likely to blame. Government policies are based on many factors, not all, or any, are of benefit to students. One only need look at current subjects on critical race theory, sex and gender to see how it is all off the rails. I’m not sure there is any hope for turning back the clock on this. Adaptation may be the only course.
On a slight tangent, I’ll mention an irritating habit many people seem to have in working with people of a certain age, like me. I have had my hearing tested, and it isn’t tack-sharp but I don’t need a hearing aid, yet. But many service folks, either on the phone or in person, have a habit of “trailing off” at the last part of a sentence, or even the last sentence of a complex thought.
So this forces me to ask “What?” or some variation of that. This is bad enough, but it seems that frequently I get the second-last phrase, not the last! For example I hear “We could come by on Thursday, and mmmph-mmmph-mmmph.” I ask “What was that?”, and hear “I said we could do Thursday!”
I have a close relative who does this incessantly, and I must have asked her a million times “No, what was the LAST thing you said?!”
And while I’m on about it, here’s one that is admittedly going away – giving a telephone number verbally when giving or leaving a phone message. “Our office is closed, but if you require emergency assistance, please call btbtbtbtrattatattat, and have a nice day!”
The number is so familiar to the speaker that it is simply a subconscious rapid-fire fluctuation of the voice organs. And of course, repeating the number would be out of the question! That would involve being sensitive to the needs of the person on the other end!!
If you can possibly afford it (and by afford, I mean, give it a higher priority than nearly anything else in your life that costs money), hiring a concierge doctor is like going back in time several decades from the point of view of service and rationality, while preserving the genuine medical advances of the intervening years.
I expect it will be made illegal shortly. In the meantime, if I state a good enough reason, my doctor answers my calls on his cellphone, even if he’s on vacation.
Last year I needed a colonosocopy to remove a flat polyp (which is quite tricky) and I called the office and the best they could do was give me an appointment for a consultation with a Gastroenterologist in 5 months (February, 2023)! I told them that it was too dangerous for me so they found a time for me in three months (November, 2022). Thank God I insisted on an earlier time as it turned out to be pre-cancerous!. I was very Iucky.
My biggest medical care horror story does involve the explanation of scripts rather than stupidity. Several years ago, a close friend of mine in her early 50s had a pain in her back, which turned out to be a cancer so aggressive that they never were able to diagnose the primary tumor (probably kidney or liver). She was a smoker and drinker. She was given six months to live — she lived two — and shortly after her diagnosis she had to go for an evaluation. The only timely appointment was at an office some 45 minutes away, which seemed cruel to start with, and of course she couldn’t drive that by herself.
As she came out from the appointment, she was clutching a bag of pamphlets. What were they? Pamphlets on how to stop smoking — which had apparently been accompanied by a lecture from the P.A. Obviously part of a protocol for the appointment any time a patient checked “smokes” on the questionnaire.
It was so callous and inhumane, it riles me to this day.
My biggest medical care horror story does involve the explanation of scripts rather than stupidity.
==
No, madam. That’s not scripts. It is stupidity.
My point was that the employee did what s/he was required to do. Of course it is a stupid as well as cruel thing to give a dying woman how to stop smoking material. I am assuming that the employee had no discretion in the matter. If they did, maybe I’m wrong.
Quote: “The only real pandemic is stupidity.”
Scripts: I’ve had the “pleasure” of being put on hold for long, tedious, exhausting minutes while a call center person reads through some scripts – or looks for the best fitting one.
Grrrrrr…
Ray van Dune: the “trailing off” talker
I’m married to one. Often, he has turned away, so I miss the last part. And he decides to reword the whole thing. All I wanted was the last fragment!
Arghhhh!
And ordering at a restaurant: the waiter misses his special requests, like no croutons.
We are working on looking UP, and at the waiter’s face when talking. That helps a lot!!
(And I do blame his parents. … Correctly. Heh. )
Nancy, stop smoking pamphlets:
Does seem cruel.
I wonder if it was required.
But still!
I’m so sorry for her, and your obvious loss.
Nancy, stop smoking pamphlets:
Does seem cruel.
I wonder if the person giving out paperwork did not know her personal actual prognosis.
But still!
I’m so sorry for her, and for your obvious loss.
Brooklynboy: flat polyp
If I may I ask: how was it found?
I.e., did you have to have 2 colonoscopies? … 1 to find it … but that Dr couldn’t remove it?
Arghhhh.
I’m having trouble just convincing a loved one to get even an initial procedure!
My point was that the employee did what s/he was required to do.
Required to do by whom? Are you telling me there’s an oncology practice where this would be policy?
Nancy, when my mother was dying of liver cirrhosis, she was humiliated over and over by medical personnel asking her how much she drank. Her idea of drinking was a very occasional single glass of wine at dinner. That wasn’t the cause of her condition. In retrospect, we think it was Hepatitis C which she got from a blood transfusion before anyone knew about Hep C and screened for it. The nurses and doctors, not knowing her, weren’t being intentionally hurtful, but it bothered her.
Like Hurin3, I must be part of a small minority in dealing with physicians and health systems. I’ve never had problems making or changing appointments with either of the PCPs I’ve had for the last 25 years. And while I don’t need to see specialists all that often, I have needed cataract surgery, colonoscopies, orthopedic exams for arthritis, and a few other procedures that are just part of aging– I had no difficulties with any of the doctors, their technical assistants, or their office staffs. And all these people were always pleasant as well as competent.
Yale New Haven Hospital and Yale New Haven Health System.
I should add that my experiences with my veterinarian and the local animal hospital have also been good. Appointments are simple to obtain, no long wait times, and my vet’s vet techs are happy to answer questions over the phone to make sure your pet really needs to see the vet instead of watchful waiting. The only major hassle that COVID caused was having to wait in the car when you got to the vet’s parking lot and wait for the techs to come out– to retrieve the pet and return it after the vet examined it. Thankfully that’s a thing of the past now.
When my kids were young I was fairly strict about “screen” time, which, in the early days basically meant TV and access to the PC we kept in a very open area, in our kitchen. My attitude was there was no need for any prior to age 5, and then maybe an hour or two a week until age 12, or so*.
For some reason this really rankled quite a few people, including family and friends. More people voiced negative opinions on this than would have had I said we were raising our kids under the guidance of David Koresh.
I would frequently hear opinions like; “What about educational programs, like Sesame Street?”
My reply, “What happens when my children get to school and their teacher is not a hand puppet?”
I can’t prove it made a difference, but I had a sense that throwing information at kids in short, entertaining bursts, even good information, may not be optimal for development.
Art Deco: Yes, I am saying that “counseling” the smoker and handing them informational brochures *must* have been the policy if the patient ticked “smokes” on the intake form. I don’t smoke, so don’t know first hand, but there’s really no other explanation — it’s just not something even the most stupid and insensitive aide would think to do on his own initiative: “Here’s how to spend your last month of life: enter a smoking cessation program!” This was at Kaiser facility, btw, not a private practice.
Kate: Yes, I had a friend’s wife die of lung cancer at 50. Everyone’s first query was always “Did she smoke?” Well, she didn’t, but even if she had…
Art Deco: Yes, I am saying that “counseling” the smoker and handing them informational brochures *must* have been the policy if the patient ticked “smokes” on the intake form.
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but there’s really no other explanation
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You’re telling me the stupidity is institutional policy and the employee in question did not have the sense to disregard it.
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Kate: Yes, I had a friend’s wife die of lung cancer at 50. Everyone’s first query was always “Did she smoke?” Well, she didn’t, but even if she had
==
No, that was not ‘everyone’s’ first query.
Art Deco: Possibly a slight overstatement, but not by much….
Q: “Why?”
A: Why should I (the clerk) bother with your needs when there is no immediate reward for doing so? Besides, you’re being violent for bothering me.
I see a reference to writing to a horse. Might not be as advertised.
Sherlock Holmes’ address, 221b Baker Street, did not exist when the stories were written. Eventually, building went out that far and the address was that of a building for a Building Society–sort of like a bank. The volume of mail to Holmes, some in fun, some asking for actual help, was so great that the Society hired a full time employee to handle it.
About sixty-five years ago, I purchased a square inch of the Yukon under a promotion of Quaker Oats, sponsor of the radio show Sergeant Preston of The Yukon.
It appears The Big Inch Land Company defaulted on its taxes of about $38 and the land reverted to the government.,
The government has “an eighteen-inch” log of inquiries, some in fun, some wondering.
I don’t worry about it any more. Easy come, easy go.
Point is, people can do things for fun or out of curiosity without being dumb enough to believe as an uncharitable outsider might presume.
Art Deco: Possibly a slight overstatement, but not by much….
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If they didn’t know her and they had some sense, they’d have assumed she smoked and been surprised if you offered she didn’t. If they did know her, they would have expressed surprise because they knew she did not smoke or they had never seen her smoke. And if they didn’t know her well, why are they probing her husband? Who does that?
Of course, if you smoke for period of time, you remain at an elevated risk of lung cancer for decades after you quit (a risk with is a function of your cigarette consumption in pack-years). Ditto emphysema.
My reply, “What happens when my children get to school and their teacher is not a hand puppet?”
Rufus T. Firefly:
As opposed to the current state of affairs? 😉
Which is to say that today’s teachers seem a lot more like hand puppets than those I remember in the 60s.
More seriously, I think you’ve got a point. While I’m all for educational content that isn’t boring, I don’t believe wholesale entertainment is the solution either.
At some point students have to be turned on to the meat and potatoes and not just dessert.
My husband and I live in a small, relatively wealthy community that spends an amazing amount on its schools. Whatever the schools spend that money on, it isn’t anything useful to the students’ jobs. Add CRT to the equation, and the kids come out of class with no common sense and absurd expectations. It’s no accident that the brightest and best-mannered young people I know are home schooled.
@ Rufus > “It seems many people just live in their current surroundings; a visceral, immediate, non-contemplative existence. I wonder if their minds and/or brains are literally wired differently. Is it nature or nurture?”
I’m betting on wiring. The world is divided into two kinds of people: (1) those who think the way I do (ask questions – why is this made that way? where does that door go? etc; find out what’s going on without waiting for someone to tell you; keep things organized instead of just dropping them randomly around the house or office); and (2) those who don’t.
The two groups have vastly different life histories, employment, family situations, etc., so I think it has to be an innate personality type (SEPARATE from the MBTI).
The other two kinds of people are (1) those who can extrapolate from incomplete information.
@ marv > “the “trailing off” talker
I’m married to one. Often, he has turned away, so I miss the last part. And he decides to reword the whole thing. All I wanted was the last fragment!”
Your spouse and mine: twins separated at birth.
Although at least you GET a last fragment — AesopSpouse delivers the first half of a sentence that clearly has a second segment, and about 3 minutes later I finally ask him to finish it.
@ Ray > “here’s one that is admittedly going away – giving a telephone number verbally when giving or leaving a phone message. “Our office is closed, but if you require emergency assistance, please call btbtbtbtrattatattat, and have a nice day!” ”
Yeah, thank goodness for today’s cell phone memory, and caller ID.
Sometimes people call me and never give their name, which I’m supposed to recognize either from the voicemail or context of the message.
Hah.
Back in the Dark Ages, when we actually answered the phone, some would just start talking without introducing themselves at the beginning.
AesopSpouse hung up on his own grandmother once for that.
We have trained ourselves, hopefully our kids, and anyone we had supervisory power over to say each digit slowly and clearly, and repeat it.
AesopSpouse (despite the other trailing-off habit) gives the number at the beginning and end, so someone replaying the message, because presumably they didn’t write it down, doesn’t have to listen to the entire spiel twice.
Is the trailing off an affectation, or a habit gained from…something?
Ordinarily, something which doesn’t work for us ceases being done. So, it would follow that trailing off isn’t a problem for the speaker and the difficulties it provides doesn’t seem to the speaker to be the result of trailing off. Somebody else’s problem not connected to trailing off.
Not particularly courteous. What happens if such a speaker is asked to change behavior? Resistance?
I went to a walk-in clinic and the very nice nurse practitioner told me I would get the results of my test in a few days. I missed the call and when I tried to call back, I got an automated service that kept sending me back to the beginning of the call. I was terribly frustrated and did a search and found another number for the clinic. I pressed 0 until I go a real person and was directed to the lab and they gave me my results. I went on Google and left a review stating that the lab was great and the phone system was terrible. A few days later I got a call from the lab and they gave me a number I could call the next time I needed someone and it would connect with a real person. Why not do that anyway?
Art Deco:
I will foolishly rise to the bait:
“If they didn’t know her and they had some sense, they’d have assumed she smoked and been surprised if you offered she didn’t.”
I didn’t offer — asking the question was (96.6257283% of the time) their first response to the news she had lung cancer.
“If they did know her, they would have expressed surprise because they knew she did not smoke or they had never seen her smoke.”
Maybe, but it was never the case that I was the one to tell people who knew her well (she was the wife of a friend, I didn’t know her friends or coworkers separately).
“And if they didn’t know her well, why are they probing her husband? Who does that?”
Everyone! That was my point. “My wife/T’s wife has stage four lung cancer.” “Oh, did she smoke?”
“Of course, if you smoke for period of time, you remain at an elevated risk of lung cancer for decades after you quit (a risk with is a function of your cigarette consumption in pack-years). Ditto emphysema.”
This woman never smoked. She was a health nut who ran the Marine Corps marathon the year before her death.
My point was that rather than first expressing any sympathy whatsoever with her condition, the immediate response was to confirm that she must have deserved it.
I brought up her case as analogous to Kate’s mother’s plight as non-alcoholic with cirrhosis. Like Kate’s mother, in addition to a cruel and fatal disease, she had to fight the presumption that she brought it on herself.
(Of course, the query in itself is not offensive — anyone would have the same curiosity, it’s more a matter of tact).
My original example of my friend at the clinic was in some ways quite the reverse: her cancer was almost certainly brought on by her smoking like a chimney and drinking like a fish. But the smoking lecture when it was by any measure too late was gratuitously unkind.
Marv
Yes. I had a colonoscopy which found a flat polyp (I never even heard of flat polyps) which the Doctor (who was not expereienced in flat polyps) decided not to try to remove it because if he could not take out all of it, it would be more difficult for another Gastroenterologist Doctor to remove what was left, so he then referred me to another Dr. who sppecialized in it. So I had three colonoscopies because after the Specialist Gastro Dr. removed the flat polyp they scheduled me for a three month follow up to make sure they got it all (they did) and they removed a scar that was left on my follow up visit to biopsy and that thankfully turned up negative – so I had three colonoscopies in 6 months!! They said to me “See you in threee years” and I said in return “See you instead in 30 years”.
The convo has largely moved on from the original post by now but I can think of so many reasons this isn’t surprising.
Most people are overstimulated, overwhelmed, distracted, anxious, and have subpar executive functioning these days. Too much noise, too many lights, too many crowds, too many distractions with emails, instant messages from coworkers, our own phones making us want to look at a new thing every 15 seconds, exposure to too many scary stories on the news affecting our mood and concentration, etc. I read that a recent study found that in this hyperstimulated society, almost no one they studied in an office environment was able to concentrate on a work task for over three minutes at a time.
I also think there’s been a sort of… slippage… in our language in recent years. Maybe it has to do with getting used to using a lot of abbreviations because of texting and instant message, but it seems like almost everyone has a problem being clear and not being overly vague. “Why can’t people use nouns? Everything is ‘that thing over there!'” I’ve seen one internet acquaintance complain. It’s also much easier to make ourselves understood through in-person communication than any other method because we’re picking up so many cues we’re barely conscious of (I recently read Matthias Desmet’s book that went into this a bit, it’s really fascinating) and communicating in real time with no disruption due to poor signal, audio quality, etc. As we become more reliant on remote methods of communication, I expect the quality of communication to continue dropping.
Management is also terrible in a lot of places. Maybe even most of them. Leadership is a skill that must be learned over time. People are often promoted to supervisory roles without developing necessary leadership skills (a common example of the Peter Principle). Many people are poorly trained. And they’re poorly trained by people who mean well. And they mean well themselves, but they don’t even understand what competencies they’re supposed to have. Hey, maybe your person was just a fool or just didn’t care no matter what her level of training was but this is a real society-wide issue.
Neo,
Short answer: because no one bothers (or has been taught) to think any more.
Worked with a subculture whose verbal connections included huge proportions of “th” words. This, that, there, those, so forth. And directions without references. “over” “up” so forth.
Worked because in conversation somebody can say, “Say what?” and get it figured out.
Was a real prob in written communication.