Monday, October 19, 2009

Getting Even

As you may remember, Mary saw fit to torture her poor, aging, employer a few weeks ago.

One of her jobs (besides playing Farmtown online) is to fax my notes to other physicians' offices. So late this morning she had a bunch of them to send.

Around 11:30 the girls decided to order lunch from Chipotle, and faxed over an order. Mary went to pick it up.

While she was out I fished the fax confirmation sheet from Chipotle out of the trash, along with some of the medical office fax confirms on my patient notes. I doctored them up to make it look like she'd accidentally faxed all the patient notes to Chipotle. I put them on her desk, and went back to my office.

When she found them she was frantic for about a minute. Then she came back here to kill me.

It was SO worth it.

21 comments:

PJ Geraghty said...

I love practical jokes. But sometimesI love the revenge from a joke at my expense even more.

Easily Lost said...

And they call me evil, jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh. (I wonder if Mary need a nice new cast iron fry pan for Christmas. She can use it on your head :P )

Gert said...

That is truly evil...and great!

The Good Cook said...

Oh, that is wicked good.

D said...

Awesome.

Doris said...

You are eeevil (thats 'evil' with 3 Es. You know, really eeevil.

Paybacks are a bitch. Watch your back.

An Open Heart said...

So, which one of you is the evil one?

Anonymous said...

Now you have to look forward to payback, you poor devil...

Anonymous said...

I sooooo want to come work for you!! Please???? Pick me!! Pick me!!

Kimbra Kasch said...

Sounds kinda like Bill Murray's practical joke in Zombieland. . .

Now, that you have entered the halls of the undead I guess you'll have to see Zombieland to understand.

Magnus said...

I used to work at a store in a mall. We mostly sold "educational" kids' toys.

For some reason, at least one person who worked for Kaiser Permanente used to give out our fax number as the number for people to fax medical records when appealing Kaiser's decision not to pay for medical treatment.

Every so often, we would come in in the morning and there would be somebody's medical records in the fax machine.

I called Kaiser and got a "supervisor" who claimed that she knew who was giving out the wrong number but couldn't do anything to stop it.

I called every patient (or parents of patients who were children) whose contact information I could find. (On shifts I didn't work, though, nobody else called. That really bugged me. The idea that someone would get stuck paying a perfectly reasonable medical bill just because Kaiser was having appeals sent to the mall seemed really unfair.) Invariably, they were grateful.

I started out calling hospitals and doctor's offices if I couldn't find patient contact information. Those almost always devolved into threats of legal action for having the nerve to intercept faxes from them to Kaiser. I quit calling hospitals and doctors' offices. I was paid to do other things than listen to harangues from people who didn't understand how faxing worked when I first came in in the morning.

And of course we ended up just throwing the files out, rather than buying the expensive kind of shredder the hospitals insisted we get in order to prevent any more breaches of confidentiality on top of our interception of their faxes.

I think your story is hilarious. (I wish I worked for you too.) But I'm also really glad that Mary was frantic for a moment at the thought of faxing patient records to Chipotle.

ER's Mom said...

I love a good joke...and that one was good.

snicker

Is the Grumpy tribe learning the fine art of the practical joke? I'm sure you are tutoring them. ;)

Chrysalis said...

Be careful. With Mary, you'll never see it coming. :)

Leesy said...

You do know you're gonna die, right? Probably in some scenario involving poodles, jello, and an audience of patients?

Grumpy, M.D. said...

Leesy- yeah, I know she's plotting already.

Anonymous said...

Magnus tried to do the right thing. That's precisely why there is a niggling of doubt about everything going all e-records. It's great between the docs (and pharmacists that have to reconcile the perpetuity of prescriptions), but when the HIPAA stuff gets in the wrong hands...really, I thought the original intent of HIPAA was to avoid selling of private information between vendors and ultimately denial of insurance benefits from 'getting something on Maggie Marmelstein'.

Grumpy, M.D. said...

I think Magnus went above and beyond the call of duty.

Most people would just toss them, or worse, an identity thief would see it as a gold mine and take them.

MOJITOGIRL said...

Mess with Mary at your own risk......you could open doors to the seven levels of Hell.....!!

Unknown said...

I love Neurologists, they have the best personalities, and very frequently the best sense of humor. Endocrine, and surgery, on the other hand not so much. I hate to say it, I agree that frequently the best part about practical jokes is knowing that you are going to get it back. Then again; I think that my grades in college would have been much better sans the time wasted on the very elaborate, and frequently sadistic jocularity.


Joke on Grumpy!

Anonymous said...

@Anonymous at 6:05 am -

You'd be surprised at what HIPAA
doesn't cover, like selling Rx
records. Drug companies use them
for marketing, and eeevilll
companies like Millman and IHS
aggregate them and sell databases
to insurance companies so they
can more easily deny you coverage.

Anonymous said...

That's hilarious.

Also, as a Chipotle worker, thanks for faxing instead of just showing up and ordering 34324782395 burritos.

 
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