Monday, May 19, 2014

Attention patients:

Those of you who've met Mary and Annie know my staff is pretty awesome. But, due to some recent confusion, I'd like to point out what my staff is NOT here to do:

1. Arrange tee times, make restaurant reservations, and look into available flights. We are not the hotel concierge desk.

2. Drop-off or pick-up your dry cleaning. This is not a service my practice offers.

3. If you have a letter to mail, and want Mary to put it with the rest of our outgoing stuff for her daily run to the mailbox, she doesn't mind. Asking her to look up addresses and postage rates, or to supply you with free stamps, is going too far.

4. Babysitting. This is a big one. WE ARE NOT HERE TO BABYSIT YOUR KIDS. Pissy and I only see adults, and consequently do not keep toys or copies of Ranger Rick in the lobby. We do not want your kids drawing all over our magazines, walls, and lobby furniture. Supervising them is also not the responsibility of other patients in the lobby - I see Alzheimer's patients, for fuck's sake. If you can't control your kids you will be asked to leave and given the option of rescheduling when you can get a sitter, or just seeing Dr. Darth across the street.

5. We are not going to help your kids with their homework. This is a medical practice, and my staff is busy. If junior needs a piece of scratch paper or to borrow a pencil, that's fine. But we are not here to teach spelling, algebra, or quantum mechanics.

6. Look up movie times. I mean, I can't remember the last time I saw a patient who didn't have a smart phone. There's an app for that. The fact that you handed your phone to a toddler to keep them busy is not an excuse.

7. We absolutely, positively, do not keep diapers (for ANY age) on hand. Either bring your own or hit the Target down the block. And DO NOT even think of changing them in our waiting room. There's a bathroom 15 feet down the hall.

8. Call your order over to Starbucks, Chipotle, or wherever. It's not like you even offered to treat us.

9. Give advice on pet care. We are not the vet. They are 2 blocks over, and do a great job. The fact that between us the staff has 8 dogs does not make us an animal hospital.

10. Pick up your trash. There's a trash can out in the lobby. Leaving the detritus of your McGrease lunch or little balls of snot-loaded tissues on the lobby table is rude, gross, and unacceptable.

11. Find you a pharmacy, or therapy place, or hospital, or pretty much anything in Montana. Or Canada. Or South America. Or anywhere outside of Grumpyville. Let's face it, we have enough trouble figuring out what pharmacy to call HERE when you give us directions like "it's near the place with blue awnings," "the one by the Denny's," and (my favorite) "across the street from the homeless guy in the baseball hat."

12. Call numbers you got from Craigslist of people selling furniture, clothes, themselves, etc., then reporting back to you on what we found out.

13. Buy shit that your kid is selling for a school fundraiser. Don't even go there. You wouldn't like it if we hit you up for cash outside of your office co-pay.

14. Answer your cell phone while you're with the doctor, and take messages. They do this all day for me, and I'm paying them. You are not. It can go to voice mail.

Thank you.

Ibee Grumpy, M.D.

19 comments:

  1. Yep yep... My world, does not revolve around YOUR kids.

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  2. i'm sorry that you felt that this had to be written. really people!?!?!?

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  3. Rants are such wonderful things.

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  4. There's lots of crazy even a neurologist can't fix.

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  5. Gramps had to be admitted to the hospital for something. The kids thought they could drop demented and incontinent Grams off in the hospital all day too. Since the nurses could watch them both. We told them NO!

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  6. It just keeps getting sadder and sadder...

    And now we KNOW you can't possibly pay Mary & Annie enough!!

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  7. Ooh my favorite is when they try to leave their kid with me in the exam room, because I tell the they can't use their cell phone while I am trying to interview/examine them. So rather than hanging up, they'll just run out and finish their call, leaving baby ADHD in the room to try and steal my phone. I do want kids someday, but I don't really want yours.

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  8. #5 made me burst out laughing!!
    This is such a sad, but true state of affairs.

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  9. Wait, these are all REAL examples? Even the Craigslist, Starbucks order, and leaving cellphone with Mary? If only these were grounds for dismissal from a practice. But of course, everyone deserves medical evaluation and treatment regardless of age, creed, gender, or narcissistic personality disorder.

    Is it so wrong to ask people to treat my staff and me with a modicum of basic human respect at all times?

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  10. My daughter asked me if I thought our species would continue to evolve, I was forced to explain the concept of devolution and to let her know that the peak had come something around 1960. Thereafter,some women began to do drugs and alcohol while pregnant and tilted the equation. Go ahead tell me I am wrong.

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  11. Packer, you're wrong. (well, you asked!) In any case, women have been drinking as long as there have been men.

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  12. having lived in montana for 4.5 years, a general rule is that if it's a standard part of life in a major us city, it probably doesn't exist outside of billings, missoula, great falls, or kalispell.

    having said that, i loved my neuro nurse practitioner in great falls. :)

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  13. ... but I don't have a smartphone...

    I love the people who think you should watch their kids, except that if you actually catch the little undisciplined brats doing something bad or dangerous, these same rocket scientists start screeching, "HOW DARE YOU TRY TO TELL ME HOW TO RAISE MY CHILDREN!"

    Yeah, can't have it both ways, dingbat. And if your kids are so stupid and/or unmonitored that they don't know not to stick things in electrical sockets or chew on power wires, I'll be happy to tell social services allll about it.

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  14. It's not OK to poke my female staff member in the belly and ask how many puppies are in there. Even if she were pregnant (which she isn't)it would still be incredibly rude.

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  15. Yet I work in pediatrics and it doesn't sound as bad as your office! Maybe because we're used to it?

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  16. What the heck is wrong with these people? I've never seen anyone (in the UK) ask reception staff for anything more unusual than a glass of water, and that was with profuse apologies and thanks.

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  17. Let's all move to the UK. Apologies in advance, Mal.

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  18. The office staff will NOT sign the Medicaid transportation reimbursement slip when YOU showed up for your appointment on the wrong day.

    The statement clearly says, " Patient so and so received a Medicaid reimbursable service on this day....blah blah".

    You didn't, so they won't. Thanks.

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So wadda you think?