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December 09, 2001-7:46 p.m. Here it is! The entry where I tell you about the last thing the trucker�s daughter did that sent me over the edge! As you may remember, I work at the insurance company, as does the trucker�s daughter. She is under the mistaken impression that the job that I perform is easy and could in all likelihood be performed by a trained chimp. She is quite fond of telling how she helped me get caught up once (before I had a sainted assistant), not that she has retained any of the knowledge gleaned then. For a time it was the trucker�s daughter�s job to process any faxes that came in without being addressed to a particular person. Some of these faxes pertained to my job but as they were not addressed to me or to my sainted assistant, they fell to the trucker�s daughter to process. We foolishly assumed that as she holds a position of quasi-authority with the word �expert� in the title, she would ask us if she was unsure as to how to proceed. I received a call from a customer service side supervisor saying that she had a man on the phone who was very upset that his child�s provider had been sent a letter from us and he had not received a copy. Thinking that perhaps it was a case of something that had been lost in the mail, I told the supervisor to bring the information to me and I would pull the file and send the member a copy of the letter. No big deal, right? When the call supervisor gets over to my desk, she has a print out of one of our documentation screens upon which the trucker�s daughter had documented that she had �faxed provider back requesting additional information.� Evidently a customer service representative saw this note, thought a letter had gone out to the provider, and relayed this information to the member. Red flags are now shooting up all over the place. I have no idea what she has sent them. I pull the file and all I find upon glancing it over is the information that they sent to us. I am livid but it is after hours, the trucker�s daughter is gone and we have ice in the forecast, so I save it for the next day. I was in late the next day due to the inclement weather. When I got to work, I got my system going and then I went to my supervisor with this issue. As I was trying to explain it to the supervisor, the trucker�s daughter walked over. Other people were waiting at the supervisor�s desk but once they got a whiff of what was going on they left, hurriedly. My argument was basically that we had no documentation of what she had sent the provider. Now we had a mad member on the phone screaming that the provider had gotten something that he had not and if this was not resolved to his satisfaction he could go to his employer or the union and then we�d really be in a pickle. The trucker�s daughter maintained that she was sure that she had sent a fax cover sheet along with the information that had been sent to us and an explanation as to what additional information we needed. I ask her how she knows this if we don�t have a copy; how can she be sure? Does she remember this case specifically from July? She takes the fax from me and looks through it, finding on the last page a handwritten note that she had made on their cover sheet saying that she needed X, Y, and Z. There was no signature and you really had to be looking to differentiate her note from what they had written. �Here it is. This is what I faxed back over to them� �Why would you do that?� I think she may have felt that this vindicated her but I pointed out that we have a form letter that we send out to the provider and copy the member, which details what specific information we need in order to approve and pay the claims. There was no logical reason for her to have done it the way she did. The supervisor asks her if she is aware of the existence of this letter. �Yes.� All I could do at this point is just shake my head and keep repeating, �This. . .this. . .this is not good.� I was so mad that I was shaking. I kept thinking about how I had had to sit in that conference room with the supervisor and manager listening to a lecture on my lack of professionalism for having left an anonymous note for the same person who evidently felt it was okay to fax anonymous notes to providers. Then I thought about the fact that she is a higher pay grade than I am and how despite what they say, I�m sure she makes more money than I do and she is in that position not because she excels at anything other than annoying the hell out of people, but because a departing manager had bizarre sense of humor and handed her the position on a platter. As luck would have it, she was fairly amenable and agreeable (although she did try to unsuccessfully embroil my sainted assistant into the fray during lunch) because at that point in time, I�m quite sure I could have snapped her neck in two with one hand and not even thought a thing about it. Amazingly enough, there haven�t been too many remarks of late about how easy my job is. Wonder what�s up with that? **Disclaimer: All characters in this diary are fictional. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, real or imagined, is purely coincidental and unintentional.** |
