‘You’re going to get in a lot of trouble!’

The phone rings at 7 in the morning. The phone rings at midnight. If we don’t answer the phone, letting the machine screen the calls, the patients leave interminable messages, explaining that the insurance company already paid, that the second test on their sexual plumbing wasn’t really necessary. It’s amazing the detail about their very personal medical histories these people will pour out to the message machine of a total stranger.

If we’re at home and it’s within normal business hours, we answer.

“Is this the (name) medical center?” they ask.

(I’m sure the medical center has some fine, hard-working staff. I decline to name the outfit in part because no surviving Nevada employer needs any more trouble today, what with Steven Horsford and the other armed robbers of the Nevada Legislature still at large.)

“Ma’am, you have a bill from the medical center there in front of you?”

“Yes.”

“The phone number on the bill, can you see that’s a 10-digit number?”

“What?”

“If the area code is different from 702, you’re going to have a dial a ‘one’ and then the entire 10 digits,” we explain. “It just happens that here in the Southern Nevada area code, our home phone has the same last seven digits as your health center’s office in Coral Springs, Florida.”

It seems that last fall the outfit decided to centralize their billing operations in Florida. We’ve been attempting to conduct our polite little seminar in “area codes” ever since.

I talked to the outfit’s chief of billing about the problem four months ago. She now says that because I stopped calling, she figured the problem had gone away. It hadn’t.

Monday, the brunette told me that even on days when she doesn’t have to work, she can’t stand to be in the house more than four hours straight.

“The medical center calls?”

“Duh.”

So I started again. Tuesday morning, I called the office in Florida. (Other than the area code, I never have to look up the number. It’s my number.)

“Hi. I’d like to talk to the person who’s in charge of sending out your bills,” I said.

They transferred me to “Roberta.” Within five seconds, I was pretty sure “Roberta” was not the person I needed.

“I don’t think you can help me,” I said. “I asked to talk to the person who’s in charge of sending out your bills.”

“Oh, I kin hep you,” she said. “Just give me a try; I kin hep you.”

I told her my name, and explained about the phone numbers.

“What’s you account number?” “Roberta” asked.

“I don’t have an account number. I’m not a patient. I’m the guy who’s getting calls from your patients day and night because you refuse to print your area code in extra-large type, or put a note in red letters on your bills that it’s not a local number. That’s why I told you I need to talk to the person who’s in charge of sending out your bills,” I said.

“Are you a patient?” she asked.

“I’m not a patient,” I explained. “That’s why you can’t find my account number. I’m calling because I’m the guy who’s getting calls from your patients at all hours of the day and night.”

“What company are you with?”

“I work for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, but that’s not the main point here.”

“And you don’t know your account number?”

“Listen, Roberta, I’m the guy who’s going to start telling your customers that because of the Health Affordability Reform Act, enacted by the U.S. Senate last week, they don’t have to pay your bills any more; they can just throw them away, because Barack Obama is going to pay them. Now are you going to let me talk to someone in charge?”

“Roberta” hung up on me.

I tried the local offices, here in Las Vegas. I always start out asking to speak to an actual medical doctor or a corporate officer. Oh no, no need for that. Mandy, Mindy or Bimbolina always insists she can handle my problem. Between repeated interruptions of the “What’s your account number?” variety, I tried to explain the problem — which I had already explained to everyone there, four months ago.

When I told one of the gum-chewing micro-boppers that if I didn’t get some satisfaction I was going to start telling their customers about the Health Affordability Reform Act, she shouted “You’d better not do that or you’re going to get in a lot of trouble!” … and hung up on me.

Finally I reached an office manager named Gabrielle, the first person I’d reached all day who appeared to be smarter than my cat. (And Skeezix is the kind of cat who wants to look out the front door to make sure it’s raining there, too.) She seemed to immediately grasp the impact of having multitudes of their patients told about the recently enacted (and thoroughly imaginary, you understand) Health Affordability Reform Act. She managed to have an actual corporate officer call me back within the hour. He said he’d try to add a line to their bills, pointing out “This is a long-distance call.”

Think I’m holding my breath?

“Brian” also told me it would be fine if I started telling their customers to throw away their bills. Honest.

Later in the day, I got a call from the person who really is “responsible for sending out their bills” in Florida. Guess what? It wasn’t “Roberta”!

She said she’d try again to make some changes in their bill forms. She even offered to send me “before” and “after” bills to show their efforts, to my Review-Journal address.

I thanked her, but pointed out how many of their employees, at so many different locations, had declined to put my calls through to someone smarter than the average potted plant even when asked, instead trying over and over and over to determine my “patient number,” and finally hanging up the phone.

“You have to understand, Vin,” she said. “These are eleven-dollar-an-hour employees. You can’t expect them to know how to deal with something that’s outside their experience.”

I’ve been thinking about that.

I started working while in high school, at $1.60 an hour. I was thrilled, in my youthful ignorance, when the minimum wage went up to $1.75, thinking that meant “a raise for everyone.” I didn’t realize some jobs just weren’t worth $1.75, or $2.35, that some jobs that once gave kids a first step on the employment ladder — think “filling station attendant” — would go the way of the dinosaur.

But even when I earned $1.60 an hour, I believe I could have answered a telephone, politely determined the nature of the problem, and passed along the call to someone who could deal with it.

Eleven dollars adds up to almost $23,000 a year. And you wouldn’t want to see “Roberta” take a spelling test, believe me. Yet we wonder why U.S. firms are outsourcing so many services to India? In India there are college graduates, bright, cheerful, literate in several languages AND the jargon of computer repair, who would be tickled PINK to make $23,000 per year. Yet in America that kind of money now hires — and empowers — arrogant twits who can’t even figure out when it’s time to pass the call up the line, as requested, to someone who can tell you her age without tapping it out with a front hoof.

3 Comments to “‘You’re going to get in a lot of trouble!’”

  1. MamaLiberty Says:

    So very true! My first job paid 50 cents an hour, and I thought I was rich!

    As for the outsourced jobs, just wish that some of the nice, polite Pakistani (or whoever computer) tech support people actually did speak English. I’m sure they understand it, but between their mouth full of mush accents and my half deaf ears, I can’t understand more than one or two words in ten. Makes for long phone sessions. Thank goodness for 800 numbers.

  2. B Dean Says:

    Ah, I so often make the same mistake, Vin. Looking for competence in an age of entitlement. Oh well, one day it will come crashing down and after a far too long period of dearth of material wealth and/or freedom (any of that left?) we will try again. Who knows, Roberta might even notice after her nails dry.

  3. Michael Says:

    Vin,
    you are a funny man! Lack of competence is the trademark of greater government. It seems that the cancer is bleeding down though society. The marketplace is the only hope for correction. Alas, with better than half the sheep at the trough there are not enough rams left to make a difference and plenty of wolves to take advantage of the situation.