Things That Annoy Me, But Shouldn't

Good to know I’m not alone in not being to speak under such circumstances.

 

I had a "SpeakEasy" device when in middle school and high school.
Looks like a hearing aid. Fits in the ear with a little microphone thing that sticks to just under your ear lobe. The microphone picks up vibrations as you talk and feeds it back to you via the "hearing aid".

Basically, it was like talking on the phone and hearing yourself with a delay on the other end of the receiver.... But all day, every day

 

Didn't really come here with the intention on being attacked. It was just something my brain decided to pick up on, for some reason, so I wondered if I wasn't alone. I guess I am in this case.

Sorry, I'll back off now.

 

I was joking.

 

I was just trying to be funny.
I really have been using that word, though, and it reminded me of the whole "hipster" stereotype with "ive been doing X since before it was cool"
So i became a hipster in the post

 

Me too. If there was an attack against you @Platina I'm sorry, I had no idea. I was only responding to a message or two above mine, with no idea of the context.

Edit—I just went back and found the original post. Basically we were all agreeing with you @Platina ...

 

Ah, OK. Thanks.

Oh good grief, this!!! So much! Coffee, especially, is the worst in that case if you're not use to room temperature or cold brew!

 

Oh, good heavens, don't back off! Grin and join in. We're all joking. Occupational hazard: I see a word situation waiting to be manipulated into something weird and I go for it.

 

Football songs......nil poi from me

 

The suggested posts function in Instagram

For every post in my feed from accounts THAT I ACTUALLY FOLLOW, I get like three stupid horseshit posts from random accounts, AND I CAN'T TURN THEM OFF. WHAT IS MY DISCOVER PAGE FOR IF NOT THIS VERY THING?!?! I want to see pictures of my friends and my cousin's new baby, without having to scroll through three stupid memes in a row from accounts I've never even visited. Your mother is a whore, Instagram. It's so stupid. It's painfully obvious how intent Instagram is on manipulating its users into getting hooked on the app and scrolling for hours to their detriment, rather than giving them any kind of organic experience. Mark Zuckerberg should feel ashamed of himself, that pasty-faced lizardy bastard.

Rant over I guess.


#socialmediaappssuckmajorballs

 

Also bread and circuses to keep us entertained and satiated so we don't see how they're gradually stoking up the fire under the cooking pot we're all in. What's that delicious smell... ? Sorta smells like chicken.

 

People (especially a few well known social crusaders) saying this virus is 'unprecedented.'

If ANYTHING has had precedence historically it's a f'ing pandemic.

 

Oh, dear. Speaking as a former receptionist, we certainly weren't sitting idle. In fact, we had three incoming phone lines, and they were nearly ALWAYS all active. I was a gibbering wreck at the end of every day, and it took me several years after retirement to not feel the urge to scream every time the phone rang at home.

The thing is, while you're sitting on hold, you have no idea what the receptionist might be dealing with. Some people are just making an appointment ...that usually is a quickie, unless they can't get the appointment they want on the day they want at the time they want with the doctor they want. Then the negotiations take time. Other people may have a concern about their prescription, which means looking out their file, finding a doctor, getting the response they need, then finishing the call. Or somebody has a complicated issue involving a previous phone call, which requires a bit of hunting through the daily 'message' book, or writing a message to give to the doctor when he or she is free from their daily round of patients they're seeing, and getting the follow-through arranged with the patient.

Many patients would phone, anxious to know if hospital tests had come back yet. And many of them phoned a bit too early, meaning the test HAD come back but hadn't been seen by the doctor yet—so we weren't allowed to give out the result. However, to find this result at all meant a rummage through the doctor's message cubbyhole as well as the patient's file, plus a call upstairs to see if the computer people had the result, etc. Many times the test result had NOT come back yet, meaning we had to go through all these potential locations, and then end up phoning the hospital to see what had happened, or if the test had been completed. Which meant dealing with hospital receptionists, who were working under many of the same conditions we were.

During that job—which I did love and felt worthwhile doing—I was stressed to the max most of the time. Mainly because I was aware of the importance health issues have to the patients who phone us, and also aware that very little can be done instantly, as lots of people and events have to dovetail.

People who contact a surgery can seem unaware that receptionists are dealing with hundreds of patients every day, on several different levels. And with only two or three telephone lines and only a couple of receptionists enabled to answer these lines. Plus the receptionists must also pull files for the surgeries, book people in, send them through to the doctors and nurses when called, hand out prescriptions, make appointments over the counter ...well, it's difficult to get things done as fast as each patient would like.

People also sometimes fail to realise that the doctors have set protocols, and receptionists aren't allowed to bypass these protocols. While there is always an emergency line available, for true emergencies, most other things will not be dealt with instantly. Doctors particularly detest being interrupted during an ongoing consultation, with requests from other patients. And when you think about it, if you were consulting with a doctor, would you want receptionists busting in, asking the doctor to sign prescriptions, answer questions about somebody else's test results, asking to rummage through the doctor's pile of patient records, etc?

I worked at four different surgeries during my time as a receptionist - two as a fill-in receptionist when I was first getting started, one in a surgery that required a 2-bus journey both ways to get there and get home, and about 9 years at my final surgery, which was only a 20-minute walk from home. I can assure you, the problems we had as receptionists were common to all four of these surgeries.

For me, a good receptionist is somebody who DOES enact what they promise to do. DOES phone the patient back, once we can get the required information. Or arranges for a doctor, nurse, or other receptionist to make contact when the information is available. My irritation at colleagues often came when they had promised to do something, then when their shift ended, they just walked away without informing colleagues what they had promised to do. And that was an embarrassing situation that ALSO required quite a bit of telephone time, as the new receptionist attempted to track what the previous one had done.

Whenever I had to put a patient on hold, I ALWAYS asked if it was 'okay.' I didn't want to slam the person on hold if their need was urgent. Most of the time they said 'yes.'

Surgeries aren't perfect, and they can often be chaotic, depending on what happens during the day. I remember one angry patient, who had been sitting in the waiting room for longer than expected ...we'd had several real urgent cases, including a lady who was having major chest pain, fitted in that afternoon ...marching up to the desk and saying, very loudly, "If you take that heart attack patient in before me, I am going to complain to the Health Board. This is ridiculous. I've been sitting here for an hour..."

Sometimes NHS patients can really lose sight of the fact that it's a shared service, and triage and priorities do take place.

I retired in 2006, just before most surgeries were fully digitalised. I think digitalising has made things easier, as test results are on computer already (coming from the hospital that way) and patient records are also nearly always on computer. However, during the 12 years when I was a receptionist, we spent about 70% of our time chasing paper. Chasing paper files which doctors had sequestered in their consulting rooms—which were off limits to us until the doctors were finished consulting—or were upstairs with the computer staff, or stuck in the doctors' cubbyholes, complete with earlier messages. As a result of phone calls (while the patient waited on hold) we chased test results and hospital letters that were WAITING to go into patient record files. We chased prescriptions, which might still be at the chemist, or in the doctor's piles waiting for signatures, or upstairs with the computer people getting printed, or in the dispensing box, or in the bags going to the various pharmacies for collection.... just a sample of what our day consisted of. Chasing paper. I think some of that is less problematic now.

 

@jannert - but as I say, I’ve sat in their waiting room countless times. There’s never more than a couple of people in there and quite often I’m the only one. The phones aren’t ringing and I watch them come and go, seemingly not doing very much at all.

When I was a kid back the 70s and my mum used to take me the doctors, they were always rammed with patients. I don’t remember delays and trouble getting appointments then. And she certainly didn’t have to phone at 08:00 on the dot, because phoning at 08:01 meant you would be 27th in the queue and all the appointments would be filled by the time you get through.,

 

To be fair though, it is Things That Annoy Me But Shouldn't.

 

No no no. Just no. That would drive me insane!

 

Apart from the book I'm reading which is 641 pages and I'm a slow reader I have 5 other books sitting on the table waiting to be read and I don't put books on the shelf if they haven't been read and it annoys me how slow I read

 

Thanks, Anheuser-Busch, but if I want apple in my beer, I'll mash one in there my damn self.

 

Thanks Minute-Maid, but if I want lemon in my water, I'll just mash one in there my damn self.