I just had a little unexpected meltdown on a call to refill Edward’s Remicade prescription. It’s a call that is already silly: our current insurance forces us to use a pharmacy that ships the medication to the hospital, when our former insurance just had the hospital pharmacy provide it. So it used to be that we did literally nothing to refill the prescription (the nurses just let the pharmacy know it was needed), and now instead we receive an automated call asking us to call this remote pharmacy, and then we call them, and we spend five minutes contributing NOTHING to the process except to say “Yes, as usual, go ahead, yes, as usual, yes, thank you, yes, just do it as usual, I don’t know if that’s right, the hospital handles that part” and confirming that nothing has changed. The whole thing could be automated, but is not, and we endure it because who is going to make a big system-changing deal about an unnecessary five-minute phone call every seven weeks. Not me.
This time the call took more than half an hour, and I would have said it took 45-60 minutes except I did not actually check the time I started the call, and it is so easy to exaggerate when telling a story of high emotion. I just know it was more than half an hour because I DID glance at the clock the first time she said she was going to put me on hold, which was already well into the part of the call when I was wondering how much longer this was going to take, and I know it was half an hour after that when I finally got off the phone. Anyway, when I had been on hold twice for her to check something AFTER I had given/confirmed allllll the information I ever need to give/confirm, I asked DID she need anything more from me, because it sounded like all she still had to do was confirm things with the doctor’s office, and I’m never involved with that. She said she did in fact need more from me, but that she first needed to confirm with the doctor’s office before she could go on to that part of her form, so I would need to be on hold again while she did that. (This is not typically the case when I call. They typically deal with me, then hang up and do the rest with the doctor’s office.) Then there were two full rounds of unsuccessful attempts to contact the doctor’s office plus one session while she looked for alternate ways to contact them—all of this with me still on the phone. I finally asked WHAT information she still needed from me, and she said she would need me to confirm whatever shipping date the doctor’s office gave her.
That was apparently my breaking point. I transitioned from “somewhat impatient, but still cooperative and polite” to FULLY FLIPPED-OUT in what I would estimate was two, maybe three seconds. My voice went from normal and calm to fast and intense and shaking. In this mode I went on at some repetitive length about how they did NOT need that from me, that I NEVER confirm the shipping date after they speak to the doctor’s office, that I did NOT need to personally confirm the shipping date as long as they were getting it there in time, that WHATEVER the pharmacy and the doctor’s office agreed upon between themselves was FINE with me and I would be giving an automatic YES to whatever it was and did not need a separate call for that, that I did not CARE when they shipped it as long as it got there by the date I had already given her, that I would be happy to give that same VERBAL PERMISSION individually for every single shipping date between now and then if I could JUST GET OFF THE PHONE.
I feel bad that I said it all in that quavering losing-it voice (so contagious to other people’s moods) to someone who has very little power over the situation, and is attempting to do her job as she’s apparently been instructed to do it. (I don’t know how the other representatives avoid what happened this morning; the one I spoke to implied that they did it by not following the rules.) I did remember to say early on that I knew this was not her fault and I knew she was doing what she was supposed to do and I knew that she didn’t make the rules—which, as a former customer service worker, I can say really helped ME when someone was flipping out.
I also recommend, if you are the one flipping out, using “they” to refer to the company you’re having a problem with, rather than “you.” So you’d say, for example, in your high, quavering, clearly-losing-it voice, “I don’t understand why they need me to agree AGAIN to have it shipped!!,” rather than “I don’t understand why you need me to agree AGAIN to have it shipped!!” This helps make it psychologically/emotionally/linguistically clear that you see the nearly-powerless person you’re speaking to as separate from the entity in charge of them. Plus, you get a better answer, if there is one: if you use “you,” you get useless stuff about protocol and following orders, because the agent is hearing “you” personally and so is telling you why he/she specifically has to do it that way; if you use “they,” you might get information about why the company has its agents do it that way.
Anyway, I am not proud of myself this morning, and I’m embarrassed. Everything is weird with all the pandemic weirdness, and there is no need for me to add a meltdown to someone’s working day. (I’m still mad about being on the phone SO LONG FOR NO GOOD REASON though. If you must-must-MUST confirm with me, then CALL ME BACK. WE ARE ALL HOME ALL THE TIME NOW. GAH!)
I can SO relate!!! My husband has Parkinsons and is treated by the VA. He had to see a non VA provider at our local hospital that still would have been covered by VA insurance. INSTEAD the hospital billed Medicare and are saying we owe close to $3000…. This has been going on since last May!! and still is not resolved! I continue to get bills, continue to keep contacting those who SHOULD be able to solve it…..BUT!!! I get off the phone and absolutely rave about incompetent people!!!
Oh gosh, I can relate to this!! My husband had a treatment for his liver cancer using a non-VA provider, and we got billed for that just like you did. His only coverage is through the VA, and we got a bill for $95,000. It’s maddening! (Ours was resolved, and I sure hope yours is resolved soon!)
Thinking of you and your husband. We’ve had a lot of Parkinson’s in my family (only one related to me by blood). XOXOX
I love the ‘you’ vs ‘they’ thing, it’s absolutely true and definitely helps/works when used.
These things are truly maddening and referring to they rather than you takes the personal sting out of it entirely. I hope you feel better now. Theres so much pressure on us at the moment, What With Everything, it’s understandable that we need to vent occasionally. People understand.
(Gah! *There’s*! First the ironing went. Then the personal grooming. And finally, the apostrophes.)
Noooooo! Never the apostrophes!!
The you vs they thing is so smart!
Also: Ugggggggh. This whole thing sounds needlessly awful.
Please don’t be so hard on yourself about this. You did everything you could to keep the pressure away from the phone-rep; apart from that, it’s simply not on you to keep it together all the time at a high cost for your psychological well-being, to make up for the company’s inane and precious-life-time-stealing process that was unnecessarily forced on you. You did not choose to even be in that situation.
You are also ALREADY paying for it with time and marbles, and not unloading on the rep personally is really all that’s required here to fill up the “decent human being” part of the score card. Anything above that is saint level requirements, and let’s be honest, who has the energy and mental fortitude for that?
So, please be kind to yourself. You really handled that with as much grace as you could – I for one know I couldn’t have done better, shaky pressured voice and all. And I likely would’ve had about the same breaking point, because honestly, to be kept on the phone for half an hour to figure out a shipping date to not even your own home is almost insultingly stupid.
Curious to know what the customer service rep’s response was?
She said she would pass my concerns on to her supervisor, but that it was protocol to have the patient or patient’s representative on the line when the shipment scheduling was made with the doctor’s office. She said she couldn’t speak to what had happened all the other times I’ve been through this, when I hadn’t been made to stay on the line for that; she said she could only say what she’d been told to do. She said someone would have to call me back when they did finally get in touch with the doctor’s office, because it was protocol for the patient’s representative to be on the line to verbally okay the shipment date.
You had an understandable mini-meltdown in the face of an incomprehensible and needless stressor on top of a whole bunch of other stressors AND you managed to think about the feelings of the person you were directly dealing with. You should not feel the least bit embarrassed.
Even in “normal times” i find that my nerves fray quickly on calls of that nature. I am impressed at how you conducted yourself and how you remembered to use such positive ways of dealing with the person on the other end of the phone. I cannot say with assurance that I would have been able to do the same.
It feels like we are at a point when a lot of people are really having a tough time and are under immense emotional stress, even if we have fully stocked pantries and healthy kids and whatnot. This is just HARD. It really is. I think you’re doing really well and I don’t even think I’d call this a meltdown on your part!
She should have called you back. Her dithering activated your stress levels which is totally understandable. I’ve been snippier with people, people have been snippier with me. I’m not holding it against anyone. I’m also trying to not hold it against myself and that’s the hard part.
You did well, thinking of her feelings in the middle of super stressful situation. I’ve done worse. I don’t think I’ve ever done better.
I will remember the “you” vs. “they” thing for future.
There have been times where I’ve been like, “I know this isn’t your fault and I’m sorry that I’m so upset, when it’s not your fault, but this situation is untenable. I realize there’s nothing you can do to fix it, and I’m not blaming you for that, but is there someone up the chain who might be able to fix this? And I will absolutely tell them you did your best for me so that they know that I know that none of this is your fault”.
And then there are the times that I get my husband, who is a lawyer (he doesn’t work as one, but he has a license to practice in our state), to write a letter. The letter basically goes, “I am a lawyer. I am self-employed. I will take you to court and it’s no skin off my nose because I don’t have to pay a lawyer and you do.” That generally works when nothing else does. If you don’t have a lawyer in your life, you can write a similar letter and say you’re taking them to small claims court, where generally lawyers aren’t allowed, but they’ll still have to pay someone to go.
All that long distance pharmacy crap can be so infuriating, even in the best of times! It always made me so mad that the people responsible for dropping the ball or screwing things up were never the people I was actually talking to and wanting to express my frustration to. We had so many issues with a pharmacy our insurance forced us to use that my husband finally tracked down the email of the CEO and messaged him directly. Let me tell you, after that we got stellar service always. He responded and assigned us a specific person that handled all of our needs from there on out. I was amazed. Don’t be afraid to take these issues as far up as you need to!
I don’t know if this helps at all but 1) that situation was ridiculous and you reacted appropriately and 2) sees.com is up and running again.
OMG SEES IS UP
:)
I don’t even understand why you need to be involved at all! I think I’d have a meltdown every time I had to make a call about something that the pharmacy and doctor should be able to handle on their own. All this to say that I think you were justified!
Wow, that is INSANE. But I commend you for noting that “it’s not her fault” because that does help but WHOA. I mean, why would you need to do this when this is not A NEW SITUATION OR PRESCRIPTION.
I cannot read the title of this entry without it being sung in my head to the tune of “The Final Countdown” (the 80s song).
I WILL HEAR IT THIS WAY IN MY HEAD FROM NOW ON