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The Angry Post
EXTRA, EXTRA: Got a double feature today, because I was lazy and let all this stuff accumulate. But I'm breaking it into two posts, or I'll drown you all with my words, which neither of us want.
First, to my astonishment, the other day I spotted ex-neighbor Jennifer pulling into the parking lot. She was the hoarder with the five cats, thinking of getting a puppy, but thank god bought a house and moved away?
She was coming back to take her garden as the final stage of her moving out -- which is crazy talk to me, but I don't know a lot about gardening. She saw me and eagerly filled me in on all that was new with her (while throwing a bag of garbage in our bin, which I thought was a bit rude since she's not a resident anymore).
She then asked if I still went to the gym. I said no and started to tell her why (the mountain of hospital debt my money has to be spent on rather than luxuries like gym memberships), when literally she got distracted by the daisies that had started coming up and walked away from me.
I escaped back home without even saying goodbye, half relieved to get off so easily (conversations with her tend to suck large segments of time and for the most part usually focus on her -- kind of like talking to my family) but mostly really irritated at how unbelievably rude she is. I mean, "Me me me me me. What's new with you? Oh look...daisies!" Whatev. Thank god she moved.
I did make the observation, and Tery agrees, that it's pretty bizarre considering my unrelenting cynicism concerning people and their endless capacity for selfishness, that I'm simultaneously relentlessly optimistic and always surprised to be proven right.
~*~
BIG happenings in Tracey's world. She has a new neighbor under her, a woman named Nina, who is very outspoken and has no intention of taking any shit from her (literally, with Tracey's "balcony trained" dogs).
She's been here two weeks and is already fed up with her. She's prepared to go to the HOA, Animal Control, the police, President Obama himself to get her evicted. I didn't think eviction was an option, mainly because the HOA likes to paint itself as powerless against her, but Nina assures me it can be done.
I thought I hated Tracey, but compared to how Nina feels about her, I might as well be her Facebook friend. She is really, REALLY angry.
The problem is Nina's beef isn't with the barking during the day, but the galloping around at 3:30 a.m., which we can't exactly assist her with since (blessedly) we can't hear it. Plus she told me she still has urine dripping onto her balcony (EWWWW). "I don't think I've ever seen her walk the dogs," she told me. "Well why do you think you have urine on your balcony?" I asked her, lightheartedly because I get the impression Nina is someone whose good side you want to stay on.
She said there is an unbelievable amount of damage both to the balcony and the inside of the unit because of the dogs (and who knows what other activity), and Mary, the owner, is preparing a lawsuit. About bloody damn time. I've seen enough court TV shows to know she also has a good case for loss of rental income the way Tracey drives people out of there.
I really hope Nina stays, and that she's the final nail in the coffin. Just leave, Tracey. Have mommy and daddy buy you a house where no one will bother you, or at the least a ground floor unit somewhere. Anywhere else but here. We'll have a block party to celebrate your departure.
EDIT: Nina went to the HOA meeting, bringing with her a pal who runs the board at another complex. Two things of interest popped up: a) There seems to be the possibility that Tracey's (and when I say "Tracey" I mean "Tracey's mommy and daddy") insurance company never received full disclosure about the meth lab (or maybe she meant the dog situation. It doesn't seem possible that such a major detail as a felony arrest could be kept hidden). If they were to find out, Tracey might become uninsurable and lose the unit that way.
Also b) not just a possibility but a fact is that Tracey's mommy and daddy's names are on the title, not hers, which makes her in the eyes of the law a tenant and not a homeowner. Which makes her far less impervious to eviction.
(I have to wonder why this was all news to our own HOA and what the hell we're paying them for. It seems to me if I was going to run a property management company, one of the first things I'd like to learn about is how to deal with problem neighbors.)
Nina seems very excited about this, so we'll see. Christmas might come super early this year.
~*~
I was angry about a new policy at my transcription job whereby essentially we would be penalized financially because of ESL (English as second language) docs, but then they unexpectedly gave me a raise -- my first in two years, and I didn't even have to beg for it.
In case you'd like to know the details of the policy that makes me hate my job, in here you'll find a vile, obscenity-filled rant, only interesting to me and anyone curious about the seedy, dangerous underbelly of medical transcription.
Up until now my job has been great because we MTs have had a safety net in the form of QA (quality assurance), to whom we could send reports with blanks and they would try to fill them in with varying degrees of success.
There are really only two reasons to have a blank in a report: either you're having trouble finding a medical term/doctor name/facility despite hearing it clearly, or your dictator is a damn ESL with only the most tenuous grasp of the English language and you just can't imagine what it is s/he's trying to say.
Thanks to the suggestive powers of Google that can turn almost any phonetic spelling into a search for an actual term, as well as a phalanx of very useful sites, very, very rarely do I have instances of the first. Quite the opposite in fact: every once in awhile after determinedly plugging away on Google, I'll turn up a term so obscure, so bizarrely spelled and sounding so much like a collection of common words combined (which causes more misleading searches), that I'll actually say out loud, "I fucking ROCK." (the most recent example was the "Silfverskiold test." Try finding THAT phonetically.) Those are the days I get the most job satisfaction.
So in my case, 98% of the time my blanks are a result of those ESL docs with accents so thick you can't be certain they're even speaking English. I don't mean to sound racist or be all "learn the language" (in fact I have one psychiatrist who's American and I still can only understand one word in five), but the fact is the onus is on me to produce an accurate, coherent document that will affect a patient's care, and you, Dr. Steven SungHo, are not helping (and I don't for a second believe that "Steven" is your real name).
Well, they're now instituting a new policy where we're allowed to submit up to 5% of our total lines worth of reports to QA; anything above that number, and we're paid a lower rate for those reports. Or we could send it on to the hospital, not involve QA at all, and risk irritating the client (because of course we MTs are first in the line of fire over an incomplete report -- it just COULDN'T be the fault of the almighty doctor).
I understand the purpose of it is to discourage people abusing QA, sending in every little blank so they can move on to more reports and get higher line counts (particularly since learning from my supervisor that some MTs send as much as 40% to QA, because they're so lacking in confidence. That's CRAZY. She told me my average before this policy was about 11%). But what I take exception to is that they've made it so the entire report counts against you, whether it contains one blank or ten. So for instance I sent in a particularly long report that ended up being 106 lines. Perfect except for one blank, but all 106 lines count in that 5%.
The injustice of this would just about kill me if not for this raise.
Of course none of this stopped me from puckering up my lips to kiss some serious ass when, shortly after starting this program, they offered a $1000 gift card for the best 500 or less word essay about how great it is and how much it will help the company and the MTs. Four years as an English major left me with a bachelor's degree and some mad bullshitting skillz, at least on paper. Might as well see if they'll pay off.
~*~
Finally, this just in today: I was behind a woman whose car was covered in breast cancer ribbons and bumper stickers. Which I didn't have a problem with until I noticed a puff of cigarette smoke come out of her window. Really? Guess lung cancer is okay? If you ask me they both sound like rather unpleasant ways to die.
Whole lotta anger goin' on.
First, to my astonishment, the other day I spotted ex-neighbor Jennifer pulling into the parking lot. She was the hoarder with the five cats, thinking of getting a puppy, but thank god bought a house and moved away?
She was coming back to take her garden as the final stage of her moving out -- which is crazy talk to me, but I don't know a lot about gardening. She saw me and eagerly filled me in on all that was new with her (while throwing a bag of garbage in our bin, which I thought was a bit rude since she's not a resident anymore).
She then asked if I still went to the gym. I said no and started to tell her why (the mountain of hospital debt my money has to be spent on rather than luxuries like gym memberships), when literally she got distracted by the daisies that had started coming up and walked away from me.
I escaped back home without even saying goodbye, half relieved to get off so easily (conversations with her tend to suck large segments of time and for the most part usually focus on her -- kind of like talking to my family) but mostly really irritated at how unbelievably rude she is. I mean, "Me me me me me. What's new with you? Oh look...daisies!" Whatev. Thank god she moved.
I did make the observation, and Tery agrees, that it's pretty bizarre considering my unrelenting cynicism concerning people and their endless capacity for selfishness, that I'm simultaneously relentlessly optimistic and always surprised to be proven right.
~*~
BIG happenings in Tracey's world. She has a new neighbor under her, a woman named Nina, who is very outspoken and has no intention of taking any shit from her (literally, with Tracey's "balcony trained" dogs).
She's been here two weeks and is already fed up with her. She's prepared to go to the HOA, Animal Control, the police, President Obama himself to get her evicted. I didn't think eviction was an option, mainly because the HOA likes to paint itself as powerless against her, but Nina assures me it can be done.
I thought I hated Tracey, but compared to how Nina feels about her, I might as well be her Facebook friend. She is really, REALLY angry.
The problem is Nina's beef isn't with the barking during the day, but the galloping around at 3:30 a.m., which we can't exactly assist her with since (blessedly) we can't hear it. Plus she told me she still has urine dripping onto her balcony (EWWWW). "I don't think I've ever seen her walk the dogs," she told me. "Well why do you think you have urine on your balcony?" I asked her, lightheartedly because I get the impression Nina is someone whose good side you want to stay on.
She said there is an unbelievable amount of damage both to the balcony and the inside of the unit because of the dogs (and who knows what other activity), and Mary, the owner, is preparing a lawsuit. About bloody damn time. I've seen enough court TV shows to know she also has a good case for loss of rental income the way Tracey drives people out of there.
I really hope Nina stays, and that she's the final nail in the coffin. Just leave, Tracey. Have mommy and daddy buy you a house where no one will bother you, or at the least a ground floor unit somewhere. Anywhere else but here. We'll have a block party to celebrate your departure.
EDIT: Nina went to the HOA meeting, bringing with her a pal who runs the board at another complex. Two things of interest popped up: a) There seems to be the possibility that Tracey's (and when I say "Tracey" I mean "Tracey's mommy and daddy") insurance company never received full disclosure about the meth lab (or maybe she meant the dog situation. It doesn't seem possible that such a major detail as a felony arrest could be kept hidden). If they were to find out, Tracey might become uninsurable and lose the unit that way.
Also b) not just a possibility but a fact is that Tracey's mommy and daddy's names are on the title, not hers, which makes her in the eyes of the law a tenant and not a homeowner. Which makes her far less impervious to eviction.
(I have to wonder why this was all news to our own HOA and what the hell we're paying them for. It seems to me if I was going to run a property management company, one of the first things I'd like to learn about is how to deal with problem neighbors.)
Nina seems very excited about this, so we'll see. Christmas might come super early this year.
~*~
I was angry about a new policy at my transcription job whereby essentially we would be penalized financially because of ESL (English as second language) docs, but then they unexpectedly gave me a raise -- my first in two years, and I didn't even have to beg for it.
In case you'd like to know the details of the policy that makes me hate my job, in here you'll find a vile, obscenity-filled rant, only interesting to me and anyone curious about the seedy, dangerous underbelly of medical transcription.
Up until now my job has been great because we MTs have had a safety net in the form of QA (quality assurance), to whom we could send reports with blanks and they would try to fill them in with varying degrees of success.
There are really only two reasons to have a blank in a report: either you're having trouble finding a medical term/doctor name/facility despite hearing it clearly, or your dictator is a damn ESL with only the most tenuous grasp of the English language and you just can't imagine what it is s/he's trying to say.
Thanks to the suggestive powers of Google that can turn almost any phonetic spelling into a search for an actual term, as well as a phalanx of very useful sites, very, very rarely do I have instances of the first. Quite the opposite in fact: every once in awhile after determinedly plugging away on Google, I'll turn up a term so obscure, so bizarrely spelled and sounding so much like a collection of common words combined (which causes more misleading searches), that I'll actually say out loud, "I fucking ROCK." (the most recent example was the "Silfverskiold test." Try finding THAT phonetically.) Those are the days I get the most job satisfaction.
So in my case, 98% of the time my blanks are a result of those ESL docs with accents so thick you can't be certain they're even speaking English. I don't mean to sound racist or be all "learn the language" (in fact I have one psychiatrist who's American and I still can only understand one word in five), but the fact is the onus is on me to produce an accurate, coherent document that will affect a patient's care, and you, Dr. Steven SungHo, are not helping (and I don't for a second believe that "Steven" is your real name).
Well, they're now instituting a new policy where we're allowed to submit up to 5% of our total lines worth of reports to QA; anything above that number, and we're paid a lower rate for those reports. Or we could send it on to the hospital, not involve QA at all, and risk irritating the client (because of course we MTs are first in the line of fire over an incomplete report -- it just COULDN'T be the fault of the almighty doctor).
I understand the purpose of it is to discourage people abusing QA, sending in every little blank so they can move on to more reports and get higher line counts (particularly since learning from my supervisor that some MTs send as much as 40% to QA, because they're so lacking in confidence. That's CRAZY. She told me my average before this policy was about 11%). But what I take exception to is that they've made it so the entire report counts against you, whether it contains one blank or ten. So for instance I sent in a particularly long report that ended up being 106 lines. Perfect except for one blank, but all 106 lines count in that 5%.
The injustice of this would just about kill me if not for this raise.
Of course none of this stopped me from puckering up my lips to kiss some serious ass when, shortly after starting this program, they offered a $1000 gift card for the best 500 or less word essay about how great it is and how much it will help the company and the MTs. Four years as an English major left me with a bachelor's degree and some mad bullshitting skillz, at least on paper. Might as well see if they'll pay off.
~*~
Finally, this just in today: I was behind a woman whose car was covered in breast cancer ribbons and bumper stickers. Which I didn't have a problem with until I noticed a puff of cigarette smoke come out of her window. Really? Guess lung cancer is okay? If you ask me they both sound like rather unpleasant ways to die.