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Sunday, August 18, 2024

Oh, to be old and doddering

Some days I wish stupid errors did not get under my skin, even to the point of irritation. Here's a small one. A small sign announced Eggs Benedict, Saturday morning, for breakfast. I ordered one Egg Benedict, with my usual substitution of a piece of bacon instead of ham under the egg.

Two mornings a week we have a doddering old woman behind the counter, relaying orders to the kitchen. Like the character Joan-Margaret in Grace and Frankie, she shuffles in and out of that swinging door, bringing her breakfast offering back with a hopeful smile. She brought me a poached egg, broken and swimming on the plate, over several pieces of bacon, topped with Hollandaise. "But you asked for it over bacon!", when I refused it. Enough of the petty.

I switched my pharmacy to my prescription plan's mail order service. This began a month or so ago when I called them to compare prices, and to update my address when the comparison was quite favorable. A prescription came up for renewal, so I gave the nurse my new pharmacy. The next day I had a text to confirm the order for delivery to my address--in Peninsula.

Back on the phone, I called to confirm the order and switch the address, again. I was told the three month prescription would cost $450 and change. I was transferred to Benefits, where I learned I was again in the Donut Hole. An annual occurrence. Back to the order desk to confirm and be sure my address was correct.

Thursday I had a text that the script would ship that day. I called again to confirm it was shipping to the correct address. "Oh, yes, Ms. Noragon, the address is correct." I made him repeat it to me, to be sure.

Saturday I had a text that my package was delivered that day. Since my mailbox is downstairs, I waited until breakfast today to retrieve it. No package. I checked the tracking. Yep, delivered to my old Peninsula address, where I have not lived for four years.

I called and spoke with a well trained operator, whose only mistake was to tell me I had confirmed the old address. I informed her that every call was recorded so there were at least three recorded instances of my change of address. She is sending the replacement by expedited mail.

I certainly hope I don't have a credit problem to unscrew, too.

This whole transaction should have been as simple as some operator rising from his/her keister and verifying the address on all platforms. Perhaps not even standing up.

In better news, the pumpkin towels came off the loom yesterday and are on the computer today. A real head start on Halloween.



31 comments:

  1. I feel for you. Especially about mail order Rx. I had to put my doctors through ordering the same Rx three times recently because they kept insisting the doctor hadn't got back to them and they'd cancelled. A big lie. That never happened. Finally the Rx arrived, three weeks after I'd run out and been splitting larger dosage pills to make the correct dose. I like no copay but you pay in agita.

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  2. Incompetence makes me angry too. Especially angry when costs to me might occur. I recently read we should keep a 6 month supply of any medications we are taking. Medication shortages occur these days and nobody has an explanation. Big pharma is being required to lower prices on popular drugs but this will not happen until 2026. It should be happening yesterday.

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  3. You have more patience that just about everyone under the sun! Good thinking about being recorded, I would not have thought of that! New towels are lovely!

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  4. I used to do drugs by mail when we lived in the RV and traveled. Most prescriptions went to South Dakota to the mail forwarding people and that worked well. Then I needed a refill while we were in NY, bound for Canada. So I had them send it General Delivery to a post office. They sent it UPS, UPS sent it back, they don't deliver to post offices. I called them, they told me it had been delivered, I asked them where it went, oh it was back to the pharmacy. So, they were able to expedite it to the USPS and we picked it up before we were due to head out to the great wide open. It was a mixed bag of good and bad.

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  5. I love those pumpkin towels! My mom has had frustrations with her pharmacy/doctor's office calling in prescriptions but nothing to the level of this incompetence. I am very particular about my eggs so I feel your pain!

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  6. It's enough to drive you to drink some days! Make mine a double!

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  7. I use the mail order pharmacy connected to my advantage plan. it's mostly quick and problem free. mostly. sometimes I use the local Walmart pharmacy is it's a temporary scrip. one time I told them the Walmart of I59 in Wharton. They sent it to a different Walmart pharm on 59 several hours away. now I just give them the phone number.

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  8. Real head start on Halloween reminds me that yesterday one store was putting out all the Halloween junk.

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  9. Love those pumpkin towels. The rest? NOT so much. I am hissing and spitting on your behalf.

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  10. Hari OM
    I am gnashing my teeth on your behalf!!! YAM xx

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  11. I hope you don't end up with a bill for their incompetence. I will never order prescriptions online and thankfully doctor and pharmacy are within walking distance for me.

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  12. The colour and pattern of your latest tea towels are just right Joanne - the cream and pumpkin are such a good combination for this time of the year. And it must be very difficult for those without perseverance and computer skills to negotiate their way round and over some of the hurdles you find
    Have been having trouble commenting here for a while so fingers crossed this comment publishes

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  13. Eggs Benny with bacon is just that..and shouldn't be swimming in anything.
    Thankfully calls are recorded...so you shouldn't get charged for more than one.
    But they are both things that have no excuse.

    Love the pumpkin towel colour!

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  14. The thing that gets me are that these people only have one job to do and have been doing it for many years. Maybe they used to do it well, then became old and doddery?

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  15. Incompetence is one of the things that frustrates me most. I hope you don't get a big unexpected bill to have to sort out.

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  16. The only items I order by mail are books, with seamless efficiency. I will continue to do this until I can’t walk. Even then, maybe I will be able to press my daughter into service.

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  17. Now I'm craving Eggs Benedict for breakfast, with no hope of getting one. Sigh. But a broken egg would ruin it!

    What a nice color (the towel!)

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  18. So frustrating trying to deal with issues over the phone. I hope the meds arrive in a timely manner!

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  19. I have recently had two different orders from two different companies get sent to the wrong place. It is infuriating.
    I, too, would be upset about my egg order. I mean- really? There's actually a restaurant near here called The Broken Egg which is a cute name but hopefully, it does not reflect the reality of what is served.
    Those towels are going to fly off the shelves.

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  20. It's so odd when people don't care enough to do a good job. When I was a young working woman, a mentor told me that "We are always just working for ourselves." That stayed with me.

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  21. When all else goes awry, at least there are pumpkin towels.

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  22. Oh, I was so upset with my cable TV company this week as they sent me new equipment to install myself but enclosed the wrong directions so I was totally confused. Thank goodness, my son was able to figure it out but I was so disappointed in the lack of service.
    Your towels are lovely and I am sure they will be popular.

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  23. People in charge of fixing problems over the phone can be so aggravating. I recently called my TV satellite company with a problem. I was paying a lot of extra money to get the broadcast of my favorite baseball team. I had called a few times before and they fiddled with something to make it work. The final time I called two different people told me it was my fault! I cancelled the whole thing and am now getting my ballgames and a lot more features for more than $100.00 less each month. They want me back but I am happy with what I have.

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  24. I just read Anthony Bourdain’s book about working in restaurants – –“kitchen confidential”– – and he advised,
    “never eat the eggs Benedict.”

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  25. How frustrating to have taken the time to confirm your current address, not once but thrice, only to have the parcel shipped to an outdated address by four years. That poached egg mess of a breakfast would have bugged me, too. x

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  26. We had Humana mail order and everytime I reordered, it was a major exercise in futility and I always eneded up talking to a "representative" because the automated system was ineffective. I asked to speak to a pharmacist once and told him that someone there needed to pull their head out of their A$$ and update the system, that it should not be that hard to reorder RX! He asked if I had ever had a job and I told him that I had indeed had several and that one of them was in a Walmart pharmacy and that I was the one who went from store to store to help teach everyone to use the new computer program that facilitated reordering on an automated system. He had no more words. I know it is cheaper, but I still won't use mail order again.

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  27. It's breathtaking how people can give you completely false information and think nothing of it. He must have known he had the incorrect address but he made out he had the correct one.

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  28. The pumpkins towels look fantastic and I think you have every right to be perturbed because they messed up your orders and you were assured they would not be messed up.

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  29. I would be fuming. More incentive to become a hermit.

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  30. I thought I commented on this a week ago but clearly I did not! I can't even remember what I said, so it was clearly not memorable. In your place I would be terribly frustrated. Why can people not do their $%^& job?!

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  31. Oh gosh, Joanne. This is awful and supremely frustrating. I sure hope everything got fixed. Sheesh!

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