10 Gallons of Crazy in a 5 Gallon Bucket

Yep, that's pretty much sums up my day at work on Wednesday.

You know it's never a good way to start the day when the office manager says to you as you walk in, "Computers are down, sweetie."

I really should have just turned tail and went back home and stuck my head under a pillow.  *sigh*

The full-time receptionist is on vacation this week. So, Dr. J asked me to fill in. So here's where the crazy schedule comes in that even I can barely keep straight. I still had to take a day off so I wasn't working 6 full days. But he wanted me over at the main clinic in Town, so he had the office manager's assistant fill in at the Sticksville clinic for me today. And had me take Tuesday off, which meant all three techs had to take turns playing receptionist, and they don't play receptionist very often. And some of you may remember my post on how reception is the worst position in the clinic - no one wants to fill in for the receptionist.

And because the techs were all playing receptionist on Tuesday, it meant they did, in essence, the bare minimum. They didn't file files back, didn't pull the next day's files, did bare minimum straightening up at the end of the day, and they left everything on. Fortunately, they didn't leave me a disaster of a mess.

So, I come in to the computers being down and the office manager having to call in our computer guy to hopefully fix it quick. Meanwhile, the phones are ringing off the hook with people suddenly wanting to pay their bills over the phone. Must have been something in the water today. I got everything filed away, but only pulled a portion of the files for today's appointments. Why? Because I either couldn't read the person's hand-writing, or the client had a common last name and they didn't take a first name, so I had no idea which Smith or Johnson or Jones they meant. And even though we take phone numbers as well, people change those like they change their freaking socks, so often times we don't have the correct number on file, meaning, the phone number is often useless.

My stack of stuff to enter into the computer keeps getting bigger. I had to manually write up receipts for people, which I do at the Sticksville clinic anyway, but this was on a much busier scale. And doctors and techs keep setting things down in places that are actually meant for something else. Meaning my desk was a freaking disaster zone until closing because I had to keep moving things to the right piles and stacks so I could keep things straight.

The computers were finally fixed around 11am, and then I had to wait half an hour for the office manager to do "end of day" for the previous day, so I while I could look things up, I still couldn't enter anything into the computer. *sigh*

At 11:59, some guy walks in with a cat saying he had an appointment for his cat to get shots, but he'd had a hard time catching him. Okay, I'll give him that. But his appointment was at 10:30am. He couldn't have called to give us a heads up? So, I had one of the girls lock the doors, and he asked, "You guys close at noon?" I smiled and said, "Yes, we close from noon to 1pm for lunch." Never mind that it says so on the sign on the front door with our daily hours. Never you mind that minor detail, sir.

I called in an order to go, went to the bank, picked up my order, and went back to work to eat and work for the remainder of my lunch. It was actually very peaceful as the phones were forwarded to our machine, the lights were off, and no one was around. Even still, I only got maybe half the work done that I wanted or needed to get done. And once 1pm rolled around, the phones rang off the hook again and my lobby was full of people. And to make things similar to morning, doctors and techs were still putting things in piles and stacks randomly because they didn't bother reading the sticky notes I had for myself or asking me where I'd like stuff. The only reason they didn't get kicked out of my little area was because they helped me answer the phones and help the poor souls in the lobby.

It took me all afternoon to finish my pile of "needs to be entered" stuff. Took me all afternoon to get stuff done for the surgeries that get dropped off the evening before. That was just in between the phones and the people in the lobby. And then I finally noticed a little pile of "entered" sheets with a sticky note on them: "please print invoices for these in your spare time". It was in one of the doctors handwriting. I'm sure you could imagine what went through my head. I clamped my mouth shut, put the pile aside and I'm pretty sure I felt steam coming out of my ears for about 10 seconds. In my spare time?! Needless to say, that pile is still sitting there and when I have spare time, I will be more than happy to print invoices for the doctor. It's very easy, but it was definitely on the bottom of the priority list.

In the end, I got a call from Dr. R's wife after I got home about my one boo-boo. In the chaos of today, a "one time only" invoice forgot to get entered (which is all on me). I had run his credit card, but somehow the papers got stuck under another pile or in the wrong pile or the wrong something, and I forgot to actually enter that payment into the computer. I explained the situation and she totally understood and asked me how to enter this "one time only", because she didn't know how to enter in a new client. I told her just do it under the "cash" invoice, because he lives down in Imperial Valley and was up here on vacation, so there's no need to make a file and an account for him when we will probably never see him again. She said she'd take care of it. Considering the day I had, I'm surprised that was my only hitch.

Anyway, by noon I was thinking a Cosmo in a gallon bucket would suffice just fine. Or a vat of a chocolate. Maybe both. By 5pm though, I was thinking of a whole different drink: a "margadaquiriscrewalottaonthebeach" would be just about right.