I know it's been a while...

But I've been busy, and haven't really had much of a chance to do any real thinking.

However, the fact that people are going nuts in ever-increasing numbers is no particular mystery to me. Look at what we have to deal with...

Frankly, I'm blaming outsourcing for much of the headaches we're facing. There's no situation so difficult that you can't introduce a third party and make it worse.

We've been fighting with the COBRA administrator (third party) to get coverage done properly. This is not the first fight we'd had with these people.

Last time, we'd had to invoke an attorney (like we're going to get anything back for that. If they were smart, they'd pay us back, issue an apology, and maybe compensate us for the trouble and effort. That's an awfully big if...)

This time, it took them three weeks to figure it out - and we ended up having them pushed from both ends (from us, and from the carrier. "Both ends against the middle.")

For two weeks, I was out of meds. Oh - they kept her coverage up - but they lost track of me (which I still don't understand - it's a common account.)

Their answer? "Just pay cash and you can get reimbursed later." Right.

So, in addition to the eight hundred dollars we're out for COBRA coverage, you want me to just fork over $1500 for meds - then wait a month for you to figure out what the Hell you're supposed to do and we're out the money in the meantime - that's assuming we can come up with it in the first place.

Is it any wonder at all why I want to begin conversations with these people with some variation on "Listen up you hollow-headed piss weeds!" and things will likely get progressively darker from there?

The problems, as I see them:
- No-one wants to take ownership of a problem anymore. Used to be, when you found out something was wrong, you kept at it until it was either solved, you found out you had to up the chain with it, or it was agreed all around that the problem /could/ /not/ /be/ /solved/ with materials, methods, and rules at hand.
- Little to no empathy. "It's not a problem for me, why should I care?"
- Scripted responses. "Sorry, it's not in my scripted reply book, I don't know what to do." That's easy - /go/ /up/ /the/ /chain/ /and/ /find/ /out/! That's not such a difficult idea.
- And, no-one wants to finish any sentence that begins with "I don't know." I don't like using that phrase, but I'm not averse to using it. However, I have always considered "I don't know" to be the beginning of a sentence, not a compleat sentence in its own right. Acceptable finishers?
-- "but let me find out."
-- "give me a(n) (half-hour/hour/day/fifteen minutes/whatever) to find out."
-- "but I will know shortly, and I'll pass it along."
- Lack of independent thought. The "party line" gone mad.

Discuss.