Eyeroll moment of the day...

[MarmaladeSideDown]

I'm sitting here at home and the landline rang but stopped before I got to it, so I dialled 1471 to find out who it could be (family members often call it as my mobile reception here is rubbish). It was a local number and seemed slightly familiar to me, so I searched online and discovered it was my GP surgery, so I rang them to find out what they wanted.

The receptionist answered saying how could she help so I explained about the missed call. "Well it wasn't me", she said. Oh right, I thought. Here we go.

She then asked for my name and I said that DH and I both lived here and gave her my name and his. "Well, no-one has called you" she said so I suggested that perhaps the call was for DH. He has a hospital appointment tomorrow for investigation into an ongoing condition, so I wondered if it might be about that, but since he isn't here at the moment I thought I'd better find out in case he needs to contact them. "Well I'm sorry" says she in a very officious voice. "I can't give you any information about anyone else". I pointed out that it was they who had rung first, and I was just trying to be helpful in calling them back in case it was urgent. Not good enough apparently, and she refused point blank to even tell me whether it was him they were trying to contact.

What a pointless waste of my time that was.

Has anyone else felt themselves rolling their eyes out loud at the brick wall of officialdom today?

The local optician rang late MIL and left a message asking her to call them to rearrange the appointment she'd missed. We called them back and told them she'd died. They kept on phoning for ages, leaving messages for her. We kept telling them she was dead. It took quite a while for the penny to eventually drop.

Another relative was called up for Jury Service not long after he'd died. We informed them of his passing. They then decided he was in trouble for not turning up at court when he should have done. That one took a solicitor to sort out.

YABU for telling me IABU because this isn't AIBU. For the love of Mike.

Made a routine dentist's appointment for DS in half term. DH took the day off to drive him. The afternoon before, we got a text from the practice informing us that the appointment had been cancelled because NHS patients no longer get 6-monthly checks and to book one for April. It's not an NHS practice and we pay for his checkups, so I thought it was odd, but we just got on with half term. The following week, a letter arrived in the post saying, in bold, that he was now overdue for his checkup and to please book it immediately 🙄

Years ago when my dd was under 16, she had a call from someone, but the woman wouldn't say where she was calling from, it was all to do with patient confidentiality. My dd was at school, she wouldn't have been able to take their call as they always phoned during the day, and they wouldn't say who was calling so we couldn't tell her who to call so she could phone back. The calls went on for a few days, and I think we eventually had someone else call who said they were from the gp surgery and it was a medication review or something like that. I think we didn't know as they withheld the number. It was madness!
They now have an excellent receptionist called Penny and I am always glad to hear her voice as she will always help and is just so lovely.

Well I would if people would only give it a rest. 🙄

British Gas : Will you have a smart meter fitted
Me; Yes please!
They arrive at appointed time
BG : You cant have a meter fitted because of XYZ.
A week later I get an email to apologise for inconvenience and a £35 (I think, ish ) credit
Then they had a problem with existing meter. They sent out an engineer. Except it was the wrong type of engineer - it was the same smart meter guy.
So I then got an apology and a £35 credit.
Then they sent out the right engineer but he couldn’t make the agreed time slot…so I got an apology and a £35 credit.
.. at the end of the saga they agreed problem couldnt be fixed, not could I have a smart meter ..and I was over £100 better off

I asked my GP’s surgery for a paper copy of some results and when I opened the envelope it contained my results plus pages of medical results for Mr A.
I phoned them to tell them and tried to give Mr A’s name and address off one of the letters but they accused me of breaching GDPR by looking at the letter.
I asked how else I was able to tell them whose results they were and they got all arsey with me.
I tried speaking to the Information Commissioners office but apparently you can’t only put in a complaint regarding your own information not being secure, not someone else’s.

We train people to follow procedures and all common sense is banned. Shithole Britain.

She was correct. She can't give you any information from your husband's records. Also how would she know who had made the call?

Result!

Why is MN so full of such rabid doctors' receptionist apologists?

I DIDN'T ASK HER FOR ANY INFORMATION FROM MY HUSBAND'S RECORDS. Fuck me, how many more times do I have to explain this simple fact?

If I'd got to the phone in time, I'd have answered it and she'd have said "Hello, could I speak to Mr Marmalade please?" and then I'd have known who it was they wanted anyway. I could then have told them he wasn't at home, and to ring his mobile. Job done.

Ha, you did better than me. We had smart meter guy turn up and fit the smart meter.

A month or so later a message from BG to say your smart meter isn't sending readings.

Engineer turns up and says, oh this meter will never work because it is in a place where the wifi doesn't reach. Who fitted it?

You did, says I.

That was a massive eyeroll moment.

By "your GP", I refer to the whole practice team.

I'm not sure how, if I was the receptionist in that situation, I would be able to convey the information that I could not even confirm whether the surgery had tried to call someone else at the same phone number without it being interpreted as "rude" by the listener. Especially not when speaking to someone who has branded as "rabid" people who have told you something thing that you don't like to hear. Some people will take any unwanted message as rude, no matter how you have chosen to word it, because they don't like being told "no".

I refuse a smart meter for this reason. I can't even get cellphone signal here.

I'm aware of data protection and privacy requirements. I don't expect to be told about my husband's medical information by his GP surgery. However I also don't expect them to ring me back to get arsey about the fact that I ended the call, when they couldn't tell me who they were and didn't want to leave a message for him!

Fine, confidentiality prevents you from sharing any information including where you're calling from - but once you've established the person you want isn't available, there's no further conversation to be had. I'm not going to stay on the phone talking to someone who can't tell me who they are and what they want, because there's no point.

We unplugged our landline a few years back and that's solved the problem now. Even when we'd got mobile numbers as our preferred contact method, they would still go for the landline each time. My new surgery is much better as they use secure texts via their message portal which is loads easier.

Ok but she also said she was dead. What do they need to understand it? The Norwegian blue parrot sketch??????

The reaction of a few posters going on about GDPR probably reflects the attitude of the receptionist.
Aka not reading/listening properly and ASSUMING the OP wanted to get information she wasn’t entitled to.
Hence going on the attack and being rude (the receptionists).

Im always interested when people’s reaction is to automatically assume the other person is stupid or ignorant.

Yesterday at the Post Office...

Usually lovely woman at counter: (struggling to get my 'large letter' to fit through the size guide) I can't accept this
Me: (laughs) oops, sorry! Can I buy a new postage label please?
Woman: (huffs) No... it can't be changed
Me: (smiling) That's ok, I'll just buy a new one. Can you stick it over the top?
Woman: You won't get your money back. You'll have to pay twice
Me: (still smiling) I'm not worried about that, can I do it here? I need it to go today.
Woman: (huffs again, regards empty Post Office) I'll have to do you a new one.
Me: (smile a little strained at this point) Thank you

I think she was hoping I'd just take it back and put it in the postbox outside and save her a job, but I didn't want to risk it. She's usually perfectly normal so I'm not sure what happened earlier that day to put her in that mood!

Last year, I was having trouble accessing my daughter's bank account online. I went to the branch to get the balance and see if the payments were arriving. The lad said no, as it wasn't my account.

I said, "She's ten and I'm signatory to her account."

"It doesn't matter, I can't give out someone's information to another person."

"But she's ten, I'm the named signatory."

He wouldn't back down! I went home and phoned instead and they sorted it. Only about 45 minutes on hold for a short conversation!

Probably the best GP-related one we've had was about 12 years ago, when we received a letter addressed to 'The Doctors' with our address and postcode. DH and I both have PhDs, so it seemed to be legitimately for us. I opened it to find a letter from a prison giving the full details of a prisoner's time and date of release, the address (very close to us) where he would be living, and all his medical and prescription information. I rang the number on the letter and I could genuinely hear the person on the other end going white as she asked us to please shred it immediately. She said it had been sent by a trainee, but I have no idea where our address came into it, as we do not have a GP surgery on our road, or indeed within half a mile of us. The nearest one starts with the same word as our road name (think Broadway and Broad View), so there must have been some kind of autofill incident on a form. These days it would have been a GDPR nightmare, and I could probably have made life very difficult for the person who sent it.

My daughter gets an appointment with the optometrist.

Unfortunately we can't make it.

This is the first and only time I asked my husband to arrange for the appointment to be changed.

We attend the new appointment but are told there is no appointment booked for my daughter.
The receptionist waves us through- the kid that was booked had the same surname as my child but was a boy.

Anyway the optometrist comes out and says she can't see us because someone else is booked into the appointment and they might still turn up- Obviously they haven't turned up- because the person booking it put the wrong name in. Maybe she didn't have my kids files but she refused to see her.

Anyway.

After all that I agree for my daughter to be discharged from followup because they were going to discharge her anyway. And it was likely to be her final checkup.

A few weeks later we get a letter saying we have been discharged from the optometrist because we did not attend her appointment.

Since this descended into something resembling a farce yesterday, and bearing in mind DH's ongoing medical issues and that it was reasonably likely that the surgery was trying to contact him fairly urgently...

Once it had been established that the call wasn't for me, in an ideal world the conversation should have gone as follows:

Me - Oh, well in that case, my husband's name is Marmalade and he isn't at home at the moment, but if anyone has been trying to contact him, then they could call his mobile, you already have the number.
Receptionist - Okay, thank you for letting me know, goodbye.
Me - No problem, bye.
<click>

It actually went like this:

Me - Oh, well in that case, my husband's name is Marm...
Receptionist (interrupting) - WELL I'M SORRY, I CAN'T GIVE YOU ANY INFORMATION ABOUT ANYONE ELSE.
Me - No, but....
Receptionist (interrupting again) - I CAN'T GIVE YOU CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION ABOUT ANYONE ELSE.
Me - But I'm only trying to help you out here...
Receptionist (increasingly belligerent and interrupting again) I'M NOT GOING TO (continues rant)....
Me (having had enough by now and with rolling of eyes) - Oh, never mind.
<click>

🙄

Dear me! What a palarver!

Which it needn't have been.