aibu to think that this is the most ridiculous excuse...

[bigbluebus]

that I have ever heard as to why I did not get a reply to my letter of complaint. It says "It would appear that, having dictated the letter it somehow got stuck in the system and we have been unable to retrieve it, but this has only just come to light........."

I am scratching my head trying to figure out how this could possibly happen.
Any suggestions - funny or otherwise

Paper jam...been going for weeks. There are now reams and reams of paper bursting out of every crack in the printer. There's smoke too.

"stuck in the system" = forgot to type and send it.

Definitely no smoke show I would see it from here - the office concerned is ony up the road Thanks for the image of a printer churning out weeks' worth of letters though and some poor Secretary frantically having to deal with them.

Probably seven although I'm more inclined to think he dictated it and then recorded over the tape

Computerised dictation system: someone deleted it by mistake.

It has "only just come to light" because you told them

Well, having filled my nearest printer three times with the same paper after a colleague accidentally printed everything in the world (it would seem - although it's just spewing out blank paper) I can well believe it!

It's been doing it since about 2pm yesterday and no one knows how to stop it....

This?

It's a really stupid excuse and I am surprised that they went into more detail than just "an administrative error".

What is likely to have happened is that the letter was dictated on an electronic system and the file uploaded to a queue on the typists' system, which often allows multiple people to pick up work from the same queue. Either nobody picked it up and the author forgot to chase for it, or it was typed but the hard copy was them lost or scanned to the author's email and s/he overlooked it, or some such nonsense.

It's a bit pathetic as the person is basically saying "I did read and reply to your complaint right away, honest, but it's somebody else's fault that you didn't receive the reply." Very self- justifying.

Maybe it got jammed in the shredder?

nextusername How did you guess?

jack very funny, but I don't think they'd be allowed a cat on the premises

jessie the whole letter goes on to blame everybody else regarding the issues that I raised. The letter being able to get lost in the system is more than a little concerning as this is a GP practice

It's obvious: once the Sweary-Word Removal (R) filtering software had done it's work on the original reply, there was nothing of substance left and "the system" diverted it automatically to the recycle bin before printing.

On a more serious note ... perhaps there's some kind of pre-programmed 'workflow' and the next person who needed to take action was off sick / on holiday / had left the practice / etc and hadn't set up a divert in advance, and the job got deleted after X days of inaction or something?

Whatever it is, it's very poor. Hope you get the outcome you want in the end.

Iwashere

I don't understand how these modern day dictating systems/computers work. There were still dinosaurs on earth when I last worked in an office

As I said previously it is a little worrying that a letter can just get lost in the system - it could be a referral to a hospital for a patient. One conversation I had also implied that it was possible for telephone messages to get lost too if they were put on the system in a certain way rather than e-mailed to the individual.

Alternatively there may be 3 mins of silence recorded whilst the person nattered on as the record button on the Mike didn't work

Oh my bigbluebus, I hope you're in good health as it sounds like it would be difficult for you to get treated!

At an old workplace we used to write letters on the system, click send, and they'd be sent to some central letter stuffing type place where they'd be put into envelopes and posted. So no need for us to print off and frank etc.

However, a certain percentage of letters would be held so your boss could check them over, make sure they were correct etc. Perhaps the letter wasn't approved or he forgot to click the send button, leaving it in computer limbo.

Point is that systems don't eat things all by themselves, it's the users who muck it up. Your GP sounds like a pathetic snivelling self- apologist OP.

Oh it's easy to explain, I work at a GP and the paper jam story isn't far off the mark, not many computer literate peeps working here
We recently had a letter which got lost for three months....
You have to take pity on us, it's the wrong type of sun, shining through the windows...

cheshirechat I am thankfully in the finest of health

notquitehuman the dictator of the letter is the boss

secrettoblerone I did wonder if it was the lack of computer literacy of this particular person which was to blame - although from a conversation I had with one of the other doctors it sounds as though all sorts of bizarre and unexplainable things happen within their computer systems possibly due to the lack of computer literacy of some of the doctors.