#and tell me that a single easily made non-malicious paperwork error

[cognitiveleague]

Cut for work venting / length / sleep deprived ADHD run-on sentences. Basically just using Tumblr as a journal for stress relief since I’m awake

Goddddd it’s past 3 AM on a damn Saturday and I’m trying so hard not to spend half the weekend trying figure out any response to an upset client’s most recent email other than like.

“Hon, I think you may have mistaken my polite tone and commitment to engaging with you in good faith with decency and transparency for some kind of inclination to bend over backwards if a client is not happy for any reason? But I think my colleague and I have both been pretty straightforward with you about what kind of help we can and can’t offer in this situation and Karen-ing about it at this stage isn’t going to change that, especially since we have legal obligations to your insurance company to actually charge you what they have put toward your deductible costs for this year, so instead of stamping your feet about not being happy with the cost (which I *understand* is a lot and we’re all broke and tired and it hurts, and which I fundamentally believe a just world shouldn’t place on the patient, but we live in the world and the country we live in for now and you are older than my thoroughly grown ass so we are both going to have to be adults and deal with that part) please fucking work with me here so Incan at least give you all the patience you need and the assurance that your credit won’t be affected as long as you stick to some type of payment plan or at least keep in communication with us about any issues with the plan, or it WILL become my job to send your case to a collections agency, which exists to try and get your money without giving any kind of a fuck and will ABSOLUTELY both add 20% to your already difficult to bear balance and immediately report the debt to credit agencies without batting one goddamn eyelash, and under no circumstances do I want to have to do that any more than you want me to so please help me have another choice in the matter”

Or, less charitably, “oh my god I’m so sorry, I thought you told my coworker you were upset to receive a bill for [pre-expected write off amount] because you were confused, but if you ‘already know how to read a statement and know the actual balance is [much smaller amount] and that’s what [you’re] upset about’ then you must just have been trying to intimidate the entry-level worker with the wrong number on purpose to see if you could guilt her into doing her job wrong and getting in trouble for you, my bad!” or “look, it sucks, but management is not going to view the one mistake that was made on our end as one on the scale where it would be appropriate to respond by lowering the balance significantly, like if I stuck my neck out even further than I already have for you there’s a slim chance I could get you a small courtesy write off but it’s not too damn likely and would be small enough to feel like more of a slap in the face than just saying ‘no, the balance is correct and I’m afraid it isn’t something that’s negotiable at this point’ , and since you’ve been sort of a dick to my colleague and me so far (because you seem like the kind of person who thinks it’s appropriate to throw a fit at underpaid employees until someone kisses your ass and pretends the client is always right, but unfortunately for you my instinctive reaction to rudeness is not to kiss ass, it’s ‘oh that’s how you want to play? Let’s fucking dance, then, asshole’), I’m not sure why I should waste more of my limited time and annoy my bosses for the slim chance of a small change that would still leave you furious and dissatisfied anyway”

or “I think there may be some kind of error on the alleged list of practices your surgeon gave you for the mental health clearance, because if the other practices can actually provide this evaluation at the out of pocket price point you insist were on that list, I will eat my fucking hat. Like at this point it’s cost our practice more than that much to buy the blank forms needed for your evaluation, submit them for you, and pay me personally (even at the mildly insulting rate I get paid) for the amount of work hours I’ve spent reviewing your case, talking to office management to see where I could get them to compromise for you out of the goodness o my heart, and making sure my colleague’s and my own responses to you have all had the right balance of ‘compassionate and polite but setting clear expectations for what’s realistic to be asking at this point’ and you haven’t even paid us a damn cent of it yet?”

Or “look, I owned up to the one small contributing mistake on our end in the interest of being decent and honest to you and being able to grant you SOME ground in compensation, and I really do get where you’re coming from, but in total fairness here, even the least competent member of our billing team on a bad day would have easily caught that and cleared it up for you before services took place if you had made any attempt to ask *us* (the people whose job it is to know jack shit about insurance) what it was going to cost prior to your appointment, but what you did was wait until you were already in session and then ask the guy who, I cannot stress this enough, is a wonderful person who is great at the things that are his job but has a doctorate and decades of relevant experience in *psychotherapy and psychiatric testing*, not any sort of financial field, and works for a practice where someone else handles the accounting and insurance stuff for him, so why the fuck would *he* have been able to instinctively notice that the numbers looked wrong the way we would have in the 5 seconds of your appointment time he could spare to check on them for you???????? How was asking *him*, during the appointment, ‘doing your due diligence to research the costs in advance and make an informed decision’, you absolute turnip?????”