I currently owe the Utah County Health Department $100+ for immunizations.
Let me explain.
Among my other billions of errands to run on Thursday, I decide that was the day that I take Katelyn to get her immunizations at the health department. After several hours of running around, I decide to give Katelyn some tylenol and head to the health department. In my head it made sense. I would arrive about 30 minutes after the tylenol dose, get the registration stuff done and get her shots about an hour after the tylenol–plenty of time to take full effect. After all of that, I would head home where I’d be able to comfort her with a feeding. Perfect.
Well, leave it to incompetent people to screw up my plan. But really, I should have known better. These people have two things stacked against them. 1.) They are medical workers and 2.) they work for the government. How can you go wrong? Oh, so many ways.
Surprisingly, things went pretty well until the end. I got registered, accepted the up-sell pitch that the consultation nurse gave me to get a combo Hep A and B shot for myself, and proceeded to the waiting area to be called in for the shots. Katelyn got the three shots (since she didn’t get the Hep B at birth) plus some anti-diarrhea sickness liquid goodness. Yes, she screamed. Yes, it was torture for me. And since when does a mother have to deal with that stuff on her own? Oh, but it gets better.
After the shots, I am directed to the waiting area for paying. (Why you have to wait a total of three separate times is beyond me). I take a seat as the lone person in that area, waiting to be called. Another woman enters. She is then called up. Another couple enters. They are then called up. Another family enters. They are then called up. Get the picture? Finally some woman not in charge of checking people out points out the fact that I had been waiting before anyone else even arrived to wait. The genius checker-outer-lady was retrieving the files from the folder-holder-thingy backwards. Wonderful. So the smarter of the two ladies pulls my file and tells the dumber of the two ladies that I am next. Now with a full waiting room, another woman is called to check out. Then another family. Then another couple. After 20 minutes of waiting, this is when I chimed in saying loud and annoyed, “excuse me but is there some kind of order you’re going by? I was here when no one else was and have been waiting for 20 minutes!”
The dumber lady replies, “I don’t know what’s going on. I just got here. I don’t know what happened to your file. It’s gone.”
Fabulous.
I think to myself, “you couldn’t have told me that 10 minutes ago when you realized this?” I exercised some control while saying, “ok who can I talk to so I can get this taken care of?” This is all of course while Katelyn has been crying, screaming, or fussing for the last 20 minutes and my arm is about to fall of from swinging or bouncing her in her car seat.
Dumb lady then tells me I need to go find my nurse and ask her what she did with the file. What?! C’mon. Like I was actually paying attention to who stabbed my arm and made my daughter cry. Clearly I was trying to control the reaction from both of those and not asking my nurse what her name was or even checking out her hair color.
Extremely annoyed, I walked over to the shot administering room that I had come from to find it empty. Not at all attracted to the idea of wondering around the clinic with a crying, hungry baby asking, “are you my nurse?” I decided it was dumb lady’s problem and since she clearly wasn’t going to do anything about it, I walked out.
In my defense, I did call the department as soon as I got home. Unfortunately, they are one of those awesome organizations who shut off their phone system an hour before they actually close. The crappy thing is I could just pay for it over the phone but I never received a copy of the records so either way, I have to visit that wonderful place sometime this week.
Yay.
They have your #, let them call you.