September 06, 2006

Brought to you by the letter Yee

I have what is possibly the most boring job Ever. I am temping at the hospital, which seems like it could be vaguely interesting, but is in fact not. It is Boring. It is my job to wade through stacks of patient and doctor letter, enter addresses and other information into an Excel spreadsheet, do a mail merge, fold the hundreds of letters and stuff them into envelopes. Did I mention that it's boring? Even reading about bizarre diseases does not add interest, though it does make me realize how many people in this world are sick and how fortunate I am that those who are close to me remain healthy. Listening to my coworkers answer phone calls and schedule outpatient visits adds the only glimmer of anything to an otherwise dull day. Yesterday, I heard the following half of a phone conversation:

"Could you give me your patient ID number, sir?"
....
"W."
...
"Was that S as in Sam?"
...
"OK"
...
"What was that last letter, sir?"
...
"Could you repeat that for me?"
...
"One more time?"
...
"Yee? Yee???"
...
"I'm sorry sir. I don't understand the letter, yee. Could you repeat yourself?"
...
"Yee?"
...
"Sorry, sir. I still don't understand. Could you use the letter to spell a word?"
...
"What's that? Yee?"
...
"Could you try to spell something with it?"
...
"Spell something - like R is for Roger and robot and rolling and red and rabbit."
...
"No- No -- Can you spell something for me using the letter?"
...
"I don't understand, yee. Can you please spell something using the letter for me?"
...
"Can you please spell something using the letter, yee?"
...
"Spell something - like, G as in George?"
...
"No, sir. Yee is not a letter."
...
"OK. We'll go through this by process of elimination..."

And that right there was the highlight of my week, because photos of patients with massive lumps on their skulls do not count as highlights.

No comments: