Overheard...

[Heksubah]

Said coworker (CW in the post below) burst into her well known high-pitched shriek giggles the moment she hung up and walked around shaking her head and exclaiming about how she just doesn't know... just doesn't know...

CW: Hello, I’m calling from Blah Pharmacy..
CW: No… From Blah Ph… No, Pharm…FAR MUH SEE.. not BAR BEE CUE…
CW: Hello?
CW: Hello?! This is… Can you hear me?
CW: No, we’re not a barbecue. Can you hear me now? I’m with your pharmacy.

Do keep in mind, our pharmacy is mail order and 75% of our patients are at least 50 years older... (we just took on uh... let's be cryptic and say it some country's association for people who have passed the working age... and it's initials could be similar to warp... if you change a letter... now that we are past the crypticness, we just took them on as a client at the beginning of the year, so we have six million new clients! ) ...so it can be expected for a few of them to have hearing issues. This one, however, took the cake especially since said CW has a loud and grating voice so everybody got to hear her saying that we are not a barbecue.

[AFpheonix]

I love that.

My favorite deaf old person? Not only was he completely stone deaf, he was not an english speaker, so I finally got fed up, called the phone number on his account, and told his son to come pick him up and explain to him that he has no refills left on his meds and that's why I'm only loaning a 3 day supply.

[Heksubah]

It's rather amusing, since we're not really a call center, but in a way we are. We're so big since we're mail order that we have a lot of people around us, but we don't always do phones. My department is a combination of data entry, doctor calls (for resolutions), patient calls (for resolutions, questions, payments, etc), and getting things ready to be filled. We're every step after the image has been scanned up until it actually goes up to be fulfilled. We work in little units of 12, eight technicians and four pharmacists, and there are probably at least 10 units in the room I'm in. The point I'm trying to get at, though, is when someone on the phone gets someone who can't hear, everyone notices. You hear that tech or pharmacist slowly start raising their voice, "We're your FAR-MUH-SEE... No, sir... FAR-MUH-SEE..." We've had some mighty crazy coots that people in my cell called that just couldn't hear us and said the funniest things to our techs as a result because we had to ask HIPAA questions when we called. They can't hear the word pharmacy but they sure can hear the words date of birth and they get hopping mad/crazy.

[zzapp the witch]

"Sir, we're your pharm..."
"Sir, you're medications...."
"Sir, you want your drugs or not?"