This email was from my buddy Demotivated Dan on 06\/28\/11<\/p>\n
I was assigned to something like a react team.\u00a0 It was a 6 month active duty.\u00a0 Anywho, I had to go through a short screening process which involved a checklist that I had to complete and submit.\u00a0 It was a very easy checklist, all I had to do was fill it out with information that was pertinent to myself and get a couple of signatures.\u00a0 I filled it out and went straight into my superiors office and asked him to sign it.\u00a0 He asked what it was and I told him what it was.\u00a0 He signed it after going through it for a few seconds.\u00a0 Simple and easy.\u00a0 All I had to do now was get a signature from my health care provider.\u00a0 Any of the following was eligible to sign off on it.\u00a0 The list included:
\na. Your primary health care provider
\nb. a nurse practictioner
\nc. a physician or
\nd. a corpsman<\/p>\n
So I called the clinic and spoke with the scheduler for my care provider.\u00a0 I asked if I would need an appointment to get a signature and she replied, “No.\u00a0 Just swing by around lunchtime and we’ll sign it for you.” Easy enough right?\u00a0 It should have been anyway.<\/p>\n
So I get down to the clinic, expecting to use about five minutes of their time and be on my merry way.\u00a0 I get to\u00a0 the front desk and make a little small talk and explain my situation to the lady at the front desk.\u00a0 After I was finished explaining this is the conversation that took place.<\/p>\n
Overanalysis and bureaucracy…<\/p>\n
L:\u00a0 What is this for again?
\nD:\u00a0 I just told you, but here is the checklist.\u00a0 There’s a small paragraph at the top that says what this is for.
\nL:\u00a0 Oh.\u00a0 I can’t pronounce that.\u00a0 Please take a seat.\u00a0 I’m going to go get my supervisor.\u00a0 Take a number as well.
\nD:\u00a0 Alright.<\/p>\n
Fifteen minutes later…<\/p>\n
I approached the counter as I got tired of waiting.\u00a0 I asked them what was going on.\u00a0 In the fifteen minute span, the receptionist had forgotten who I was.\u00a0 For the third time, I was to repeat my situation, however she had my paperwork in her hand.\u00a0 Sadly I had to repeat for the fourth time as her supervisor was now out on the floor asking why she had called him.\u00a0 All I needed was a signature and a date for when my physical was completed.\u00a0 I failed to mention this before but the physical only needed to be current as of five years.\u00a0 The situation took an all time low while I was speaking to the supervisor.\u00a0 I thought management was supposed to alleviate situations the regular employee could not handle.\u00a0 Unfortunately for me, it was just bureaucracy playing tricks on me.\u00a0 I had known this before as Navy Medicine works like a bureaucratic machine.\u00a0 Quality of health care provided is mumbo jumbo.\u00a0 What really mattered were numbers.\u00a0 It isn’t about how many ill or injured personnel have I treated and cured today.\u00a0 The real mission of the Navy Medicine team are how many people have came in and how many people left “treated” or how many cases of injuries or illness can I mask today!?\u00a0 The unfortunate motives of the Navy Medicine are just that.\u00a0 Even something as trivial as one signature must go through their totalitarian appointment system.\u00a0 I realized it then and now.\u00a0 I’m just adding a number to their daily quota by making an appointment.\u00a0 That’s all I was to this so called physician.\u00a0 A number.<\/p>\n
Back to the issue at hand though…<\/p>\n
After explaining that all I need was one signature.\u00a0 The doctor just looked at me and said well you still need an appointment.\u00a0 By now I was irritated and explained that I don’t need to be seen.\u00a0 I have the date of my last physical and a pen, all you need to do is sign.\u00a0 He quickly replied, “No, you need to make an appointment.”\u00a0 By now sarcasm had set in with my irritation and I replied with, “Well really, any monkey can sign this.”\u00a0 I was pretty certain it had offended him, he shot back “Any monkey cannot sign this. Are you insinuating that I’m a monkey?”\u00a0 Honestly, it was a figure of speech made by a irked dude.\u00a0 I thought to myself, did he really just take offense to that?\u00a0 Him being an officer in the Navy demanded I respond to him.\u00a0 So I replied, “I wasn’t insinuating anything, it’s just that its a simple signature and frankly I can probably sign it myself and save myself this trouble.\u00a0 Perhaps I came off a bit condescending sir, but aren’t you being a little too sensitive and insecure?\u00a0 I mean it’s obvious you’re no chimp.”<\/p>\n
To wrap this up…<\/p>\n
My five minute quest ended up turning into an hour long quest thanks to having to deal with two primates.\u00a0 It was quite ridiculous.\u00a0 They also didn’t end up signing my paperwork.\u00a0 They scheduled me for an appointment for Thursday.\u00a0 I needed the signature today though.\u00a0 Checklist was given to me on Friday afternoon and expected to be done by Monday afternoon. Feasible, or so I thought.\u00a0 I ended up asking a corpsman at the smokepit to fake sign this checklist.\u00a0 After soliciting about three corpsman, the final corpsman agreed.\u00a0 God bless her pretty blue eyes.<\/p>\n
Overanalysis – It’s a simple signature.\u00a0 Not a complex neurology related operation.
\nBureaucracy – I understand that implementing a system that promotes high efficiency and low cost is good for a business or agency.\u00a0 However, I think that if you put wait times on trivial tasks, it just wastes more time and energy.\u00a0 Isn’t the purpose of a bureaucracy to make an organization more efficient?\u00a0 When was putting an hour long wait to a less-than-a-minute task considered efficient?\u00a0 I must have missed that conference where sixty-five minutes is shorter than five minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This email was from my buddy Demotivated Dan on 06\/28\/11 I was assigned to something like a react team.\u00a0 It was a 6 month active duty.\u00a0 Anywho, I had to go through a short screening process which involved a checklist[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-moto-wall","uentry","postonpage-1","odd","post-author-admin"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fleetmarinelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fleetmarinelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fleetmarinelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fleetmarinelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fleetmarinelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=360"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.fleetmarinelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":872,"href":"https:\/\/www.fleetmarinelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions\/872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fleetmarinelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fleetmarinelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fleetmarinelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}