Prescription Woes

I'm going to do one more post today just because it's less stressful on the world for me to do this than to freak out on someone. My question for the day is why is it so difficult for people to actually do their job? In fact, I find it interesting at how absolutely spectacular people are at NOT doing their job. And it's not even like it's just one person, it's multiple people ALL not doing their job. So, my story for today of people with issues doing their job:

I got a prescription for Nasonex when I was at the doctor to help with the allergies (it works better than Flonase for me, which is what I was using at the time but had just run out of) that were leading to the head congestion that was leading to the post nasal drip, that likely helped with the sore throat and possibly helped with the ear infection. For anyone who doesn't have allergies, nasal spray is generally far more effective than pills, but you have to start it and be on it longer before you start seeing the effects. And thus when I got the prescription I went straight to the pharmacy. Here is my first bit of confusion - in my experience people don't fill prescriptions for fun. They actually need the item for which they are filling the prescription, otherwise a) they wouldn't have gone to the doctor and paid for a visit and b) they wouldn't have offered to pay you (the pharmacy) to fill the prescription for them. When I went to pick it back up they said they needed some kind of pre-authorization form from the doctor and that they had faxed it over and I could come back in a few days for the prescription.

So here is question number two. Isn't a prescription kinda a pre-authorization form? I mean you don't make them up. A doctor had to actually write it for you, so why does it help the insurance company to have a doctor write a second paper saying yep, they wrote the first one. ESPECIALLY for allergy nasal spray - I mean I'm not filling codeine here. Anyway, what are you going to do, that's the way it is, so I paid for my antibiotics and ear drops and went on my way. Two days later I called the pharmacy to see if it was ready. A real live person checked the file, said no they had not received anything back from the insurance company but the form had been faxed to my doctor, so I should wait another day or so and then check again ("because sometimes it take a while to fill out the papers" - really? I fill out papers all day and none of them take 3 days to do, but whatever).

Then on Sunday I get an automated call on my phone saying my prescription is ready so I stop by the pharmacy, wait in line and when I get to the lady (and spell my name 18 times because she is really having issues with it), I find out that no that automated call was saying my prescription is ready if I had that form filled out but since I don't it's not, and I'll keep getting those calls so I should ignore them. REALLY? You can't turn that option off your computers? She says that she will fax it again though, so I drive away, calmly talking to myself and saying it's really not that bad, I only wasted 5 minutes of my day, move on with life.

And we come to today. I finally decided it was worth bothering the doctor, not just the pharmacy, so I called the ENT to see if they had filled out the form. They say they have never received a form and give me their fax number to make sure the pharmacy has the correct one. I call the pharmacy and after about 5 minutes of listening in awe to the stupidity of this entire thing and that idiocy of this entire process I learn that 1) they don't have the fax number, 2) they never faxed it because that wasn't an option in the system, 3) they normally call them, 4) she doesn't know if they called them, 5) I was supposed to call them with a number I was given for them to call and supposedly do something that I don't know what it is, but they would know. I mean you have GOT to be kidding me? Three (not one, THREE) people told me something was faxed, and it's MY job to call the doctor and ask them to call some number and say something to someone so I can get some stupid allergy medicine. And the lady ended the call with 'thank you for your patience'. Don't thank me for my patience, lady, thank me that I've got an allergy induced headache and so I can't think very hard of something snarky enough to say to make me feel better. I figure I should definitely have the medicine by the time allergy season is over.