I’ve been very diligent about paying my assorted – and wildly (deliberately) inefficient – medical bills. The notion that some over-zealous random doctor’s office would turn me over to collections makes me anxious and so I’ve been quick to put the checks in the mail.<\/p>\n
I’ve also been keeping careful documentation on everything and that includes making a copy of the bill before tearing off the payment section to send in.<\/p>\n
I got a bill yesterday and decided to get it in the mail and out of the way that day. It was late in the evening, but I figured I could get a copy made at Staples and then drop the payment in the mail on the way home. I needed to get gas anyway, so it seemed like a quick and productive trip.<\/p>\n
I get to staples and head over to the copy area. I had a pocket-full of change with me and figured I would just use the self-serve machine.<\/p>\n
Except I forgot that I was living in the era of “let’s make things more complicated for no reason and fix things that aren’t broken”. \u00a0So, my coins were no good.<\/p>\n
The self-serve machines require a copy card. Which I didn’t have and had no intention of getting. I needed one copy, after all – getting a card seemed like a waste of time.<\/p>\n
I head over to the counter and the woman has me wait while she attends to a machine. Which is not a good sign.<\/p>\n
When she’s finally ready to deal with the human, I hand her the bill and ask for one copy. And here begins the madness.<\/p>\n
1. She picks up a copy card from the counter, inserts it into a reader, and spends a minute or two typing on the register. I’m guessing it was a blog entry on how freaking stupid I was.<\/p>\n
2. The card pops out of the reader and she collects it and the bill and goes over to the self service machines.<\/p>\n
3. She then inserts the card and makes one copy.<\/p>\n
4. The card pops out and she comes back over to the register to reinsert the card and hand me the bill and the copy. She types for a bit, the card pops out, and she announces the total.<\/p>\n
11 cents.<\/p>\n
I hand her my two dimes and she gives me 9 cents in change and my receipt.<\/p>\n
There was the briefest of moments. A pause. A stillness. And in that clarity, the horror of our situation was shared. All that time and effort, all the back and forth, all the sheer waste… it chilled us both.<\/p>\n
I took my change, my receipt (which, ironically, used nearly as much paper as my copy), and my papers and I was on my way.<\/p>\n
I dropped the bill with payment in the mail on my way home and then filed the copy in with the rest of my bills.<\/p>\n
Next time, I’ll either man-up and buy a card – or just wait until Monday and make the copy at work like everyone else does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve been very diligent about paying my assorted – and wildly (deliberately) inefficient – medical bills. The notion that some over-zealous random doctor’s office would turn me over to collections makes me anxious and so I’ve been quick to put the checks in the mail. I’ve also been keeping careful documentation on everything and that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1761"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1762,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1761\/revisions\/1762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}