What a Freaking Day!

I’m having one of those days. Would you like to hear about it? Of course you would!

I get paid bi-weekly on Thursdays (usually at around 2:00-3:00AM Thursday morning). Therefore, I generally wake up on Thursday morning and check my bank balance to make sure everything is in order and to pay whatever bills I have pending. I log on this morning and poof, my balance is the same as it was the day before. I won’t tell you what my balance is, but let’s just say I probably would be hard pressed to buy a Big Mac with what I have in there. After some investigation, I find out that the problem is with the Royal Bank of Canada. A “transaction processing problem” is not only causing huge delays with my bank, but with other financial instituitions that deal with the RBC nationally and internationally. What makes it worse is that I wrote a rent check two days ago which I obviously can’t cover until my balance is updated, which should hopefully be later today. Even if it isn’t, I do have overdraft on my checks and any fees incurred as a result of going in the red obviously will be reimbursed by the Royal Bank. If they aren’t, I’d switch banks on principle.

That’s obviously the worst thing that happened to me this morning, right? Heh, nope. My second story is even better. My doctor had scheduled an appointment for me this morning with an Orthopedic Surgeon to look at my knee. They gave me the name of the Doctor and directions to his office. I leave work, jump in the car and head on over there. I’m forced to pay three dollars for parking. I enter the Doctor’s office and say “Hi, I’m Jim Kirk, I’m slated for an 11:00AM appointment!”. The secretary looks at me and says: “Actually, I have no record of an appointment. Besides, the Doctor is in surgery today.” Urgggg. She is kind enough to call my Doctor’s office and after 5 minutes of back-and-forth we discover that they sent me to the wrong Doctor completely. I actually have an appointment at another Doctor’s office in another section of town.

Bad, right? It gets worse. I jump in the car, drive to the other office and pay yet another three dollars for parking. I walk in the door and say “Hi, I’m Jim Kirk, I’m slated for an 11:00AM appointment….. I hope.” The secretary is quite nice and says “Yes! We have you listed here. Can I see your X-Rays?” I hand over the X-Rays and she asks me when they were taken. I told her last August and she proceeded to tell me that since they were older than four months, the Doctor wouldn’t be able to see me today. Furthermore, she added that this was mentioned to the Secretary at my family physicians office when the original referral was made. In an ideal world, this sort of screw up would cause me to switch physicians but unfortunately there aren’t any other doctors available and I was lucky to get into this guy to begin with. :-/

So… I’m out six dollars, I wasted an hour and a half of my life, and now I have to go for more X-Rays (on both knees, just to be safe) and go back to the Orthopod next Friday.

In closing today, I’ll leave you with an applicable definition:

in·com·pe·tent adjective

1. Not qualified in legal terms.
2. Inadequate for or unsuited to a particular purpose or application.
3. Devoid of those qualities requisite for effective conduct or action.
4. My family physician’s staff.