Stupidity
Monday, April 17th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
Sorry for the leave of absence, but I've been dealing with lots of stupidity lately. First my own stupidity: Last week, for the first time in the ~10 years that I've had one, I lost my ATM card. In a foreign country no less. So I call up my bank to cancel the card and get a replacement, but after wading through the endless computer voice menu, I always get "Transferring your call. I am sorry your call could not be completed at this time." Grrr. So I go online, and try and contact the bank through their secure messaging feature. I get an email back that they can't help me, I need to call to verify information. After explaining that I've already wasted $15 trying to get through, and get hung up on by the computer every time, they finally give me the secret back door number. When I finally get to talk to a human, I get my card canceled without a problem, but getting the replacement proved to be a bit tougher. Since I am in a foreign country, they have to send the card via DHL/Fedex/etc. The problem with this is that the express carriers "don't deliver to PO Boxes." However, no one in St. Vincent has a physical address. All mail gets routed to PO Boxes, where people go pick it up. The supervisor didn't believe me, so it took a bit to convince her to send the card. I mean I have gotten stuff Fedex'ed to me before, trust me, it works, even with a PO box… So hopefully I should get the replacement card soon.
Next up in the endless parade of exams (ok, not really, it just feels that way) is the OSCE. It is occurring all week, but I have mine scheduled on Saturday, since the rest of the week I will be recertifying 300+ students in CPR. (And they might actually need to learn it this time, since there is a slight chance they might be performing CPR over the next two years in clinicals.) I am not too worried about the OSCE - from what I have heard almost no one ever fails, and last term the entire class got grades between 82.1% and 89.7%. (So really, what's the point, if everyone is getting a B?) Anyways, can't be too tough, considering we never had a class on one of the exam stations (prescription writing - I mean why are we getting tested on that anyways, as we won't actually be writing prescriptions for a few years…), and there was all of one hour on another exam station (EKG reading, and since I've been reading them for years, I've got a slight advantage, I guess…). Oh and there's the station where we have to do a complete history and physical exam in 7 minutes, including reporting results. They really can't be expecting anything but something completely superficial. (On a side note, isn't this close to the average length of doctor's appointments in the US?) 
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[…] Remember my doubtfulness about the replacement for my lost ATM card ever making it to St. Vincent? Well, it turns out that the people in the Customer Service department at my bank didn’t believe me when I said that no one in SVG has a physical street mailing address, just a P.O. box, so they mailed my replacement card home instead. Thanks guys, that does me a lot of good there. Their big reason why they couldn’t mail it to my P.O. Box? “No one will be there to sign for it.” Well, guess what? There was no one home at the time my replacement card was delivered, and a lack of a signature didn’t prevent them from leaving it unattended on a porch. Funny thing is, if they had sent it to my P.O. Box here in St. Vincent, they would have gotten a signature from one of the secretaries at the school to whom all express packages for students are delivered. Oh well, I guess that is what happens when you let someone with a G.E.D. run things. […]