November 27, 2015

Long Weekend

It wasn't until sometime late last week that I discovered that the office was not going to be open on Black Friday.  Four day weekend!  Now, to be honest, I wouldn't have minded working today all that much... it's not like I have to deal with retail customers as a medical claims processor... but I'm not going to look a paid day off in the mouth of a horse of a different color.

Things have taken a distinctively positive turn at The Job.  I cleared the first major hurdle of averaging 100 claims a day a few months ago.  I then set a goal of averaging 20 claims an hour, or 160 claims per normal day.  I've sunk that one a few weeks back, and set sail for 200/day.  Almost immediately I reached that milestone.  Even better, I've now worked at The Job long enough to be paid on merit for each claim.  For the past three months I was locked at $.50/claim.  Once you hit merit pay, the base amount per claim drops to something like $.34.  However, you then get bonuses based on your accuracy levels on three separate categories.  If you're not making too many errors, these bonuses add up to truly pleasant levels... like, twice as much as the base amount?  Combining my recent speed boost with that means that my per-hour rate is looking truly inspirational. 

There is one little problem though... I haven't worked a full eight hours in a day in two, maybe three weeks.  There's some long-winded reasons for that that I'm not going to get into, but there's one smaller reason that just makes me facepalm so very hard.  See, as you may remember, the medical industry recently switched from the ICD-9 standard of coding to ICD-10.  This is actually one of those few changes that makes a lot of sense... ICD-10 allows for much more accurate coding of incidents.  Just making up an example, ICD-9 would code for "broken arm, right."  ICD-10 codes to "broken arm, right, upper, enclosed fracture, honey mustard sauce."  However!  The implementation date for the new coding had been pushed back multiple times, and it appears that a lot of medical facilities just assumed that would occur again.  This means that it's taking longer for claims to get to us, as doctors' offices and clinics and all those sorts of places try to figure out software and codes they've been neglecting.

Other than that little problem, though?  Things are okay.  The mp3 player allows me to mostly tune out the world... except for one person.  This person, who we'll call Louise because that isn't her name, is a talker.  Worse, her voice has a lot of throw weight to it, much the way nuclear weaponry has throw weight.  She doesn't ever whisper, so everything she says is quite audible, even when she isn't talking loudly.  Remember, this is in a relatively quiet workspace as well.  The job is hard enough without hearing her discuss her lunch in detail.  Polite requests for her to be quiet had a couple hours' worth of effect.  More formal complaints fell on deaf ears or worse, led Louise to complain to the manager of the entire office... "boo hoo, they're picking me."  Frustrating.  One feature of this job is that long-term people with good speed and accuracy are often allowed to work from home.  Combine that with the usual workforce churn and open seats tend to appear.  When enough of those occur, a reorganization invariably takes place.  Remember, in the Duckford office, we actually work with four different medical insurance firms, and it's always best to get the workers for a firm in one place.  New employees, for example, will always get put into The Big Room before they get shuffled to their real room.  This reorg occurred on Tuesday... and Louise was moved from her seat in the cube directly in front of me to one literally as far away as possible from me and still be in the same room.

I ain't even sad that she was there first.
That very Tuesday, I cranked out my best claims day ever... I was within spittin' distance of 300 when we ran out of 'em.  Coincidence?  Nope.  I could listen to my music without fear of hearing her "huh?" rip through Athena's Barcarolle from ARIA... I have a four minute long live recording of it on the mp3 player that can manage to bring tears to my eyes.  So work is okay.  And it's not in a mall.  No complaints at the moment.  And hey, four days off!

Posted by: Wonderduck at 03:54 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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November 19, 2015

Stagnant? Moi?

Not intentionally... at least, not since that last post.  My internet connection has been completely down since very early Wednesday morning.

This is very very annoying.  It's not like I need help in not blogging, after all.  The connection has been up for only a short time... my modem fired up as I was looking at it, in fact... but I have no confidence in it staying up, so I thought I'd better get a notification posted.  And when I clicked to finalize this post? The internet had gone down again.  Guess I was right.  Wow, five minutes of internet in over a day.  Considering this provider's track record at times, I guess I should count myself lucky.

On the other hand, I managed to watch a few episodes of Sakura Trick, which I was told was really really good.  I will never take this person's word for something ever again.  However!  Attention Steven!  The character in the picture above normally wears red quarter-rimmed glasses!  Even BETTER than half-rimmed!  If you wanna see, check out Ep03 and beyond.

Just... don't pay attention to the show.  Or be at risk of diabetes, and by "at risk" I mean "you once ate or drank something that had some sort of sweetener in it."  And if you actually have diabetes, avoid Sakura Trick like the plague.  Dear god, this series will kill you dead.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 05:11 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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November 06, 2015

I... Uh... Hm. Well.


Frighteningly accurate representation of Wonderduck blogging these days
Blogging is not happening.  I'm trying, but nothing's happening.  Sure, I've got things to write about, Gakkou Gurashi Ep06 first and foremost, but everytime I sit and begin to type, it all comes out... boring.  Dull.  Insipid.  Uninteresting.  How in the world do you make the zombie apocalypse boring?  I dunno, but I'm managing to pull it off!  So I'm not going to blog tonight.  Do you have anything you'd like to hear me pontificate upon?  Or, conversely, not talk about because you don't want it ruined by a boring blogger?  Let me know in the comments... or don't, if you think that's a safer option.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 07:44 PM | Comments (21) | Add Comment
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