I never had the typical high school first job. While my brother and many of my friends either worked fast food or retail, I did not. My first job was doing telephone surveys. I went from there to working in the financial aid office at the University. After that, I did do a one year stint at a local video rental store (remember those) which ended badly, and then, after a few months of unemployment found myself as a medical receptionist.

 

When people start telling their worst working in customer service experiences ever (and people love to tell these stories), I could top pretty much everything except being robbed at knife or gunpoint. (I have friends that were bank tellers.) And none of my stories came from working at the video rental store. They all came from being a medical receptionist.

 

This was high volume customer service. Friday and Saturday nights at the video store were non-stop busy. None of them were as busy as a typical day at the doctors’ office. Let’s start with some basics. I worked in a six doctor specialty practice. Each of my doctors saw, on average, 30 patients a day. In addition, we had two techs who saw patients independently of the doctors, and we had an attached optical shop, and people would often come over from there to make new appointments.

That means that the front desk dealt with around 200 patients per day- most of them with multiple points of contact. Over an 8 hour day, 200 patients equals someone new through our doors every 2 minutes 24 seconds- non-stop. And someone checking out before walking out our doors at the same rate.

In addition, we handled over 300 phone calls a day- both incoming and outgoing.

We had work stations that we rotated between, including charts (which allowed us to get away from patients, mostly, one week out of six) so that people did not get stuck doing the same thing over and over.

 

You need an appointment when? And my doctors weren’t just specialists, they were specialists within their specialty. I worked for ophthalmologists (eye doctors with MDs vs ODs). I had 2 of only 3 retinal specialists in the area, 1 of the 2 glaucoma specialists in the area, and the only pediatric/muscle specialist between UC Davis (Sacramento) and Salt Lake City. My 3 MDs who weren’t retinal/pediatric specialists all did cataract surgery, as well.

When I started there, I could get a patient in with my pediatric specialist in about 4 weeks. My glaucoma/cataract guy was booking out 2-3 weeks. Everyone else, there was a chance I could get you in this week, possibly even tomorrow. Three years later, when I left, my pediatric specialist was booking 3 months out. My glaucoma/cataract doctor was booked out 6-7 weeks (though he’d always squeeze one more pressure check into his day), and I couldn’t get you in with anyone for at least 3 weeks.

Unless, of course, one of the doctors was on ER call that week. They each had to take turns at ER call in order to maintain their surgery privileges at the local hospitals. In that case, we had to take anyone and everyone who had an urgent or emergent issue that day- no matter how busy.

 

Everyone was stressed. The other “fun” thing about working customer service in that environment is that it’s not just high stress for the worker. It’s often high stress for the customer as well. Sure some folks were just in to get a new glasses prescription, but others were facing surgery, going blind, or in massive amounts of pain (like the guy who took a screwdriver to the eye).

Add to that cost (no dollar menu here) and the confusion of insurance. While state laws determine the practical difference between MDs and ODs in your area, insurance companies care a whole lot about whether the diagnosis is medical or vision. And people who come to see an MD often think their medical insurance will cover the appointment no matter what (they’re seeing an MD after all, not an OD), even if they just need new glasses and they don’t have vision coverage.

Every January we got to argue with people about deductibles- especially the mandatory Medicare deductible. And on a regular basis, we also got to argue with our MDs about whether or not they could waive a copay.

 

Given all of that, it’s really kind of amazing that only once did a patient try to come over the desk and attack one of us (same patient did hit one of our opticians in the head with her cane- we fired the patient), and that we averaged maybe 2 threats a year.

 

We need you here. What we did have was high turnover. When I left, only two full time receptionists had been there longer than me, and they were the two supervisors. I was the trainer. When I started, I was promised mobility. Most of the back office and doctors’ assistants had started at the front desk and moved on. But we had such a hard time training and keeping receptionists that in the entire three years I was there, only one person got moved from the front desk (and she still did a lot of front desk work for the pediatric specialist).

 

I got to know myself as an employee. I did learn a lot while I was there. I learned how to train people and even created the first training documents they’d ever had. I learned how to calm people down in stressful situations, and how to explain the often confusing world of insurance (especially since it was the early days of Medicare Advantage plans). I developed the skills I would need to become a top notch administrative assistant by finding the correct balance of treating my bosses with respect while sometimes bossing them around in order to get what I needed to do my job. I learned I could and should demand respect for the work I did from my bosses- the doctors may have had more education than me, but that didn’t make them better people, and their office certainly could not have succeeded without the hard work of the front desk staff. In many senses, I found my professional identity.

And when I left, I promised myself I would never go back to the medical field. I broke that promise, of course, and three years later found myself back in healthcare (and I’ve stayed for over 8 years now). But that’s okay, because the promise I was really making myself was that I would never go back to high volume customer service. That promise I’ve been able to keep, so far. And truth be told, if I had to go back, despite the better pay and benefits of being a medical receptionist, I’d rather work at McDonalds.