My Unpaid Office Job ~ Probably Yours Too

April 5, 2008, by Linda Bergeron

I’ve been thinking it was just me, a long-time office worker with a penchant for invoice details and getting papers into the right file, but I’ve come to believe that the necessity of a home office really has very little to do with a PC now in most homes and everything to do with the Great Records Shirk that has been on the increase for several decades.

This monster that few mention – the best I’ve been able to figure - is the result of small businesses, the federal government and other agencies, insurance companies (auto, home, medical, all of them) and the whole gamut of organizations and retailers who have come to require that consumers complete, renew, re-apply for, document, and – basically keep tabs on – a wide assortment of records.

Most days of the week I thank my lucky stars that I have office and general bookkeeping skills as a valuable endowment so I know enough to save receipts, mark bills paid, keep track of upcoming renewals, which medical bills occurred before or after the deductible…remembering to ask the question, Do I get to pay 80 percent now instead of 100 on that last visit?

Right now my desk, shelves and carpeted floor in the assigned small bedroom house the following:

* a pile of medical receipts (which needed several organizing file folders) that include original bills, the notification that the original bill is still the same amount due from the patient but in a pending status because the insurance company claims “requested report not received from physician or provider” yet - and meanwhile I keep track who I’ve seen, and when, and why, and whether or not, or how much, I’ve already paid;

* a thickening folder for auto insurance receipts including the old rig that was suspended while it was parked in deep snow all winter, which is now running (under reactivated coverage) yet parked out front behind a red-lettered FOR SALE sign on the dashboard (and somewhere I know I’ve got a record of when the tags expire next just in case that fact helps be a plus on the pick-up’s asking price);

* all the orthodontic receipts from my son’s office visits over the past two-and-a-half years just in case there’s some end note discrepancy about that $5,000 smiling adventure;

* three two-drawer files that are getting harder to wedge this month’s papers into that are holding all the rest of the chronicle of me and mine in these times.

I think this GRS (remember, Great Records Shirk) began one day in an office when the general manager said to the Human Resource director, “Hey, let’s have the client fill out the form so we can use a temp clerk instead of hiring another office gal.”

(He was trying hard not to use the four-letter “girl” word; and yes, he was probably a he.)

This time last year I had no health insurance. Life was considerably simpler, although my home office was still an active place. In truth, I was postponing medical attention here and there on this and that (mostly the that, because it was more expensive.).

If they – you know them, the dutiful members of Congress, the hard-at-the-bit gang of political go-getters, and those who truly care about and are wracking their college-educated brains over what to do about the dying-state-of-the-American-health-care-system – if they would only ask me and other hard-working home-office workers our opinion on where to save money on this Gargantuan system – and doesn’t it bring out the “Grrs” in your suppressed Angerphile? - I’d suggest this: let me pay for the service, you look it up in your multi-volume that explains what was or is a ‘pre-existing’ condition (which I’m sure does not have a footnote on genetics). If my designated plan is covered, make a decision that day – oh, my Gosh! - and mail me the results in seven to ten business days. You pay me back, or I pay the balance. If they keep all the paper generated from one office visit in their office, floating from pending pile to pending pile, sitting on this clerk’s desk until s/he is back from vacation or training (on that multi-volume text, you know), waiting on the poor physician who’s desperately trying to read her/his own handwriting from three months ago about the visit in question and getting swamped in his own home office of tall medical journal stacks….well, you can see where this is going. Home offices are on the increase; the paperless office idea talked about in the late 1980s is certainly mobilizing upward the recycling industry for the sons of the old timber boys, and most people are still not getting paid what inflation suggests they should be. Especially those of us with papers at home to file.

This entry was posted on April 5, 2008 at 15:04 and is filed under Contributing Authors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.