Downscaling.net

Yesterday did not disappoint me in it’s sheer shittiness. Came back to a mountain of work to do, people asking me questions right and left – mostly like this: “Oh, how are you feeling? Heard you had swine. That really sucks. Can you approve this expense statement for me, m’kay?”

Almost shed a tear about an hour into it but I hung tough. Yeah, if I had balls they would be big. And hairy.

Totally not a sexy visual.

Any old hoo, at 1 p.m. I went to a benefits meeting because it is the holly-jolly open enrollment season and employees all over America are celebrating by going into conference rooms and having HR Santa explain all the changes they can expect for the new year.

And then we decorate the benefits tree and smugly sing insurance caroles because we thank the Baby Jeesus in his little holiday feeted jammies that we are blessed enough to have employer-sponsored health care, amen.

Except somebody forgot to tell our HR Santa that this is supposed to be a joyous occasion and she went all HR Grinch on the whole party. And by Grinch I mean snotty biznatch.

Typically I blow these little soirees off because I never make changes to my insurance for fear of angering the HMO Gods. All I care about is knowing how much my premiums and co-pays will increase and you can totally get that schedule on the Intranet and in the packet they mail to my house. But we are changing carriers this year and I anticipated this meeting would actually have useful information and the opportunity to ask questions.

It’s the last part that upset the HR Grinch. And I can totally see her point because why would anyone have questions about health care these days? Nope. HR Grinch had a script and by Dog, she was sticking to it.

And I found it highly amusing to watch HR Grinch lose. her. shit. whenever anyone dared to ask what seemed to them (and the rest of the horrified onlookers) a valid question.

For example: She explained that on one of our new plan choices, a family’s deductible is $300 annually. Insurance benefits kick in when the primary insured and one member of his/her family meets the $300 deductible.

Keyword here: AND. As in two people. No insurance benefits are paid until two people shell out at least $150 each in non-covered payments. Folks, that is a quote. And I am a trained journalist, they teach us this shit in college and stuff.

So someone, and by someone I mean the most senior manager in my department, holds up his hand and says, whoa, hold the phone. Are you saying that if I choose this plan and then I get into a terrible car wreck on Jan. 2 and end up with a $1o,000,000 hospital bill, it’s not covered because another member of my family hasn’t met their half of our family deductible yet?

And HR Grinch says yes. And tries to move on.

And then someone points out this rather absurd loophole would mean that you should keep your family in a bubble until you can get them to the doctor in early January and run up as many procedures as possible so you can pay your $300 up-front and actually have, you know, insurance.

And she says, “We can play “what if” all day, but we will never get through all this if you keep playing “what if.” Insurance has changed. We need to accept it and move on!”

And then she had her goons haul off the instigators and had them tortured in the hall. For really reals. We could hear their screams. It was a brilliant move on her part to quell the voices of opposition so she could explain how we would need buy a bigger wallet for all the cards our new insurance overlords were going to mail us. BWHAHAHAHA!

One of our reporters turned to me in horror and mouthed “WTF” Except she didn’t use the acronym. Ah hell yeah. She was scared. They were ALL scared.

Except one dude who clearly wasn’t paying attention and felt compelled to point out, using the InterWebz on his iPhone, that there were several options for plans on the dental insurance Web site that the HR Grinch had in her Power Point presentation and could she please clarify which one we needed to select.

When they dragged him away, they all just sat there in their silence and soiled underwear. And no one will ever hear from that mouthy little mo-fo or his damn iPhone again.

It was totally glorious in its evil injustice. And I just laughed and laughed (silently to myself of course, so as not to attract wrath) because I can switch to the hubby’s insurance and we’ll probably save a bit of money.

And we can invite his HR Grinch over to our house and get him shit-faced on good wine and ask all the questions we like because we have totally done that before and no one has ever gotten hurt. Unless you count the hangover. Which you should because that was wicked.

So yeah. BEST INSURANCE MEETING EVER!

And it totally made an otherwise shitty day memorable.