arteejee

A site of satirical musings, commentary and/or rhetorical criticism of the world at large.

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Location: Southeastern, Pennsylvania, United States

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

A Tribute to Open Enrollment


The editorial board has reminded me that it has been a few weeks since I have written a blog entry.  So, with apologies I humbly submit a health update and the state of my job.

To be fair, I am still working on getting back to 100% health wise.  I still have a few more weeks for physical therapy, but I have all but abandoned using the cane for most of my walking.  It was a busy week last week: a birthday and an anniversary in the same week. Fortunately, these events only come once a year.

Speaking of annual events, my employer is having its open enrollment season.  It’s not simply open enrollment for my company, but its also open enrollment for about a gazillion other companies which has hired us to answer any and all questions about their health insurance offerings in the coming benefit period from their employees.  And guess who gets to answer the calls from these employees?

Stress at work is an understatement for my job at this time of year.

It would not be so bad if these callers did not wait until day 13 of their 14-day open enrollment period to call in and ask a question about their coverage that requires (at minimum) at least two days of research to answer.  And God help us all if we can’t answer their question RIGHT NOW.  President-size hissy fits ensue.

I figure we have three more weeks to deal with these people before we can get back to our day-to-day working of other client’s cases. Traditionally two things happen at open enrollment at my job: it slows down by Thanksgiving which this year is coming early on November 22, and the days of the month of November race by in a blur.  Once it is all said and done we have no memory of the month.

Management does their best to keep everyone’s spirits up.  Last week we had a free pizza lunch on a few days, and they bring in dinner for those who work extra hours after their usual 5:00p leave time.  A pot luck is scheduled for this Friday.  

It may not be much in the grand scheme of things, but it does help a bit.

Anyway, I don’t think these mere words (392 so far) can fully convey the raw passion of open enrollment.  I’ll leave that to Sam Kinison.   You may remember his misogynistic comedy from the 1980’s, and I am in no way, shape or form celebrating that aspect of his work.  However, he did have a unique way of expressing mankind’s basest forms of frustration which I think sums up this whole open enrollment business quite well.  To wit:

 
Any questions?

(Thank you for reading and thank you Sam, wherever you are.)

Tuesday, October 02, 2018

It’s Groucho’s Birthday!


Today is the 128th anniversary of the birth of Julius Henry Marx.   Let us celebrate with wine, woman, song and more women.  Then some more song, then more wine.  Much, much more wine!

Please enjoy this song and dance from Animal Crackers.  But don’t dawdle.  It looks like he’s in a hurry to leave.


(Thank you for reading.  Please pardon the appearance of the Africans at the beginning.  They are not stereotypes.  They are actors working for scale!)