This morning my company had a blood drive and I donated, as usual.
After I read the forms and gave my card to the nurse at the laptop, they printed out my questionairre with my name, DOB, social security number, address, phone numbers, etc. printed on it. I circled the appropriate answers to the questions and went to the next station.
At that station, the nurse noticed that the two new additional questions had printed superimposed on top of the regular questions instead of over in the right hand margin. She went to the laptop nurse and had her print out a new form. Station #2 nurse then took the spoiled form, folded it in half, wrote “shred” on it and stuck it under some stuff on her table. I asked if I could please have the form so I could dispose of it myself. She retrieved the paper, scribbled out my social security number and said something to the effect of “that should be all right.”
I told her I’d really prefer to dispose of it myself and she said "we really don’t like our forms leaving the area. I said, “I really don’t like my social security number along with all my other personal information leaving the area.” She went to talk to her supervisor and came back with a gold inter-office type envelope and stuck my spoiled form in there. I gave up.
I’m kind of pissed about this. It’s not like the questions on the form are secret, and I know they wouldn’t let someone walk in with a pre-printed form like that and give blood without any other form of ID. They’d make them fill out a new form anyway. What do you think?
I would have made a great big noisy fuss until they returned my form. Not so much because I was concerned about privacy (although I think that’s a valid issue) but because they refused to give it back. I would have been happy to rip it up myself right in front of them, but I work with secure documents all the time and scribbling “shred” and stuffing them under a pile of junk doesn’t cut it.
Oh, and that’s real bright, sticking it into an inter-office envelope - so someone can say, “Hey, what’s this inter-office envelope doing here? I better put it in the outgoing mail for . . . Joe Schmoe in Shipping, whose name is written right here on the outside.”
I would have either torn it up very carefully into small pieces and/or asked for a black marker to mark out all the personal info. I agree—stuff marked “shred” doens’t necessarily get shredded, and the envelope doesn’t seem like a great solution either.
Your info, your property.
You were right to make a fuss, and I would have asked for the reasoning behind not returning the form, and then asked to see it shredded in front of me, or refused to leave.
I gave them my blood donor card. It has name, DOB, donor number and blood type on the front and the dates and blood pressure readings from past donations on the back. They give it back to you after they check your blood pressure, temp., etc.
I figure the sheet with my personal information that goes along with my bag of blood is necessary and there’s a procedure to deal with what happens to it. I feel the spoiled sheet has a greater chance of falling into the wrong hands, especially after seeing the nurse just fold it in half and stick it under her stuff. I wanted to shred it myself and think I made a reasonable request. I don’t go around terrified of giving out personal information, but I also try to do what I can to minimize the chances of bad things happening.
I suppose they think that having someone’s SSN is the best way to meet the legal requirements. It seems like there should be another way that’d work without having to fork over your SSN.
I belive they use it, along with all the other personal information you give, to help keep track of your records. Stuff like when you lasted donated and such.
Legally, not true. Everyone has records of their information everywhere, your doctor, schools, banks, your employer. That information and the paperwork it is on belongs to whoever is holding that information. There could have been a variety of reasons that form could not leave that area. I would be more worried about my info being on the laptop computer used by the nurse.