I work in the workers’ compensation litigation field. It’s really, really easy to take anything up to a two-year vacation in almost every state by reporting a work-related injury.
Even if we get surveillance footage of you whitewater rafting when you claimed to be housebound, the worst that might happen is that your doctor will tell you how disappointed he is and switch your work status to full duty.
In theory you can be prosecuted for workers’ compensation fraud, but in most jurisdictions the state won’t prosecute unless the insurance company more or less hands them all the evidence required to prosecute on a silver platter with watercress round it.
We can give an “emergency fill”, usually a 72 hour supply of the medication, but we can’t ever refill a prescription for a controlled medication without a current prescription, even if the patient wants to pay cash.
If we doubt the veracity of a script, we will call the prescribing doctor to verify it, but if they ok it, we have to fill. If the doctor doesn’t verify the prescription, we just tell the patient that the doctor has denied the prescription and they will have to contact the doctor. We try not to openly accuse anyone of lying to us. We generally know when people are, but it is rarely a good idea to actually call them out.
I work in public relations, which does not have a stellar reputation. But PR people are absolute paragons of virtue compared to what clients try to get away with.
“I have an academic study to prove my claim.” (The school that did the study had already repudiated it when they discovered the data were flawed.)
“I published a book about it.” (I paid a printer to run off 100 copies and bind it.)
“Yes, the CEO did sign the contract, but he was supposed to get board authorization for a contract that big. He didn’t, so we won’t pay, and you’ll have to sue him personally if you want your money.”
“Everything the reporter has written is completely wrong. I don’t know if he’s just incompetent or deliberately out to get me, but you have to defend my reputation.” (Meet with reporter, who produces 400 documents he copied from official records at city hall.)
I know this does actually happen to people on occasion. After all, most people keep their pills in the bathroom medicine cabinet, it is bound to happen. If you call me and tell me your blood pressure medicine went down the drain and you had about a week left before you needed to refill and I look at your profile and see this is the first time you have asked for an early fill, I’m not going to think twice about it. If you are calling to get your vicodin refilled early and I look at your profile and I notice that you have requested early refills for accidents many times before, I am a lot less likely to believe you.
For example: I look at the data, I see prepaid activation one after the other after the other, 30 seconds apart with false name, shifting IP addresses, etc. We are paying by the activation as a bonus, so clearly he thought he could just activate them himself rather than sell them to real customers. I confront the guy and he says, and I’m not making this up:
“Couldn’t have been me, I get a headache when I look at the computer.”
Um…yeah. Ok, well, I’m terribly sorry then, sir, to have impugned your good name and all that jazz. I’ll just go and speak to the fairies who must be the ones doing this sort of dastardly thing.
:rolleyes:
That was an unusual case though. Most just blame their staff. Because, totally, your minimum wage, ESL counter person is going to be the one who benefits from getting an extra $10 per activation, amirite? And they do this to my face.
I can’t wait to be a lawyer. I’ll get paid heaps more to be lied to, and perhaps my clients will be more inventive.
I did let people exchange when they were not obviously trying to scam a free CD. We, the counter staff, were allowed to exchange them if the person asking seemed genuine. The great majority of them seemed very obviously not genuine. It’s not hard to spot some idiot lying to your face. If I got scammed by the occasional good liar, fine, no big deal.
I’ve caught two people embezzeling money over the years from veterinary clinics that I’ve worked for. The first was an idiot. She would return products off people’s accounts and pocket the cash. She might have gotten away for it for longer but one of the first red flags was a client moving, requesting 6 months worth of heartworm meds one day and then returning it on the same day? That was an easy two minute phone call. “Hey Miss. Y, did you return your heartworm meds? I see, yes that would be very strange for you to return your meds on the same day you requested them.” We found clients with food they bought like clockwork every six weeks with returns. Again, easy phone calls, no return ever made. She at least admitted it but then fled the state. We were able to prove enough to get a warrant but I don’t think anything came of it.
The second was smarter. Probably one of the best employees we had too. She was a office manager and had access to fix invoices when mistakes were made. So she would just drop a food product or other inventory off the invoice and pocket the change. All of this mostly invisible until we decided to run an audit report and found deletions of that type all over the place. She wasn’t aware of this thing called Audit Trail Report, this is the reason we don’t really advertise it’s existence. The kicker was a person who bought insulin and needles for their cat. Items it needed to SURVIVE. Deleted. Too bad for her it was still in the medical record. She denied it, we forced a resignation but it was a really good thing I had seen the proof because she had such an innocent denial that I would have possibly believed her otherwise. Transactions that were password protected and occuring when she was the only employee on premises are really hard to doubt!
Curious - is this meant to discourage, or do they have a tendency to trash the room or something? Wouldn’t asking for it just come across as proof you knew what was up if the hotel was ever challenged for allowing illegal activity?
I see a lot of bashing of the common brands of dog food on dog forums. The small reps that distribute the premium brands have their lies. A common one is that corn is the leading allergen in dogs. Well that is true, but percentage wise it is no worse than chicken and not as bad as beef. They also compare them to McDonalds. Dog foods are all certified to be a complete and balanced diet. McDonalds isn’t.
Ummm, actually, I’ve fumbled the open bottle that contained my thyroid supplement so that the pills spilled into the garbage disposal. I had no problems getting them replaced, though of course I did have to pay out of pocket.
When I used to work in a women’s dress shop, we had several customers who would buy something fancy, wear it, and then try to return it. We finally had to institute a policy that certain items were not returnable. We also had people try to use the place as costume rental for Halloween…we simply said that since they’d worn it, that it was theirs now.
There were also people who tried to get away with paying no sales tax, claiming that the clothing was for their jobs. All of our clothing was streetwear, we didn’t carry any uniforms.
Celtling and I went through a horrendous period where she was violently resistant to taking any medicine. It lasted months, and as a result I had to ask her pediatrician for refills on every medication we used - mostly antibiotics.
Since they weren’t pain meds or anything, I couldn’t understand why the nurse was always so funny on the phone when I’d call to say we needed more anti-biotics or eye drops. Finally, the fourth or fifth time, she said “Ma’am, I’m sorry, I know when your kid gets sick you get sick too, but you are going to have to go to your own doctor to get meds for yourself.”
So I took the bottle and the Celtling to their office, asked to see the nurse, and proceeded to try and give the child her medcine. She spit it out the first time. The second time I held my hand over her mouth and she squirted it out her nose. The third time the nurse had to hold her down for me even to get it to her mouth. The screaming had the dentist’s assistant next door dropping by to see if we were OK.
The nurse apologized and got me another prescription.
Not a new one Shakester! When I worked in a record store in the 70s, people pulled the EXACT same thing. Buy an LP, take it home and make a cassette copy, bring back the LP, suddenly want another title. :rolleyes:
Also, they would buy a new copy of a favorite LP, go home and switch their beat-to-hell record inside, and return it, claiming it was “defective”. Uh, no. Triple :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
Basically, we never rented to locals (the exception would be if their house was being fumigated.) If you don’t want to do whatever you are doing in your own house, it’s almost certainly not something we want you doing in ours.
Specifically with pros, the danger is angry wives calling all night demanding we tell them “where he is” or what room he is in. Sometims they even show up crying and ranting and then what do you do? Eventually you have to threaten them with trespassing, and threatening to have a cheated woman arrested is a bad way to spend an afternoon. Motels are usually small family owned businesses, so when a grief deranged wife calls a hundred times in a night (and this has happened to me) that means the poor manager is missing a night’s sleep dealing with it.
Other factors are that prostitutes often mean drugs, drugs mean fights or cops, and both of these means that the people staying in the motel that night will never come back- and repeat guests were our bread and butter. Would you return to a motel where there was a pimp fight or drug bust in the next room?
Your doctor does sound like he’s not good at listening to patients, but next time, don’t withhold that kind of information. Tell him it’s 3.5 even at rest, but (whatever number/feeling) when you try - just once before the appointment, to see what it’s like so you can describe it - to do anything like picking something up off the floor.
This was a beach town that made a good weekend trip from a major city. Families would spend long weekends or annual family getaways with us, often returning to our motel for generations.
The tourist-dead off season was almost all repeat business- businessmen, annual convention goers, people visiting family and people dropping off/visiting/picking up students from the local university.
People who visit a city regularly develop a preference in where they stay. Where I live, there are 11 car shows every season, which means that one or two motels are booked completely full because they specifically cater to vendors who go to every show, and who book their rooms for the entire season at once. If the vendors become unhappy, they go elsewhere and a couple of motels are left scrambling for business because they now have to fight a shitty reputation.
A few months ago I was having some sort of weird back issue. I used this as my cue to find a new doctor as I A)hated my old doctor B)wanted one closer to where I currently lived. I called up, made an appointment for my issue and at the end of making the appointment I the person I spoke to said “I have to inform you, the doctor doesn’t prescribe narcotics on the first visit and if you cancel this appointment for any reason he won’t see you again.” I have to assume that’s the spiel they give to all new patients that call up with back pain since I’m led to believe it’s a pretty common drug seeking symptom.