Category Archives: Conflict

The stupidity of American healthcare strikes once again

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When I made my mammogram appointment over a month ago, the provider I was referred to by my OB-GYN had an online portal that had you fill out the usual paperwork in advance online, so I was able to do things like upload my driver’s license, front and back of my insurance card, and fill out any personal and family history ahead of time. What it also did was give me an estimate of what my out of pocket cost would be at the time of appointment check-in. This was a rude awakening: it said based on my health insurance that my out of pocket cost should be around $350 for a mammogram and breast ultrasound.

None of this sounded right. Mammograms are standard and covered by pretty much every health insurance for women over 40. Breast ultrasounds are covered in New York state (and apparently… not in Kansas, where a friend of mine lives, and where she had to pay $300 PER breast out of pocket). I called my health insurance, who confirmed to me what I suspected: I should have zero out of pocket costs, no co-pays, for either procedure. They gave me a reference number to give to the provider. I then called the provider, gave them the reference number, but they said they could not tell me the cost until I came into the office, which seemed not only completely inefficient, but just plain stupid. “If you ask me to pay for this out of pocket when I come in, I will decline the procedure and walk out,” I said sternly to them over the phone. “I am asking if you can correct this ahead of time so we don’t waste your time or mine?”

The person on the phone seemed totally unfazed, like she didn’t care (and frankly, probably wasn’t paid enough to care). She told me there was no way to confirm until the day of the appointment when I came in (which seems false the way health insurance works, but whatever). So she told me to just come in, and she doubted I’d have to pay anything out of pocket.

Well, I came in this afternoon, and lo and behold, that same $350 amount showed up as what I owed at the time of service. I insisted to the receptionist I wasn’t paying it. I gave them the reference number once again, and she made a flippant response: “Breast ultrasounds are not typically covered, but okay, we’ll call your insurance.” Her associate called my insurance. Twenty minutes later, they confirmed that I was correct, that I did not owe them any payment… but, I would be required to pay $20 copay for the breast ultrasound.

“Copay – is just for the breast ultrasound?” I said to her, still skeptical. I made a mental note, planning to call my insurance to contest even this amount after I paid it because this still goes against what my health insurance stated to me on the phone, which I wrote down with the reference number.

“Yes, that’s what I said,” the front desk person said, clearly annoyed with me. I’m not sure what her problem was — it wasn’t like she was getting the money. Their office was the one who screwed up, not me.

I paid the copay, then had both the mammogram and breast ultrasound done. I walked out of the office much later than I estimated I would, so the whole experience was pretty frustrating, especially since I tried to prevent foreseeable problems way in advance, which this office obviously thwarted. But this is just one of many stupid, frustrating and senseless examples in my personal experiences of why our healthcare system in the U.S. is so fucked — an example of what not to be. I also made a note to ask my OB-GYN for another radiology provider because I definitely do not want to go back here at all ever, ever again.

Tardiness in friends

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At a previous company, I once worked with a sales leader I really respected. Although I am not in sales, I oftentimes listened to his team talks and abided by his advice. Countless times, I can remember what he said repeatedly about showing up to customer meetings: “If you are not 15 minutes early, then you are 15 minutes late.” To him, if you showed up for a 9am meeting at 8:59 or 9am, you were already late and losing the damn deal.

There’s some truth in this advice, and not just in business, but also with lower stakes situations, such as when you are meeting up with friends or other loved ones. You want to make a good impression, stay on good footing with those you care about, and ultimately, show some respect. When you set a meeting time, you are dedicating this time to this person, and thus you are respecting that they chose to set aside this time out of their busy day just for you.

I used to be the jerk who would be late fairly regularly to non-work-related events. In my early 20s, when I’d say I would meet with a friend at 6:30pm, in my head, I’d give myself a 15-minute window of “grace.” This was never spoken. I never told any friend this. But I figured I could get there by 6:45 and it would totally be fine. Sometimes, I’d arrive early or on time. But oftentimes, I was 10-15 minutes late. And finally one day, Chris called me out on it and said it was rude, said we agreed on a meeting time, and that I needed to respect that. Sheepishly, I admitted he was right. With that, plus the influence of work, since then, I make it a point to show up to meetups about 10-15 minutes early now, assuming I am not crunched for time by things out of my control (like work meetings that might run over). And that gave me the liberty (and permission) to start calling out other friends who would show up late to agreed meetups. It’s had a “trickle-across” effect: a couple friends who would usually be late are now almost always either early or on time. Now, the majority of my friends are always on time.

Well, that’s with the exception of one friend, who is notoriously late all the time. She has shown up to 1:1 meetups with me late by 10-30 minutes. Last year, she came to lunch with us late by almost an hour; Chris was infuriated. She came to my 40th birthday party late by 1.5 hours. And then this past Sunday, she came over an hour late to my Lunar New Year party.

“Being late is just a sign of disrespect,” Chris insisted as he grumbled about her. “Would she show up late to a work event or a workout class? I doubt it. So it’s not like she’s not capable; she just doesn’t respect her friends enough to be on time.”

I texted her about 10 minutes before she showed up on Sunday, asking if she was almost here (this is 50 minutes after the stated start time of my party on the Paperless Post invitation). Everyone else was already here; we were all waiting for her to arrive. When she came through the door with her husband, she saw my text as Chris took their coats, and she had said almost defensively to my text, “Well, we’re coming from far away.” Well, “far away” is all relative: we had friends come from Staten Island, New Jersey, and similar parts of Brooklyn, and they were all early or relatively on time, unless they had told us in advance they had to be late for some reason or another. With her, we had zero communication. And she clearly didn’t do the due diligence of looking at the start time, then backing out based on Google Maps how long it would take them to get to our place via public transit the way a logical person would.

Another friend was complaining to me about people who are perpetually late. “What, do they think an event start time is just a suggestion?” she asked me.

Although I’ve already called this friend out on being repeatedly late a number of times, I have a feeling that I’m going to have to confront her about it more seriously at some point soon because when I think of the sheer number of times she’s been late, it’s exactly what Chris says: it’s just a huge disrespect. Everyone is “busy,” but no one is too busy to constantly be late all the time and disrespect people they supposedly care about.

A Lunar New Year / anniversary dinner that felt wrong

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I was on Instagram this morning, and I noticed that a (White) colleague of mine, along with her (White) husband had celebrated their 7th wedding anniversary. They decided that since their wedding anniversary coincided with the Lunar New Year period that they’d host a small dinner party at a Chinese restaurant nearby and call it a joint Lunar New Year/7th wedding anniversary celebration. This felt a bit weird to me since neither of them is from any culture that celebrates Lunar New Year, nor did it look like they had any Asian guests, but hey, to each their own. If they want to celebrate other cultures, all power to them! I’m all for inclusivity.

But then, I saw the menu for the party, and I immediately cringed… hard. They had stereotypical ha gow (shrimp dumplings) and vegetable potstickers as starters. It wasn’t terrible, but entirely predictable. Plus, dumplings are a traditional Lunar New Year food. But then when I saw the mains, I immediately felt annoyed: beef and broccoli, orange chicken, and vegetable fried rice. It couldn’t have gotten more White-washed/Americanized than this. I felt like an entire caricature had been made of my culture, that they didn’t know the first thing about what significant cultural foods are eaten during the Lunar New Year period by any Lunar New Year celebrating culture or why — and maybe they didn’t even care. They clearly didn’t do any research or put any true thought behind this. Instead, they chose stereotypical “Chinese” dishes to satisfy a White audience that would match whatever notion they had in their head of what Chinese people might eat for Chinese New Year. It was pretty upsetting to see this.

This colleague and I get along. We both travel a lot, and we both love food. She loves to bake her own sourdough and occasionally likes to cook. But I always knew we probably couldn’t be real friends… because I had a feeling this is probably how she saw my culture. And I guess the feeling was right. And if I were to ever bring this up to her, how her joint Lunar New Year/wedding anniversary meal was an insult to Chinese culture and Lunar New Year traditions, I doubt the conversation would end well. Because for many people, they want to believe what they want to believe about cultures they are superficially aware about. They want to believe that pho and banh mi are what make up Vietnamese food, and that’s it. They want to believe that General Tso’s chicken, in its sugar-laden, sticky, gooey form, is what Chinese people across the diaspora eat on the daily. And when they are told otherwise, they “other” it, ignore it, and compartmentalize it far, far away from them… and they stick with what they “know,” which are the White-washed versions of whatever that culture’s food is. They don’t want to believe that what they are doing or saying could potentially be offensive or wrong. They’re like the “nice, White parents” from the parenting podcast I previously listened to: well meaning, well intentioned, but with awful execution that they are a hundred percent blind and tone-deaf to.

What you think is common is not so common

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I feel like I’ve spent most of my life hearing people from outside the U.S., media, professors, teachers, older adults, and even my own husband talk about how stupid Americans are. Our literacy rates are pretty poor. Our math and language standards are significantly lower than in most rich industrialized nations. We have a lot to be embarrassed about from an education standpoint. But sometimes, people really, really shock me in ways I would not have otherwise guessed.

I was working on a shared Google Sheet with a colleague over the last few days. Both of us were editing it, and I had to hide a bunch of columns because I wanted to isolate certain columns of information I needed to work on another project. He got confused when he was in the sheet today and asked me why he couldn’t find certain columns of information. “Did you hide the cells or delete them?” He messaged me. “Can you please unhide them?”

I was baffled. I read the message twice before it suddenly hit me that he probably didn’t even know how to unhide the cells. How can you possibly be a white-collar professional in your seemingly late 40s and not know how to do the most basic functions in Excel or Google Sheets? And even if you didn’t know, go look it up — that’s what Google Search and all these AI applications are for!

Getting a response to your airline complaint

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I was telling a colleague on the way to the airport Friday that as soon as I got on my DFW-LGA flight and got WiFi, the first thing I would do was write a complaint about my flight cancellation/lack of comped hotel to American Airlines. She chuckled a bit, remembering how seething I was when I first told her the story. And she said while rolling her eyes, “Well, good luck with that! Who knows if they will even respond to you!”

“I have Executive Platinum status!” I said to her, indignantly. “I KNOW they will reply to me. I’m more just wondering how quickly they will, and what they will offer.”

I wrote that complaint in their portal on Friday afternoon. By Saturday afternoon, I already received a response with an apology, a request for my Charlotte hotel receipt, my mailing address for them to send a reimbursement check, plus 2,500 miles automatically added to my account for the pain and inconvenience I experienced. To be honest, I was expecting a response within two weeks; the fact that they responded in about 24 hours was actually quite impressive. Now, I just want to know when I can expect that check.

It’s very true that we live in an unjust and classist world. And they likely wouldn’t have been as quick or generous if I didn’t have Executive Platinum status. But in these moments when I get screwed, I have to play some card and get something out of them. Was a comped hotel really even worth wasting an entire two days of my life, though…?

Changing attitudes and demeanor with age at work

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It’s funny to think that this June will mark 18 years of full time work for me. That isn’t that long in the grand scheme of life. I’m 40, after all, and supposedly at the “prime” of my working years. But to say that I have 18 years of work experience sounds like a lot. I haven’t really “climbed” the career ladder, so to speak, in any externally admirable or impressive way. But when I reflect back on my working years, I realize that I’ve learned a lot about corporate America, work politics, and how luck plays a huge role in how “well” you do in our “dog eat dog” world. I am definitely not the same green, naive person I was when I was 22 and entered some tech startup in a questionable building near Union Square. As time has gone on, I’ve definitely become a lot more assertive, direct, sarcastic, and even snarky. I also just want to do what I want to do, and I care less about impressing others. That’s likely cost me promotions and/or raises, but I still have what I need, so it’s not like I’m going bankrupt because of my attitude.

In my first several years of attending my different companies’ annual sales and success kickoffs (SSKO), I used to make this huge effort to meet as many people as I could, to schmooze with leaders and people “above me” in the corporate ladder to make sure they knew who I was and we had some level of camaraderie. That’s the advice you’re always given — you have to politic in the world of politics. But in the last couple years, I feel so much less inclined to do this. I am in a fully remote role. I don’t get to see my direct teammates (who I mostly like) at all. So when I’m at this once-a-year-event when I can see almost everyone on my team in the same place, I kind of just want to see and chat with them. I can be myself around them. I can be as sarcastic, snarky, and jokey as I want, and they appreciate it and get it (at least the ones I like).

But of course, I still meet new people. I meet people I’ve worked with over Zoom in person finally. I have random chats with people I bump into, and all of that is fun for me. I an extraverted introvert, after all. But having worked remotely for six years now, these events are definitely draining because you’re essentially on — all day long, and far beyond work hours due to evening social events. I feel mentally tired coming back home from SSKO and feel this deep need to decompress and stretch both my mind and body out.

When I’ve flown home from these events in the last few years, I’ve thought a lot about the workplace in general. And I’ve always wondered but never quite pinpointed: how much of “work” is your actual day to day responsibilities and customer requests versus just internal politicking — creating a brand for yourself, making your name and accomplishments known, elevating yourself against your peers and advocating for yourself in terms of recognition, raises, promotions, President’s Club? I don’t know what the percentage is obviously. But what I do know for sure is that if there is just one thing I cannot stand about work, it’s the constant internal politics, which exist anywhere and everywhere as long as there are people. It’s my least favorite thing about the corporate world. Your work will never be enough, and it will never speak for itself even if you are the best.

I also wonder to myself what the feeling will be like one day when I no longer work for a company, for “the White man.” I wonder how much of a weight off my chest that will be, and how it will contribute to my quality of life. Or, will I become one of those people who misses what I hate (that’s also called masochism) and tries to go back into it….?!

First world problems: Bad food at CLT airport, the wait list that keeps you waiting at the CLT American Express Centurion Lounge

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Trying to eat “healthy” while on the road, especially for work, can be really challenging. You often hear of people who travel frequently on business say that it’s hard to eat a well-balanced diet when you are constantly on the go. Even when you think you may be choosing the “healthy” option, hidden *extra* things like fats, sugars, and weird thickeners and preservatives lace your food with all the nasty things you’d ideally like to avoid.

When I got to CLT yesterday, I wanted to get some kind of fruit in, but I wasn’t sure how to do this. I scanned all the food options in the “plaza” area of CLT around the E gates, and I found an acai bowl stand. That sounded promising, I initially thought. I went up to the stand, decided on a protein acai smoothie, added some mango, and ordered. But when I took the first sip, I almost gagged.

“Is there added sugar in this?” I asked the employee who made it for me. It tasted like there were several tablespoons of sugar added to this. Acai is not naturally sweet at all; mango and berries would also not have made this that sweet. So where the heck was the intense sugar hit coming from?

She shrugged her shoulders. “I just followed the proportions,” she said to me nonchalantly.

I hate wasted food. It’s ingrained in my DNA; it’s almost like I feel pain in my body when I have to throw food out. As a young child, I got lectured and yelled at more times than I can count by both my paternal grandma and my mom that they grew up with barely enough food, so Ed and I were lucky to have more than enough to eat every single day. So even if food didn’t taste good, we were still expected to eat and finish it. So, I ended up drinking the rest of that likely-refined-sugar-laden acai smoothie. I rationalized it in my head as, well… I barely ate anything else today, so who really cares if this is what my body has to feed off of today?!

Chris kept reminding me to go to the American Express Centurion Lounge at CLT because last year, he signed me up for an American Express Platinum card (for a big bonus that he insisted was worth it), and one of the perks was that I could get airport lounge access (when I wasn’t with him, since I get access when traveling with him due to his Qantas status). I checked the status of the lounge online, obtained the QR code, and went to the front desk. And then, I very politely got turned away because the front desk guy told me they could let me in only up to three hours ahead of my flight; I was there 3.5 hours ahead of my departure time.

I know this sounds spoiled, but wow. I felt like such a pleb in that moment. I just got turned away from an airport lounge when I was supposed to have this shiny card that would get me access. AHHHHHH.

So after twenty minutes (and eating a subpar sandwich for dinner), I went back into the AmEx app to see if I could generate a new QR code. Well, I had no such luck: I had to get on the wait list. I put my name in, and I got a confirmation I was on the wait list. And well… 1.5 hours later, I never got off the wait list. By that time, I had to walk 12 minutes to a different concourse to get to my gate to board. The entire experience was miserable, unsavory, and definitely did NOT scream “premium experience” whatsoever. Or maybe I’m just annoyed and cranky because this entire travel experience thus far has been awful, and I’m getting older and just feel like I am losing patience for situations like this.

Too many people have this American Express platinum card. Unfortunately, as classist as it sounds, you just cannot create premium experiences for everyone. Because if everyone has access to the premium experience, then it is no longer a true premium experience. Chris poked fun at me, saying that I am just spoiled now by always having access to fancy lounges through him. That’s probably true. When you have nice things… you kind of get used to them.

Maybe I am truly a capitalist after all.

Flight cancellation, terrible service, and an unexpected overnight stay in Charlotte

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I guess I spoke too soon. After five delay notifications and my flight getting pushed back to 8:30 from an original departure time of 3:50, AA officially cancelled the flight, stating that they did not have a complete flight crew and could not take this plane from Charlotte to Denver.

I immediately called the AA Executive Platinum desk. They said the earliest they could get me to Denver was 9pm Wednesday night. I would be missing an entire day (that’s 50 percent) of our entire program. I chatted with my manager, who suggested that I still come if I could fully participate in the sessions all day Thursday. Given our company’s getting acquired, this will be my company’s very last annual kickoff. If this weren’t the case, I might have seriously considered just going back to New York. But I wanted to be there for this, even half time, and I wanted to see my colleagues and attend Thursday night’s party. So I booked the flight tomorrow night. And as per usual because American Airlines’ service is just getting worse and worse, the phone agent told me the recorded reason for the cancellation was “weather,” and so unless a gate agent gave me a hotel voucher, they could not give me a hotel voucher over the phone. It’s always fun when AA lies on paper about the real reasons for a flight cancellation, but then gives blazingly loud announcements at the gate that it’s due to lack of flight crew. I saw the line at each of the gates — it was over two dozen people long, and there was no way I was getting in one of those lines without setting something on fire. My company could deal with my hotel. So, I got my corporate booking app to book me an airport hotel that I could stay at until Wednesday afternoon.

I got a Lyft at Charlotte to the airport hotel. After already being infuriated by this whole debacle, I immediately got even more annoyed when I realized no car had a front license plate. People can talk all they want about states like New York and California being nanny states, but you know what? FRONT AND BACK LICENSE PLATES MAKE SENSE AND ARE LOGICAL. North Carolina is clearly backwards here. When you see a sea of black and grey vehicles, and your Lyft is a grey sedan, how the hell are you supposed to tell them apart? Do you want me to go behind the vehicle and check? That is so inefficient and insane.

So I found my car and went behind him to check his license plate. I got into the car, and I said to the driver as soon as I sat down, “Do you know how ridiculous it is that your state doesn’t require front license plates? How am I supposed to know it’s you in a massive sea of grey and black vehicles?”

He responds, laughing, “Oh, I LOVE that North Carolina doesn’t require a front license plate! It’s not necessary. You found me, didn’t you?”

There went his rating. And that was an automatic “no-tip.” I don’t care if it sounds ruthless. I just told him that I found it difficult to find him, and he basically said to me in his own words, with zero empathy, “I’m so happy it was hard for you to find me!”

And it only got worse. When I got to the hotel, the line was over two dozen people long. Only one person was at the desk. The line eventually grew to over 50 people. And after almost thirty minutes of waiting, another hotel employee miraculously showed up to split the line in two. I think all of the people servicing me tonight were competing to see who could be the absolute worst.

I’m not sure how worse this night could have been. Why does our annual kickoff almost always have to be in Denver, and in JANUARY? Would it never make logical sense to make it in San Francisco, our actual company headquarters where the weather is always mild and temperate….?!

The continued effects of Winter Storm Fern: Delayed flights, accidents on the road, and an endless customer service line at the airport

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I woke up this morning to Chris telling me that my first connecting flight was delayed (a sign of his love: he monitors my flights even when he’s not flying with me). So I’d need to really hustle and run when I landed in Charlotte because my connection time between landing and boarding for my flight to Denver would be just minutes. And given the way the connections work at CLT, I’d typically land in one concourse and have to go all the way to a separate concourse, which would take at least 8-11 minutes at my usual speed-walking pace.

En route to the airport, my driver and I witnessed three different car accidents, all completely preventable and due to the idiocy and carelessness of drivers on the road. “Look at these people!” my driver exclaimed, exacerbated. “They’re driving and not even paying attention! It’s like they don’t realize there is SNOW and ICE on the road! Why can’t people just slow down? You should have seen how many accidents I saw happen on the road yesterday — I lost count!”

After I boarded my first flight, I got a notification that my connecting flight was also delayed. This wasn’t the end of the world: this small delay would mean I wouldn’t have to rush to my next gate. But then the news just kept getting worse and worse: another delay came, followed by a third, and then a fourth. At this point, my arrival time changed from 5:40pm all the way to 8pm local time. I was supposed to have a 7pm dinner reservation with a former colleague I haven’t seen since pre-pandemic. She had moved from San Francisco to Denver several years ago. She changed the reservation to 8pm to accommodate my first delay. But by the time the final delay notification came, I realized it would be far too late to meet up with her tonight, especially given that it’s quite a distance from Denver airport into downtown, so it would take time. I had no idea what the road conditions would be there, nor what traffic would be like at that time. We agreed to cancel dinner but to try to find a small window to meet for coffee or tea in the next two days.

I was disappointed, but I know I didn’t have it that bad relatively speaking. Everywhere I walked through Charlotte airport, I was overhearing horror stories of people’s massively delayed flights, cancellations, and re-routes. One guy said his connecting flight changed three times. Another person said she got rebooked on a flight in another six hours. The American Airlines customer assistance line in my current concourse was so long that it almost went into the main atrium!

As long as I get there tonight, I’ll be fine. These are the woes of air travel immediately after a major winter storm.

Winter is cold, and getting even colder, plus a secret love of boots

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For years here in New York, winter hasn’t been a true “winter.” We haven’t had much snow relatively speaking due to global warming. December through March has been a milder weather period; it has always been cold, but just not as freezing as we expect. Snow has been sparse, so Kaia has had very few times to make and throw snow balls or build a snowman. But this winter, it has most definitely been cold. It snowed last weekend; the temperatures have been in the ‘teens and low twenties Fahrenheit. And Kaia is NOT a fan. As she is becoming more and more verbal by the day, she’s definitely making her opinions known.

She has protested almost every other day of boot wearing. “I don’t wanna wear boots! I wanna wear shoes!” She hates the high-top nature of the winter boots I bought her; she probably dislikes how her ankles can feel trapped in them. I can relate to that feeling, but I have since gotten used to wearing boots since moving to the East Coast.

Kaia told us multiple times this past week, “I don’t like winter. I want spring and summer. I want to wear sandals! I want it to be warm!” We agree with her; we also tell her that neither of us likes winter much, either. But winter does not last forever, and before she knows it, spring will be here, and she can shed all her thick layers and boots and wear regular shoes and dresses again.

I’ve adjusted to living in a four-season part of the country and world. I actually don’t mind it much. It does require more different types of clothing (and a very different skincare regimen in winter due to dryness!), but now that I’ve been here almost 18 years, this is my long-time current “normal.” One thing I have secretly embraced but never said out loud is that the best thing about living in a four-season place is that… I actually love boots! For someone who doesn’t like winter, this sounds kind of funny. But to be fair, most of my boots are autumn/winter boots, so it doesn’t necessarily have to be freezing cold to wear them. I still remember back in 2003 when the Wellesley recruiter came out from Boston to San Francisco, and she told me that she had at least ten pairs of boots — all for different types of cold/weather, occasion, and environment! My mind was boggled at the time when she shared this, but now, I completely understand. I myself have three different pairs of dressy boots, along with one pair of super casual, long Uggs (which I basically live in when it’s cold but not wet outside), one pair of rain/waterproof boots, and one pair of fall duck-style boots (which really need to be retired, after ten-plus years of wear, because I found out while in Denmark that one shoe has a hole in it!). So I have seven pairs of boots myself, which is kind of hilarious. I love all types of boots: I like the leather boots, the suede ones, the heeled ones, the flat ones. I like the Chelsea style boots, the tall knee-high ones, the slouch style boots, and even the chunky combat style ones. I could easily waste an hour on Nordstrom’s website staring at all their boots and wondering which ones would be comfortable and still look good in whatever weather. But then I think that if we end up moving to a warmer weather place, how often would I really wear all these boots, if at all?

Kaia doesn’t currently share my love of boots, but who knows — maybe she will embrace them as she realizes that you absolutely need these in cold weather climates. Or maybe she will shun them and refuse to ever live in a cold weather place ever again.