With the development of sites like Twitter and Facebook, where you can literally update the world on your whereabouts and condition every thirty seconds if you have that much time on your hands, it's no surprise that people have become a lot more public with their private lives. I'm quite guilty of this myself, obviously - I just updated my Twitter, Facebook, Dailybooth, Frappr Map, and am metablogging right now this very second.
But since I began working at the call center I realized that the mentality of this "get it now" information age has made people assume that anyone can access anything at any time. Case in point: Almost daily, I'll get calls from people who want me to pull up their appointment time, look them up by birthdate, and tell them how much they weighed on their last checkup. Most back down when I tell them I'm only the switchboard operator, but some get huffy. "Why can't you look me up?" They ask. "Don't you know everything?"
On the other end of the spectrum, we have patients calling our answering service refusing to give us any more information than a sketchy spelling of their last names, undoubtably sending the poor medical receptionists into confusion. I know these people are probably different than the people who blab their every bathroom break on Twitter, but it's still an interesting disconnect. I'm supposed to know everything and, at the same time, nothing.
When someone complains that I don't know their information, I always want to ask themif they really want me to have it: I'm a temp with virtually no medical background who would probably only use Joe Shmoe's health history as inspiration for short fiction. But I don't. I apologize and wonder if I will show up later on Joe's Twitter: "Annoyed that no one knows anything about me."
At least I'm not shopping online for sex toys with his credit card.
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