Coming next week to a city near you: Amazon drone kamikazes itself into toddler's bedroom. Film at 11.

They didn't give one damn about the quality of medical care or outcome. This was an urgent care center. The entire thing was part of the corruption during COVID-19 to grift as much money as possible. COVID-19 tests were readily available at the local grocery store, and the government was sending people free ones. But if they went into the urgent care center and saw a "provider" before the test sample was obtained, then had it "interpreted" by the "provider" and explained to them after the result, they could charge something like $150 for an urgent care fee and $150 for the test, which was reimbursed. This was encouraged primarily by the schools that decided that the only acceptable test was a PCR test, when they didn't understand how to use the test or even what the acronym PCR stands for.

So you would have morons who came in and were pissed about the wait time, or the cost of the test, or that someone else was sick in the waiting room, or that they didn't get the answer they wanted, or that they weren't given antibiotics for a virus, or any multitude of other stupid shit. Before they've even hit the parking lot, their cell phone beeps with a solicitation to give a review.

Then we had customers who would deliberately game the system. They would rush in immediately to get a test when they knew that they'd been exposed, so that they could get themselves and their kids negative test results that they would wave around and use as an excuse to get let back into school. They didn't like the fact that the note said on it that even if the test was negative, CDC still recommended that they quarantine until they were symptom free for 7-10 days.

Back when all this rating nonsense started about 20 years ago, there were posters all over the place reminding us that the only acceptable rating was a 5 star rating. Hospitals all over America dinged doctors, particularly in the ER, if they didn't get 4.5-5 star averages. I knew doctors who were fired because of this. This was largely responsible for the over prescription of opioids because if people didn't get their fix, they knew to blast the doctors. Well, that and using "pain" as "the fifth vital sign" where staff had to take patients at their word -- if they said their pain was a "10 out of 10" but were sitting there texting on their cell phone and eating a bag of chips, the nurses were told they had to believe them and give them pain medications.

And here we are.

I had the misfortune of working for a company that tied their bonuses and employment evaluations based on this five-star record crap. This was in medicine. So my "approval" was based on stupid shit like how satisfied they were with the front desk staff, which I explicitly had no control over. Then a bunch of the senior members in the corporation were gaming the situation, doing things like hijacking the dumbass messages that they sent to patients(*) that most didn't respond to.

* -- The system that they had would keep a log of all text messages sent to patients. As soon as the patient was discharged, it would send a text message to the patient asking them for an evaluation. These clowns would hijack it and give a 5-star review. If the patient actually bothered to respond to it, it would then say something like "Thank you for your review" and not even prompt them. They used this to scam the entire system.

And yes, this place was an utter shithole to work in, and it's the only place in my history that I actually went out of my way to get myself fired. If I'd quit, they had a clause that I had to pay $30,000 if I didn't give a 90 day notice. (I kid you not.) To this day, they are still posting ads trying to snare people for about 50% of the market rate for physicians.

The entire idea of the 5-star system is stupid. By definition, average would be 3-stars. But try explaining this to the legions of dumbass MBAs running things.

In the markets, if enough people believe in the correlation then it magically becomes a causation.

Gentoo FTW! /s

How many people did they get to harass just because they were having electricity usage, that they are paying for, which was "too high?" Some peoples' usage is going to be higher just because they work from home, enjoy their air conditioning, and maybe have a server farm or something.

A few years ago I was working in a clinic in the South. It was during the COVID-19 nonsense. Some woman brought her kid in and wanted the physician assistant to write a medical letter saying that the kid couldn't go to school and needed private tutoring at home. He wouldn't do it. She goes flipping crazy and starts threatening to shoot up the clinic. She then goes out in the front of the clinic and proceeds to scream obscenities for about 20 minutes.

Of course, the cops were called by about four of us in the office. Two hours later a cop shows up, and says that since she eventually left during that time frame they couldn't do anything. Being the ranking guy in the clinic, I shut it down and closed it. While I was doing that, my PA went out and retrieved his gun from his car. I have no doubt that had she walked back in there, she'd be pushing up daisies.

Incidentally, I turned that cop into Internal Affairs. His lieutenant was pretty pissed when I talked to him.

Remember, when seconds count, the cops are only minutes (or hours) away. The Supreme Court ruled quite a while back that the police aren't really required to protect citizens.

A few years ago there was a shooting at a Walmart in El Paso. The only reason I wasn't caught in the store when it happened is that I did a late checkout at my hotel.

And as mentioned above, if someone has my name it's trivial to find my address. Hell, it's mandatorily put on a government web site. (Yes, my home address.) So when I turned someone in for child abuse who happened to be in MS-13 (found out later), you're damned right that I have guns in my house.

Anyone worried about this might consider buying a Glock.

Admiral! There be whales here!

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