The Billing Clerk Story

This is a story I wrote back in 1997 when I first became the Strange Biller. It basically describe the origin of Strange Biller and how he got here. I transcribed it quickly and didn't edit, because I thought that was truer to the original. Also, because as we all know, I am lazy.

The Billing Clerk Story

This is the story of a billing clerk gone mad. He wasn’t mad to begin with, mind you, which is why this is the story of a billing clerk gone mad, not a billing clerk who was always mad and tortured animals and stuff when he was a little kid. No, this billing clerk started out just as normal as any other billing clerk in the world – happy, oblivious and resigned to his sad and pathetic role in life as one of God’s crunchers of meaningless numbers in an industry of unholy terror. Health care.

His first day on the job he nearly died of a massive coronary as he was shown the 632 steps required to send a bill to a modern health insurance company. Fortunately, he was revived with defibrillators kept on site for just such an emergency – he was, after all, in the health care industry. Unfortunately, he was merely 127 steps into the process when he suffered this first heart irregularity. It was a long day for the billing clerk, as he required frequent defibrillation and plenty of water to keep him going. In the afternoon he was introduced to third party administrators and at one point was declared legally dead by a doctor on his way to pour a cup of coffee. Lucky for him, God Himself reached down from the sky and gave his heart one last jolt to get him moving.

God had a funny way of doing that to the billing clerk when he got himself into these situations. Like the time the billing clerk, then a restaurant critic, choked on a piece of pork at an upscale BBQ pit. Or the time the billing clerk, then an interior designer, spilled an entire bucket of lead paint on a rich client’s dog – a dog who later decided to take revenge on the billing clerk, then a postal worker, and tried to kill him with an exploding package. Or like the time the billing clerk, then a mercenary for hire, tried to join the Zapatista rebels, only to find both sides of the fighting wanted to kill him. You get the point – the billing clerk walked with Jesus and often found it convenient to have himself revived from otherwise fatal falls, gunshots and stabbings. The man kicked ass when it came to rallying.

But when it came to billing, the man took his profession seriously. He learned the ropes quickly, including the dangerous process of completing HFCA 1500s with the greatest of courage, once saving the entire office from certain destruction by throwing himself on a pile of EOBs that were about to go off. He was methodical, calculating and – deep down inside – just a little crazy to begin with, despite what the opening paragraph would have you believe. And every day that he billed the bills and walked the walk of an accounts receivable badboy, his brain became just a bit more unstable. More dangerous. More electric. Soon, the man was completely unglued and spewing heretical statements about BlueCross and BlueShield, Tufts and even (gasp) Medicare.

Maybe it was true, maybe it wasn’t, but he claimed God had spoken to him in a dream and told him to build a billing machine. The biggest, most impressive billing machine the world had ever seen. The kind of billing machine God would build if God needed a billing machine. Of course, God doesn’t need a billing machine any more than he needs, say, baby powder, but the point is, this would be God’s Billing Machine, powered by the Holy Ghost, baby. Take a ride on the wild side with Jesus driving your billing machine.
Your mad, they said. Insane, they said. Actually, they said these things to him on a regular basis in months preceding his announcement of plans to build God’s Billing Machine, but up to that point there had always been a little bit of doubt in their voices, like they thought he might be crazy but couldn’t be sure. And then this – he comes to work one day covered in chicken blood (again), raving about some sort of machine powered by God that would revolutionize the industry. What does one make of that sort of thing?

But I’m not crazy, he said, and I’m not insane, and I’m only a little bit nutty. He was possessed by the spirit of greatness and greatness is often misunderstood. There is a fine line between insanity and greatness when inventing something as complex as a billing machine or a peanut butter hat. Still, the billing clerk pitched his idea for a billing machine for years, all to no avail. Doctors laughed at him. Practice managers threw him out of the office. Nurse practioners covered him in honey and lapped it off like naughty little puppies – bad doggie, bad. The billing clerk never gave up, though. He knew God had chosen him to build the billing machine for a reason and he promised he would never quit. I’ll show them, he would shout at squirrels in the park. I’ll show them all. You’ll see.

One day, a stroke of luck, twist of fate, turn of events - whatever you want to call it – happened that was so important to our story that it deserves its own paragraph.

The billing manager died.

No one was quite sure how and no one really cared why, but while on hold with Harvard Pilgrim Community Healtcare to check the status of a seventeen year old claim, she up and kicked it. The billing clerk tried to revive her by waving a fresh batch of insurance checks under her nose, but it was too late – she had gone to that big waiting room in the sky.

Which left the billing clerk in charge. No asked him to be the manager – no one even wanted him to be the manager, but it was too late. He had assumed command of the SS Billing and was charging full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes, prepare the coordination of benefits for firing. His dream was finally within reach, and he began working on his billing machine.

Built from old banana peels and discarded Chevy parts, the machine was a behemoth of biblical proportions, just as it had been in his dreams. It was a thing of beauty, running on a combination of Mountain Dew and diesel fuel and a touch of cough syrup (a little Robitusin for the machine, a little for the clerk). The machine sat there in the middle of the office belching black smoke and toxic fumes for weeks on end. Skeptics continued to talk behind his back, mocking his creation. Disbelievers abounded. Annoying flirts walked by in sweaters so tight you could have bounced a quarter off them. Not one person believed the machine would work except the billing clerk.

One day the billing clerk came to the realization that the machine didn’t have any function except billing, and for some reason he couldn’t even make it do that. It was finished – that much he was sure of. After all, he built it and he dreamed it, so he should know whether it was finished or not. But how to make it bill?

The billing clerk struggled with this question for months, to no avail. He could not make the machine bill, no matter how he struggled. Then came another dream.

He dreamt he was looking back at his life, mapped out in footprint in the sand on a beach. During the good times of his life, there were two sets of prints, side by side. But during the bad times, there were only one set. The billing clerk confronted God and asked why during the most demanding and trying times of his life – such as the time he was caught in the ladies dressing room trying on ladies underwear at Filenes – did the Lord abandon him like day old bread? God looked at the billing clerk and shook his head. You sorry fucking bastard, He said.

Then it was 6:00 a.m. and the billing clerk’s alarm was going off, signaling the start of another work day in which the billing clerk would monkey with the billing machine which would never, ever bill. Why? Because this is the story of a billing clerk gone mad, not a billing clerk who revolutionized billing. How did you think it would end?