Strangle my Coworker with Christmas Tinsel!

Oh Mrs. Carnegie! I have WORK DRAMA (cue the Days of Our Lives soundtrack):

So, I have an assistant in my office who types 5 wpm and screws up the surgery schedule and she’s been feeling like she had triumphed over those of us who don’t have 6 yeas with the company because Friday she called the boss and had him tell me what was what and who was who and like whoa or something.

Yesterday, the doctor hears from four separate patients "I was supposed to have surgery months ago and no one has said anything to me about it." And he's not happy. He's a surgeon. This is pretty much why he breathes every day.

And of course he comes to ask me what the deal is. And I'm cool: Iceberg! I advise him to ask his employee who has been so insistent that she handle this responsibility. I also suggest that *maybe* he might want to inquire as to why she also fails to report pending surgeries to the billing department so that they can review the insurance requests to make sure it will go through airtight. And we won’t end up billing the patient for things insurance will rightfully cover.

He does this, and she stands there, full of chutzpah, and tells him she doesn't report to the billing department because they will double bill patients if she does it...WHAT? So, the highly trained, hyper-sensitive billing department will risk our ability to get paid at all because if she sends them a li'l piece of paper, they will think the procedure has been completed and bill the patient when usually they have to receive an operative report signed by the and delivered by the the doctor in order for verification?

You've got to be fucking kidding me?! But no, she's not kidding. She's dead-ass serious, she's got her story and she's sticking to it.

Then he tries another approach - after finding a surgery that has been waiting for 3 months (well, I handed it to him while the patient gave him an earful in the exam room). And she he tells him "well, I'm just now scheduling the March surgeries because you've been out of town so much and I have too much work to do, I have to answer phones, and I have to help the other girls and I have to drive a long way from work..."

Yeah, you have to do the same tasks as everyone else, it's just you're senile and can't or won’t complete them. There is this insane “I believe the loyal employees are the ones who are most important” thing going on here. The only reason this woman is loyal is because she’s making about 30% more than she would make anywhere else and doing roughly 1 day of work per week since he’s a surgeon and is only in the office once per week.

What kills me though is I ended up being assigned all of her work. Was her pay reduced? No. Her hours were reduced one day per week, but I didn’t get a raise for doing someone else’s job, in addition to my own, in addition to running an office and playing personal assistant and sometime indentured servant to a hyper-busy surgeon. I respect the work he does, but I feel decidedly underutilized in the work that I do. So, any advice? Obviously I have some sway in the office, I manage the place, but I’ve got a big problem in that my boss doesn’t have the heart to fire someone who is so inept that she makes my teeth hurt and my days stretch to 12-hours.