That behavior is NEVER acceptable and should be reported to the office manager (you can write it and mail it if that's easier). In the event the office manager is a thundercunt too, maybe letting the doctor know their staff needs to be trained. As cost cutting in healthcare continues, for some reason the quality in staff suffers too.

Agreed. However, I think some people are just like this and no amount of training will teach it outta them. In my experience some do it as a result of being more 'experienced'.

For example I used to be a teacher. I found that junior teaching assistants were the best because they were happy and energetic. Once they got more experienced they wanted to be the teacher (but weren't and didn't want to re-train) so they started making snarky comments during class and actively interrupting my lessons with instructions for the kids to do other stuff (and for me to back down). I had many discussions with them about this and basically gave up when I realised they had no desire to cooperate and treated me with contempt.

I'm a lawyer now and poor quality admin staff are the same (i.e. rude and snarky).