Photo by Vinnie Cammarano
Key Points
If this is not malpractice, it has to be a breach of promise.
Sitting in an eye doctor’s waiting area watching “The Price is Right” for 38 minutes past your appointment time sure does make you want to sue somebody for something. Maybe my attorney could get them for false advertising for calling the time that they tell us to show up an “appointment.”
Look that word up. One of the characteristics of an “appointment” is that it is for “a specific time.” It was painfully obvious last Wednesday that nobody who does anything medical ever had even the slightest intention of doing it to me at the 8 a.m. time written on my card.
That has been just as obvious at six-month intervals for about a decade or so at this office. Specific is way off the mark. Instead of appointment, maybe they ought to call it an estimate, except that’s not even close enough. Because the time is generally between 35 and 45 minutes off, it’s not really “around” 8 a.m.
A better word for what goes on would be “dilemma,” meaning a choice between unpleasant options. You either sit there for as long as the people behind the doctor wall want to leave you cooling your heels, OR you walk out and risk some bad thing happening to your eyes and going undetected.
Speaking of unpleasant either-or situations, here is another one to ponder while cooling those heels. EITHER the medical staff people don’t know you are sitting out there way past the time you were told to arrive, OR they don’t care.
That first option is almost certainly the least likely. They would have to know that a half-dozen people were told to be there at 8, sosurely somebody would stick his or her head out the door to see if anybody showed up.
I think they know we’re here, so why not do something about it? Be honest enough to tell us the truth. “We’re not ready to go to work yet. We have coffee and doughnuts to finish, and we want to see how ‘Price is Right’ turns out. Gonna be about 40 minutes.”
And then do something to make the wait more endurable, maybe even enjoyable. A foosball table and a dartboard wouldn’t cost any more than a big-screen TV and would be a lot less irritating. We disgruntled time-killers could pitch in for a pool table and a pinball machine if given the option.
Never going to happen. No solution will be implemented because our waiting is not a problem for the people on the other side of the wall. And we, the patients, don’t have any choice in the matter.
At least not any good ones, which is what makes it a dilemma. But last Wednesday by the time Drew Carey got to the Showcase Showdown, I was wondering about which is actually the least favorable unpleasant option.
Am I more worried about going blind or about going crazy?