Yesterday I found myself visiting the doctor’s office. As I am like thousands of other people I do not have a family doctor so I went to the walk-in clinic. While there I was able to witness something that is not all that uncommon to doctor’s office’s, actually not that uncommon in general, whether it be a dentist, post office, passport office or really any place that has a waiting room. So I was obviously waiting, the less than cheery receptionist told me it would be an hour or so, which was fine. I know that coming to a walk-in means waiting and I had a book, so no biggie. As the wait time dragged on I noticed several perspective patients approach the desk to check and see how much longer the wait would be. A reasonable thing to do I suppose, especially as how this clinic will allow you to leave without losing your place. So if the wait is still going to be another 45 mins, why not walk across the street for a coffee or what have you.
Everything was going fine, the wait was a little tedious but that is to be expected, I can deal with it. What I had a harder time dealing with was the young woman who took the lengthy wait time as an affront to her person, some sort of personal attack on her precious time. I was sitting right in front of reception so I could not help but overhear/watch the entire interaction she had with the staff. Like many others before her she went up to ask how much longer the wait, but the answer she got wasn’t good enough for her. “Yeah well you said it would be an hour and it’s been an hour and a half.” The tone she chose was one of aggravated annoyance. It’s a tone I’ve heard hundreds of times from those who feel that somehow an unexpected delay to their day has been perpetrated on purpose.
The nurse/receptionist/medical assistant responded to her with a smile and an apology and did her best to inform the patient of the remaining wait time. She said that this girl was fourth on the list, but that two of the people had already been called and not responded, so she was probably in the next two people to be called. This was still not good enough. This impatient patient again reverted to her “do you know who I am tone”.
“What does that mean? How long will it be?”
“Ahh there’s just one more person in front of you, so you’ll be called after them.”
“I don’t know what that means. How long is that? Why is it taking so long? I don’t understand what you mean by two more people, how long is that?
This exchange went back and forth for a couple minutes, with the girl demanding to know how long two other patients will be and what the receptionist meant. I had a brief internal struggle over telling the girl two more people means, “ to sit the fuck down and wait.” Luckily my small sense of politeness won that debate.
Like I said before the wait really wasn’t that bad for me until this girl had to be such a sucky bitch face. Maybe part of it was my general taste for her whole aura. She wore grey tights on a cold November day and not the good grey either, it was that light grey that if you saw someone in the gym wearing that colour you’d cringe. Up top was a pseudo army canvas jacket, a large loose knit scarf wrapped itself around her neck (as I imagined my hands could be) and on her head was a similarly knit toque, thrown on only halfway so that her dyed red bangs could protrude from underneath. She really had a solid hipster hobo-chic thing going. I think the main irksome factor came from the tone of voice and body language. Her head tilted to the side and her jaw slightly ajar. Not slack, but a little open with the muscles promoting the chin, her tongue slightly pushing on her lower lip resulting in an expression of shocked disbelief over this horrible injustice happening to her.
Realizing she was only going to have the same answers repeated to her she finally decided to return to her seat, making sure to give an insincere and sarcastic “thank you” once her back was turned and she was already several feet from the desk. A “thank you” spoken more to the room at large than the actual staff and said with enough volume so everyone knows she still has manners despite the shockingly shabby treatment she just received. After watching this display I couldn’t help but feel as though this girl would also take a discourteous tone when dealing with the pimply-faced kid working for minimum wage at the customer service desk at one store of thousands in a mega-corporation chain or flight attendants. Making sure to let them know she wasn’t happy the flight was delayed and confused by how someone who serves drinks and headphones has not yet gotten the plane off the ground.
So she went back to her seat and it couldn’t have been more than five minutes before she was called upon to see the doc. Again my inner sense of jerkiness took over, watching her walk into the back I couldn’t help but think to myself,
“I hope whatever she’s got its fatal, bitch. Whoa whoa whoa, too far Clay, too far. Hopefully its just the Herpes.”
Funny thing was she was back there for all of two minutes before she came storming back out. Not sure went wrong but if possible she seemed even more hard-done by than when she was made to wait. Her head was again tilted, with the mouth hanging slightly open, jaw forward. Only this time she added aggressive blinking to the look, not rapid blinking but really hard, pronounced blinks. Like she could blink away the unfairness she felt. Seeing that look made me feel better about my wait time, the fact that her day was so ruined took away the poor feelings she had earlier made me to feel. It was nice watching her storm out of the clinic with an expression that said,
“I can’t believe how awful this has been and now I’m going to be late for Derrick’s show opening on German Nihilism. Not that he’ll even care, ugh, what’s with him, it seems like he just doesn’t care about anything. Fuck it, I won’t go. I just want to go home smoke from my hookah and enjoy a nice cold PBR.”
But hopefully she just looked that way because of the Herp.
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