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I usually don't get all that pissy about doctors running late. However, there was one time I was really irritated.
I took my wife to the doctor for an appointment. She got the first appointment of the day. We were there 45 minutes early. We waited more than 30 minutes past when the appointment was supposed to start. While we were waiting there, the doctor came in through the waiting room.
It's one thing to be running late because of the normal day to day delays that happen in a medical practice, but if you're actually just running late getting to work, you should call and have your staff let the patients know.
I had an appointment booked at my GO. Get there 10 mins early. Everything’s normal, one other person in the waiting room.
Other person gets called in. Still normal.
Receptionist walks through the waiting room, locks the front door, then shuts the shutter to the reception desk. “Uh what”
20mins pass, haven’t seen another soul. Not tooo unusual to wait 20mins.
40mins, sunk cost fallacy sets in. Can’t leave anyway as the front door is locked.
50 mins later, receptionist comes in “the doctor will see you now, sorry for the wait we had our weekly staff meeting”
You fucking what. You booked me in at the time you have your fucking weekly staff meeting?!
Holy shit that's bad!
I'm willing to bet this is more common than we all think, probably a self fulfilling prophecy.
Some doctors may get complacent thinking, oh I'll be late by the end of the day anyway.
At least, this has happened to me on a handful of occasions too.
But really, the problem is that the practices are booking too many appointments.
Yeah. My wife was an eye doctor in private practice, and she was positively militant about never getting behind schedule.
She very rarely ran behind. It would require a cascade of emergencies.
Props to her, must have been a hectic job
It was hectic. She loved being an eye doctor, but she hated running the practice. Unfortunately, she got sick and was not able to keep working.
Doctors often do rounds at the hospital first thing in the morning. There could have been an issue at the hospital that kept them, or maybe there was an unexpected influx of patients getting hospitalized the night before. People tend to ask the people around them about their doctor when they are looking for a new doctor. So, if there was an accident at a factory, or even just food poisoning from a church gathering, it's not surprising if a large number of the group have the same PCP or GP.
On the other hand, many doctors are just narcissistic shit heads with God complexes who don't give a fuck about us mere mortals.
My pcp is often running late, but it is because he specializes in diseases that affect the elderly like diabetes and heart disease. So he often has to go to the hospital unexpectedly. On the other hand, anytime I've ended up in the hospital, he's been there first thing in the morning making sure that they aren't screwing up my medications, which they always are.None of that precludes notifying patients in the waiting room that the doctor is running late.
My first day at my duty station I was 10 min early to work and a staff sergeant told me if I wasn't 15 min early I'm already 5 min late...good words to live by
You gonna pay me for those 15 minutes?
Exactly. My meetings I time to the T to be there exactly on time. I don't want to sit around and waste my time small talking with people before the meeting.
Funny, I intentionally join my meetings a minute or two late to avoid the small talk.
In what world should anyone be criticized for not being early enough? I agree if you’re not early, you’re late.
But for fucks sake, five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes, whatever… dude sounds like an asshole.
The military. It's ingrained in you from like day one that if you're not 15 minutes early to everything, you're late. It's also why you'll hear folks from the military talking about standing in formation waiting for 3 hours before the Colonel/Captain even shows up. By the time the order gets from the Colonel to the Private, everyone in between has padded the arrival time by an extra 15 minutes.
You don't clock in and out in the military, so sure, fine. And for job interviews, it looks good to employers. But beyond that, I'm in the "if you want me here early, you need to pay me for that time" club.
It's a common saying and it's usually meant as something you should hold yourself to, rather than others.
Staff Sargent - Military. Typically military peeps are held to a higher standard.
I haven't been in the army for, um, Holy cow! that many years!, but I still operate on '15 minutes before a parade'.
Man critized for being 10 min early and then down voted for being 15 min early...I'm always early/on time is all I gotta say