The Taste of Paste
bedside manner & service without a smile
Next, please!
I went for a routine annual physical this week. Nothing special. I really like my GP and enjoy the chatting we do between her measurements and note taking.
This time, however.
I arrived on time for my 8am appointment. No one answered the door. After ringing and pulling, I waited. Five minutes later a person would answer the door and the interaction would be one that would foreshadow my entire visit.
She opened the door and said, “oh,” as if finding me on the doctor’s steps was a surprise. A surprise like the neighbor’s dog didn’t make it to the curb.
It was a glass door. I could see her coming, watch her face fall.
As instructed, I sat down in the waiting room. I flipped through magazines showing me just how far my economic status had fallen in the last three years. A nice receptionist asked if I wanted water, said it could be a while. I didn’t ask her why she hadn’t buzzed me in when I rang. I flipped through more magazines. I wondered if anyone except doctor offices still subscribed to print magazines.
What would happen to all the elementary school kids who would never learn to wield scissors because they would only cut/paste on a computer. How could an entire generation of kids grow up not knowing the smell of paste. Not struggling to transfer the gooey white stuff from a plastic stick to tissue paper.
This might be why kids my age have resilience. It might just be a result of the crafts we had to do in the 1970s.
The doctor eventually arrived and within moments my name was called.
Except she stammered and struggled and finally decided my name was Melody.
I answered to it. I answer to almost anything.
“Follow me,” the female doorman said. I turned away to scoop up my purse, my cellphone, my ear buds, my raincoat, my gloves and umbrella and turned back around and she was gone.
“Hello?” I said. The receptionist smiled at my confusion and vaguely waved me back to the warren of exam rooms. A long hallway with ten or so doors. Some open, some closed. My guide was nonexistent.
I walked the hallway, peering into every open doorway, startling a few women on cellphones. I found the guide in room 6. She looked up sharply, but did not meet my eyes. Had not met my eyes since first spotting the steaming pile of me on her boss’ front steps. I piled my stuff on an orange plastic chair.
“Finally,” she said. “about time you’re here. You’re going to get an EKG. Follow me.”
So I picked everything up again. My guide had again vanished when I turned back to where she’d been standing.
I left the room and chose a random direction. Found her in room 1, plugging in a machine. Again her eyes skittered away from my gaze, lizards trying to escape a broom.
“Late again,” she said. I wanted to tell her I would have followed her had she not vanished before my hands could clasp closed around my coat, but instead I forgave her, after all I had three decades on her. She’d learn.
She made a wet tsking sound and stared at a small handwritten sign which listed steps to follow. First step, patient disrobes down to just pants.
She rattled off the instructions with no inflection: “Remove shirt shoes bra socks.”
Then she turned sharply on her heel and was nearly our the door of the room when I heard her sharp intake of breath. She stopped hard. “Oh!”
She spun around and took a deep breath. “Put the gown on with the opening in the front.”
She spun on her heel again.
A second time she failed to leave the room, hand on the doorknob. “Oh!”
This time her exclamation was followed by her crossing through the chilly room while chattering under her breath to the sky. She approached a laptop and stared at it. She touched nothing. Eventually she picked up a pencil and left the room.
I changed into hospital couture. Sat on the table. Waited.
She knocked and then knocked again and then knocked a third time. I called “come in.”
She said through the door,“You locked me out.”
I felt deeply accused. I hadn’t touched the door. She’d locked herself out.
Again I reminded myself I was thirty years her senior. The entire digital age had arrived while she was learning to like solid food. I bit my tongue and decided it was actually funny.
And it was. She was terrible at her job. Terrible.
After I let her in, she finished the test and “laid out some fresh paper” on the exam bed.
I’ve noticed quite a bit of this - outrageously bad service where good service would have been easier.
One thing that is true: at a certain point, bad service goes from being an irritation to being the core of the joke.
Keep laughing!
Writing News
Later today I go see The HARMNF which is billed as “A talk about an adaptation of Anton Chekov’s The Harmfulness of Tobacco that is itself an adaptation of Anton Chekov’s The Harmfulness of Tobacco” written and performed by Kevin (as a robot) Laibson.
(I can’t wait.)
The weeks are flying by as I prepare for four days in Baltimore in early March, running tables and events for Pen Parentis at the annual AWP writing conference.
This week, I got a bit of good news! the prestigious GARGOYLE MAGAZINE will be publishing my monster poem on the last day of February — I’m thrilled. (Thanks, Richard!)
Wrote a little piece on AI and Lanternflies - here’s a friend link.
Also wrote a little piece on AI in creative writing that a journal is considering.
Also I just saw the final print file for my novel - you guys this book is going to be so beautiful!
Random Final Thought
Great as always!