And On The Flipside,

I went to the dentist the other afternoon. I arrived at 3:45 for a 4:00 appointment. A young man checked me in at the desk, said I was "all set" and they would call me in when the doc was ready.

I sat down and read a copy of This Old House magazine. I read another copy. I started in on Newsweek. I didn't have my watch on, and there was no clock in the waiting room, so I sort of lost track of time. But eventually I noticed there were no longer any other people in the waiting room. When someone came out and began vacuuming around my feet, I got up to go check on the delay. The young man had gone home, and a woman was in the seat. I craned my neck to see the clock above her-- almost 5:00. She said, "Oh, you never checked in!"

They got me in, and the dentist was good enough to stay late to fix my filling. The hygienist said, "When you hadn't checked in by 4:30, we put you down as 'Did Not Show'! We had the room all ready for you and everything, but we said, Well, he just didn't come!"

I mentioned that I had not only checked in, but had been sitting in the waiting room the whole time, mostly alone, in plain view. "Well, we didn't have you down as having checked in!", she explained again.

As I write this today, it's 5:20pm and I'm still waiting for my 5:00 appointment to show.