Complex Numbers

Dis Appointment

Rant time.

I had a doctor appointment scheduled for this morning. No big deal; regular check-up kind of thing. As you might be aware if you're reading this the day I post it, practically the entire country got sn*w dumped on it last night. My part of the country got off easy: maybe 2 inches, barely any on the roads. Not much, sure, but more than we've had for two years.

So naturally, things like schools, businesses, and non-critical clinics shut down or opened late. Okay, no big deal, right? Well, maybe. See, the clinic is part of a massive, bureaucratic, and very busy hospital system. They run pretty efficiently, but they have instituted some strict policies. Like, no-show for an appointment without something like 48 hours notice means getting charged in full; naturally, insurance doesn't cover that. It also means they drop you as a patient, because, like I said, they're very busy and don't have the patience for no-show patients.

You might think they'd be more lenient about such policies when we get sn*w, because everyone around here acts like they've never seen sn*w every time it sn*ws, but, like I said, bureaucracy, so no, I don't trust them to be lenient.

So, I woke up at the gods-forsaken cow-milking hour I'd have to wake up in order to account for sn*w-clearing and slower driving (the clinic is only 2 miles away, and I'm usually happy to walk it, but not on fresh sn*w in sub-freezing temperatures), and I checked their website, figuring, okay, if the clinic is closed, I'm off the hook.

It's not closed. It has a delayed opening at 10.

My appointment was for 9:30.

So there I am, bleary, blinking, no caffeine yet. What do I do? Show up at 10, figuring they're just going to try to cram everyone in? Show up at 9:30 anyway, because maybe the website was wrong? Go back to sleep, so they can potentially bone me hard? Call them? But they're closed.

Okay, I thought, maybe they have a phone system that auto-forwards in these rare instances. So, after double-checking all the websites I could think of, I got ready to try a phone call.

Which is when they called me.

That's good, right? Well, it would be, except that for some reason (possibly, but probably not, related to the sn*w), the voice on the other end was almost hopelessly garbled. She's probably trying to call a few dozen people this morning (like I said, huge hospital system), so she's understandably in a hurry.

Somehow, I manage to get the gist of what she's saying: reschedule for Friday morning at 10. Fine. I change my calendar accordingly.

It was only after the call ended that I thought to check the weather forecast for Thursday night and Friday morning.

Guess what. Go ahead. Guess.