Me Sick... But Still Can Gripe!

I had a bad sore throat yesterday. It started when I woke up in the middle of the night and persisted... no worsened when I got up for work. By lunchtime, I was in agony. I went down to the pharmacy during lunch and got myself a box of Difflam lozenges but it didn't help much. Upon Mei's advice, I drank lots of warm water... WHICH HELPED!... for about 1 minute. Plus it kept making me run for the toilet. For lunch I had some bee hoon soup. All the while I kept thinking about the yummy brown rice at the vegetarian store…

Anyway, last night it got really bad so I decided to… EAT HAAGEN DAZS! A few spoonfuls of Rum and Raisin ice cream followed by a gulp of Pipagao and guess what??? I’m feeling much better this morning!!! Ha ha. Better go stock up on ice cream.

GRIPE TIME

Anyway, there was this stupid lady who called up in the morning saying she couldn't find the entrance to our clinic. Now our main entrance opens in an area of the complex that operates only in the afternoon. Thus we don't open our main doors till after lunch. We have a side door however, that is accessible from within the main part of the complex. However, it is tucked away in a corner and is not very prominent. That’s why we usually ask clients to make an appointment so we can tell them how to get into the clinic in the mornings. The conversation I had with her went something like this:

Client: Hello? How do I get into your clinic har? I’ve tried all the entrances (to the closed area) and they are all closed.

Me: All the main entrances only open in the afternoon at 12. To get to our clinic… (gives directions)

Client: Ah… Ok. I want to make an appointment.

*WARNING!!! DANGER!!!* (Cue sirens)

Me: Appointment for when? (Suspicious)

Client: Now. I’m almost reaching the clinic.

Me: (Dying in the wave of stupidity)

Why doesn’t Singaporeans understand that appointments are made in advance and not 1 minute before you step into the clinic? I have a few clients that simply refuse to make appointments but will just come in as walk-ins. Ok I understand that some times they can’t predict their busy busy schedules and some of the clients are quite nice so I let that pass. However, a hand few of these perpetual walk-ins will always try to cover up their walk-in status by calling up as they are on the way to the clinic and then arriving and announcing:

“I tried calling for an appointment but you guys had no space”

Some even have the audacity to say that they called earlier on in the morning but we didn’t pick up the phone. I usually ask them for the time they called and surprise surprise! They called in the morning way before we opened for business.

What’s worse is that some of them simply have no patience. The waiting time at our clinic can be quite bad I agree but that’s because it’s all dependant on the complexity of the cases being seen. Plus our clinic’s philosophy is that we do not rush through our cases. For example, an animal coming in for a vaccination will not be a “jab and go” thing. Our vets will want to talk to the client, to find out some history about their pet, to ascertain that the animal is truly healthy and properly taken care of. We also do a full body checkup. For something as simple as a vaccine injection, some other clinics take barely 5 minutes but we can take up to an hour. That’s because sometimes, we do find something wrong with the animal i.e. an ear infection which had gone unnoticed with the owner. So we end up with tests to identify the cause as well as time taken to explain to the owner how to treat and do preventive maintenance.

Some clients do not understand this. To them, it’s just an injection. How long could it take? Thus we get lots of people walking in to “book an appointment now for an injection”. They then get fed up after waiting 30minutes and start making things difficult for the reception by asking repeatedly how much longer it will take. Of course we can’t answer questions like that. How do we know? Do we look like bloody psychics?

Our practice believes in education, not only for our staff but for our clients as well. We share interesting cases (and irritating clients) within the practice and our boss occasionally gives us lectures on various topics from simple stuff like disinfecting & cleaning to more complexed ones like the different kinds of disease and ailments we might encounter, some of which we may not even come across at the outlying clinics. Our staff has to be knowledgeable about things like these so as to be able to answer simple questions by clients as well as to know the logic behind our methods of practice.

Coming back to waiting time, some of my friends, even ex-lecturers and relatives have brought their pets to the clinic where I work to see the vet. Most of them had to wait. Now you see, my vets are very impartial when it comes to stuff like this. Their opinion is that being a friend or relative doesn’t mean that you get priority. In fact, one of my senior vets actually made her visiting sister from overseas wait an hour just to say “Hi”. With a precedent like that, who are we to do otherwise?

So my advice to my pet owning friends is, don’t come to us unless you are willing to wait and pay more (Our practice is the most expensive from the feedback I get). Don’t expect special privileges. We do not get much even as staff. Also, don’t ask me for advice. I AM NOT A VET. I can only tell you to go see one.