That's me in the corner.

So, this one client has been increasingly annoying for over ten years now, and try as I might to gently encourage her from seeking care elsewhere, she is frustratingly loyal to VBB Veterinary Hospital. There are a lot of things about her that annoy me, but hands down the most annoying thing she does is try to get me to attend her church.

In the time I've known her, I've gone from ignoring her church invitations, to politely saying "no thank you", to offering generic excuses along the lines of "I'm sorry, that's simply not possible," to explaining that I have my own place of worship that I prefer, and finally things got to the point where I said "please listen because I am only going to say this one time: I have my own religion. It is not the same as your religion. I not only am not interested in changing my religion, but I am also personally offended by your continued attempts to solicit my participation in your religion. Please stop this, or I'm not going to be able to be your veterinarian any more, and I'd feel terrible about ending our professional relationship over this." 

One might have thought that would put an end to the problem, right? 

Or, failing that, one might have thought I'd be cynical and jaded enough NOT to expect her to cut it out.

Sadly, one would have been incorrect both times, and I was bitterly disappointed that this client continued her attempts even MORE vigorously. Unfortunately the Boss Behaving Badly around here put the kibosh on the idea that I might fire this client...

So - imagine my response to this voicemail:

Hi Dr. VBB! This is Ms. Prossy Letize calling about my new little doggy. Well you know I don't get around so well anymore and I'm mostly in the chair all day, and little Barkmeister has taken to, well - you know.  He jumps up and [Sotto voce] humps me [normal voice again] for 20 minutes and I can't get him off of me!  What do you think could be wrong? Have I made some kind of mistake in his upbringing?  I don't really want to bring him in, unless you have some idea of what might be wrong with him that you could treat. Let me know what you think. Bye now.

Words fail me.

AYFKM?

After an extremely hectic morning at VBB central, during which the routine of Saturday morning appointments was disrupted by a steady stream of patients from our boarding kennel who chose today to break with some kind of gastroenteritis, I sat down at my desk to do some charting and phone calls. The constant ringing of the phone is normally annoying, but today it was helpful in keeping me awake, because I'd been up all night with a severely ill family member and come straight to work without any sleep. At one point I guess the phone got ahead of the receptionist and rang through to our answering machine (yes - we still have an answering machine. It uses a tape and everything!). I heard out outgoing message play, and then I heard the raspy whispered voice of Sumdood, offering to do an assortment of sexual things to the vet next time he comes in. I was very disappointed to find out that the whisper was apparently too soft to trigger the recording by the answering machine, so I have no chance to post an .mp3 here for your listening pleasure.

What's the time?

I don't know about you, but I'm a busy person. I have 3 kids, 2 pets (8 if you count the ones in the tank actually), and a husband. I do more than just blog and practice veterinary medicine and take care of family matters. I'm involved with the administration of the kids' school, at our house of worship, and my husband's business. No, I don't know how I do it - but the important thing is, I do in fact do it. And when I'm doing it, I'm respectful of other people's time, because I know oh-so-very well how irritating frustrating - well, if I'm being completely honest let me just say how INCREDIBLY FUCKING ANNOYING it is when people act like THEIR time is more important than YOUR time.

Ahem.

Seasoned readers will see where this is going, I'm sure.

So, yeah. The other day I had scheduled myself such that the last appointment was 45 minutes before closing, because I had somewhere I had to be, and I wanted to be darn sure I'd be able to be there (so as not to waste the time of the other 12 people I'd be meeting, who were going to be waiting for my arrival).  Of particular note is that the pet who held that appointment was boarding in our hospital, and required an examination, but the owner had wanted to be present for the examination and "to discuss a few problems" the pet had, so the owner had scheduled this appointment for the time he planned to pick up the pet at the end of boarding. The appointment time rolled around and the client was not there. As is our practice, the receptionist phoned the home and mobile numbers on file to see if the client was en route. There was no answer. Fifteen minutes went by, and the client was not there. After 25 minutes had gone by I figured I'd at least examine the pet, and just discuss my findings once the owner arrived. As I finished examining the pet, we heard our voicemail pick up (it does this on speakerphone - we stop answering the phone 30 minutes before closing. This fact, by the way, is well advertised) and the voice of my client came through. "Hi there! Just wanted to let you know I *do* still plan to pick up Fluffinator, and be there for our appointment, but you know, I'm not going to be there til about ten after seven, so, you'll need to wait for me. See you soon!"

Interesting message, there. The thing is that our office closes at 7:00 PM. This appointment had been made for 6:15 PM. The client just expected that we'd be more than happy to accomodate a 55-minute late arrival time for an appointment, after our normal business hours, without even a please or a thank you. Honestly it kind of blew my mind because although I may vent a lot about how people are so FUCKING ANNOYING all the time, for some crazy reason I still expect that people will actually behave in a civil manner to me. I know, I know - I'm the crazy one. Well, if you can't beat'em...

So anyway, as it happened, the Big Boss Lady was standing there and I looked at her and said "listen - my findings are written up, you can feel free to stay and discuss with her, or not, at your pleasure - but I'm leaving because people are waiting for me and I don't feel comfortable making them wait." She was fine with that. She said she was going to call the client and tell her if she couldn't come in before closing, not to come til the next day. I'm not sure if she actually did that or not, though.

Just to be 100% clear, by the way - my physical exam of this pet did not reveal any abnormalities. If I had picked up something potentially dangerous, I would have notified the people waiting for me that I had been unavoidably detained. But I saw no reason to do so in this case, especially given the massive sense of carelessness that had oozed through our telephone's speaker with the client's message.

So, yeah. That happened.
Please join me in the comments section with your answer to the question in the subject line!

Voicemail of the Day

"Uh, hi. I'm calling because - well, I got a 20-dog hoarding situation here in [place 500 miles from World's Best Animal Hospital]. Basically I'm calling all the vets I can find, just hoping to find someone who can, you know, donate some supplies and stuff to help my dogs. If you can help, please call me back at [number]."

Voicemail FAIL

Some readers may recognize this story.

Please note, details have been changed, as is typical for healthcare blog posts.

This message was received on a Tuesday following a holiday weekend on which we closed at noon on Saturday. Our hours were clearly posted on our door as well as being repeated in our outgoing message on the voicemail. This voicemail was left at 4 PM Saturday.

"Hi, this is Ms. Placedpriorities, I'm calling about Fluffy. He's beenon the medication since October you know and we were away for a week and got back this morning and I think it's time, because he's in a lot
of pain and clearly hasn't been eating. But, you aren't there. I called your emergency line but they said we'd have to go see a total stranger at an emergency clinic which obviously I'm not going to do.
So, as soon as you get this message, please call because Fluffy really should probably be put to sleep right away because he's really suffering. Thank you."

So, I got the message Tuesday morning when I arrived at the office and, because I am the sucker
who does stuff like this, I immediately called the owner. A man answered the phone and yelled at me for calling so early and hung up before I could say anything. I called back and no one answered. 


These, my friends, are the moments when your friendly neighborhood veterinarian wonders if he's in the right line of work.