We have spent quite a lot of time in waiting rooms of late, and aren't they just shitful places to be? All that beige and uncomfortable seating and tellies with the sound turned down so that you can still sort of hear it, but you can entertain yourself reading the sub titles which are on a delay and are nearly always grammatically incorrect or filled with spelling errors or are just so bad that they are no longer funny cos you don't know what the fuck it is all supposed to mean.
Today's claustrophobic adventure took us into a windowless cramped space where the tellie news was playing. I know that parochial coverage is permitted, but there surely has to be a limit...There was a bus that clipped a crane and a couple of people were scratched, and then a second story, so banal that I can't even recall what it was and then there was coverage of the bombing in Manhattan NYC. I know it happened yesterday, but I reckon it might still be newsworthy today, ahead of a traffic bingle.
And then we waited. The front of house woman told us that we'd see an 'assistant' first. I asked why and was told that she would take down the history for the doctor, and all I could think was that he must be famous or really fucking lazy. I made it clear that we had hoop-hopped in their place in Southport a year ago and we weren't planning on doing that again. Everyone just wore their Stepford Wives' smiles, and it was like I hadn't spoke.
A year ago we popped into see the eye bloke in Southie and he refused to talk to us... he told the assistant to tell us stuff and when we asked a question he told her to tell us the answer. He was a round obnoxious old little American with perhaps the biggest god complex I have ever seen in a doctor. I told the Stepfords that we were not gonna put up with that shit again. The poor polite Pom did a bit of a crawl up his own bum, cos I verged on rude but sorry I was, that it was only a verge.
But put up with shit we did. We had waited more than a month for the appointment. Stevie wanted to know if what he was using to treat a recurring problem in his 'Shingle Eye' was dangerous and wanted to know what else might be useful, so we waited. Arrived at 10.45 and saw the 'Assistant' - who cares? and then finally got to the doctor a little after 12. They were running so late that the numbing shit that the girlie had slopped into Stevie'e eyes had worn off and the bloke had to shovel in some more.
Now the doctor was fine, he actually spoke to us both and seemed to know his onions, I just don't know why he ran so late, unless there was some sort of con going where by they were billing Medicare for an eye exam whether it was needed or not. It's the only thing that makes any sense to me, and when I asked point blank if Medicare would be bulk billed for the eye exam, no direct answer was forthcoming. Ho fucking hum. Except that this ripping off of the system just makes for a less efficient system for those who are relying on it.
It seems that Medicare will pay for 2 eye exams per year...I thought it was only 1. So it seems that everyone who goes there gets to pop in with the 'Assistant' to read the eye chart and that'll be 40 bucks from the government thank you very much.
Medicine, it's big big business today. And the aging population is just gonna make it even more profitable. But this bloke today could have been working out of a little office with one front of houser. Just the 2 of 'em could have provided the same service, except that perhaps he would have run to time. There were so many staff in this place today that some serious skimming of the system has got to be going on just to make the wages bill.
While we sat there waiting and waiting and waiting some more we chattered about growth industries today. Law, Accounting, IT and Medicine were what we came up with. Of course we have no foundation for our findings, but our qualifications might well be as bankable as those of the 'Assistants' who's bullshit eye testing is costing the Aussie tax payer a fucking fortune. No wonder the Federal Governments always have so much trouble balancing the budget.
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