It’s time for,
Adventures in Bureaucracy!
So let’s set the stage. I’ve been sick the last two weeks; covid symptoms but covid negative. My doctor refers me to somebody. We make an appointment.
First problem: Because of my symptoms, I am not to simply walk into a medical facility. (Are you mad? Can you think of the pandemonium which might erupt if those experiencing cold symptoms were to merely walk into a medical facility?) No, I must first call the office so that they might send out a nurse to walk with me into the same waiting room as everyone else, through the same halls I would have walked through anyway. So I call. The answering machine tells me that they are not open. The lights are on. the doors are open, and there’s a nurse checking people as they walk in, but the phone says they are not open.
Alright. I’ll just walk in and tell the nurse I tried to call.
Standing outside in the rain as a slow trickle of patients were let into the building, I wondered how conducive this winter weather was to all our health. Eventually, I stood before the nurse.
“Do you have any of these symptoms?”
“Yes.”
She just about pulled the fire alarm at that confession. Her widening eyes searched Heaven for some answer, some reason for why a person experiencing cold symptoms should come before her when she’s just a humble nurse.
I mumble out an explanation.
“Sit over there.”
That’s better than the last time I couldn’t get through on my phone. It was raining then too, and the nurse told me to stand outside and wait to be summoned. This time, I could at least rest. The hour of my appointment came, the nurse which had let me in was gone (presumably it was the end of her shift), and little old me, with my cold symptoms, was getting worried.
Just about when I was gathering myself to make a fuss, somebody came out to greet me. It turned out to be the bloke I had the appointment with. However, and he told me this in the kindest of ways, he could not see me because I had covid symptoms, which was why I had made the appointment in the first place.
Hurrah for the bureaucracy!
Tale Told 