I’ll bet you’d be shocked, if you could add up the hours you’ve spent in various waiting rooms, and could see the total for your life so far.
Waiting rooms used to be bad enough when there were only old magazines and other patients to look at. Now they’ve all got TV. And there’s nothing on.
I recall one morning TV talk show, hosted by and featuring celebrities I never heard of, in which the guest simply didn’t turn up and they were stuck with dead air: the host went out to the parking lot to see if the guest was wandering around out there, maybe hoping to find usable cigarette butts. Maybe the guest couldn’t figure out how to use the door.
And the magazines are no better than they were 50 years ago. The ads are more prurient, but the content’s just as dull as ever.
Why does your dentist want you to watch the new Let’s Make a Deal?
Think about that.
One of the things I like best about my dentist is that there’s no television in her waiting room, just a good assortment of magazines, art books, and travel books.
My doctor’s office has the obligatory TV, but it’s usually set at a quiet level and the waiting area is large enough so I can usually get a seat where I can neither see nor hear the TV. Unfortunately, the waiting time is almost interminable. Once, when I’d had the foresight to bring along Milton’s “Paradise Lost” to reread, I got almost to the end of Book III before I was called. (And yes, smarty-pants, I started at the beginning of Book I.) Maybe next time I’ll bring along a copy of “Oy, Rodney” — or at least the 300 chapters that we have of it so far. 🙂 🙂
I don’t spend a lot of my time in waiting rooms, but my younger son does, and he is so fed up he could scream. He talks about sitting for an hour or more in order to spend 20 minutes with a distracted and non-attentive person with eyes on the computer the whole time. This so-called medical system is pathetic.
Most of that’s because the government has inserted itself into medicine.
I’ve seen this as well. One of the doctors I occasionally see has a huge waiting room with a TV blaring and zombie patients salivating like Pavlov’s dogs. I refuse to wait there and sit in the lobby, instead.
And then “The View” comes on… Time to wait outside in the hall.
Indeed.
It could be worse. They could have it on CNN. Our pharmacy has a TV set to a news channel but, thankfully, they keep it muted.
I was at a coffee shop, some time ago, and they have a big screen tv over the fireplace. It was on CNN and they were on an anti-Trump screed. I was stuck sitting next to it. Turns out they leave the remote out so people can change it. I went looking around and there was nothing else. I ended up leaving it on the weather channel.
My dentist’s office has TVs above their chairs, so patients can watch something while getting their teeth worked on. We don’t get TV at home, and they were kind enough to put it on Food Network for me – the one channel I watched, semi-regularly, back when we had TV, and actually miss. LOL
My doctor’s office has big screen TVs – all mute! My dentist has hi-tech glasses through which one can watch…cartoons!! These days, the only reading I have plenty of time for is in the waiting room.
Why is it that every fatzing waiting room I get stuck in–and the laundromat, too!–has “The View” on? I actually pay someone now to do my laundry, to get out of seeing “The View.” Yes–I pay good money not to see it.
If congress knew you were doing this they’d pass a law to criminalizing opting out! – and tax you for even thinking about it. PS: In my neighborhood, almost all restaurants show CNN. I order over the phone, arrive 5 minutes after they said it would be ready, and rush home with the food. We also have a few new buses that have a small screen TV right behind the driver’s seat. I’m sure you can guess what’s playing.
For some reason CNN, which hardly anybody watches at home, plays on every TV set in public. It’s very annoying.