8.30am should mean...8.30am

So, once a year I need to be seen by a certain doctor for a certain brief medical procedure....let's just say, it involves a part of the female body and a sonogram machine and leave it at that. The important part of the story is that this procedure is perhaps 10 minutes in duration and extremely routine.

Because this doctor's office is around the corner from my apartment, which in turn is about a 30-minute commute to my place of employment, I prefer to schedule this appointment in the early morning. Pop in, pop out, and on my way to work relatively on time, is the theory. Unless, of course, I am asked to wait AN HOUR past the time of my scheduled appointment. What is the point of setting an appointment at all if you are only going to ask me to wait in a room packed full of women, mostly a generation older than me, uncomfortably shifting in their seats and clutching their gowns, underneath which I know full well they are completely naked from the waist up...for longer than 60 minutes?! For a process that takes about 10 minutes once I am finally admitted into the exam room, where I am entitled to hold an awkward conversation with an Eastern European sonogram technician (thankfully female, but still) about my symptoms?

I can't help but think, if I am only going to wait for so long anyway, that they might as well implement a walk-in policy and let patients come and go on their own time. This painfully long wait time, I must add, was on top of the two-plus months I waited to even be granted an appointment in the first place. And, adding insult to injury, there was so Blackberry service in the waiting area, an issue I generally only encounter in supermarkets and subterranean bars. (Why supermarkets? Your guess is as good as mine.) So, as I skimmed an article in People on the joyful shotgun wedding of Ashlee Simpson and that dude from Fall Out Boy, my IQ dipping dangerously as my brain shed information on the subprime mortgage crisis in order to take note that the bridesmaids wore black Vera Wang gowns, I was also half-panicked at the idea of my boss concluding that I was playing hooky due to the long-awaited seasonal June weather.

By the time I finally escaped, half the morning had gone by, and I had to wait even longer than usual for an E train, no picnic even at peak hours. Next year, I am going to make them wait an hour. Watch me.