You can get one at Walmart for well under twenty dollars

The office that Ava and I work in sees customers by appointment only. This is a very simple concept and not one I’d consider revolutionary. The procedure is thus: customer calls for appointment, we set one up, we call them a day ahead to remind them, the customer shows up at the appointed time. This must happen a million times over the course of a person’s life with everything from a dentist appointment to a parent/teacher conference.

I simply can’t understand what is so hard to understand about this idea.

We have a lot of no-show appointments, which bugs me but not to a great extent. The hole in the schedule allows you to get more work done or write a blog post – whatever. We also have a lot of people who arrive late. As much as thirty minutes on occasion. That is really irritating, especially around the lunch hour when you’re trying to schedule your life.

What really sets me off is when the customers arrive early. Really early. Like an hour. What is wrong with people? This happens way more often than you’d think. Then they get frustrated with you when they have to sit in the lobby for fifty minutes or more and all we can do is smile and remind them what time they were scheduled for.

Among the many list of things I plan to do when I win the lottery (buy Italy since Greece is now off the table, hire a full time masseuse, quit my God forsaken job from the airport’s international terminal, travel, travel, travel) is buy every single man, woman and child in this town a freakin’ watch.