Last Monday I made another visit to my new dentist who is only a couple miles from our house. When it comes to making medical appointments I'm not very good at it. I go to see a doctor when I really need to, but fortunately it's pretty rare. I've always had a tough work schedule and making the appointment has never been easy for me.
However, once I make an appointment I always make it the office somehow. I understand that a doctor's time is very valuable and sending patients a reminder is certainly necessary. However, how many reminders do you need? One, two, I can't imagine getting more than that as being necessary.
For my appointment I received five reminders, by phone call, text, and e-mail. When I got to the office at 4:20 I made it a point to tell the receptionist that I was twenty minutes early for the 4:40 appointment, just in case in the future I'm late. She looked at my appointment and told me I was one minute late and the appointment was for 4:20. I got five reminders, but I never checked the time of the appointment.
I told my dentist with a smile on my face that coming to a dentist is never something I look forward to, but being reminded five times only makes the experience worse. He understood and thanked me for letting him know.(while he put my arm around me-a southern thing I think) He said there's no problem in cutting back on those reminders for me.
He asked me if I wanted to get a check-up cleaning once or twice a year and I said once and he told me they would contact me at the beginning of the year for my next visit. I was feeling pretty good about our talk when I left his office Monday at 5 pm. Wednesday morning I got an e-mail and a text from the office about my next visit. Do I reply to the two reminders or hope they stop at some point?
It's still five months until New Year's Day, how many friendly reminders will I get? I can't wait.
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