If you have a doctor’s appointment, it’s important to make sure you show up in the correct location at the correct time.

In today’s story, a couple of patients get confused about where they are supposed to go, but their attitude makes a big difference in the outcome.

Let’s see how the story unfolds…

Just answer my simple question!

Years back I had a temp job at the reception of a hospital.

The concept of the hospital was that external doctors could book rooms for surgery and for their patients after surgery, if they had something bigger to do that they couldn’t do in their own medical practice.

There was also a sleep laboratory, run by an external practice, where patients stayed over night for their examination/measurements.

For that usually the technician and the patients started coming in at around 7pm and they all left at 6am.

Usually anything besides the measurements during sleeping were done in the medical practice, which was in walking distance in the same street.

A woman arrives for the sleep laboratory.

Setting: Random day, somewhere way before 7pm, where usually nobody is in the sleep laboratory.

Nice woman (NW) comes in and asks about the way to the sleep laboratory.

I’m pretty sure that she’s at the wrong location, and I explain that to her.

I ask her to take a seat nearby and to give me a moment so I can check with the practice where she needs to go.

She thanks me and takes a seat.

Another woman enters.

While I’m still typing the number of the practice, enter awful woman (AW).

AW asks the same questions as NW.

I try to explain the situation, same as before, but she aggressively interrupts me and slams something along the lines of “..it can’t be so hard to answer a simple question, tell me where the sleep laboratory is NOW!” in my face.

Cue malicious compliance – I smile and tell her the way – ‘first floor, to the right, ..’ and so on.

AW walks off.

It turns out that she was right.

I call the practice and they tell me that, as I expected, nobody is at the hospital that day and that every patient should go to the practice.

And that they all should also know that, because it’s on their note with the date and time for the appointment.

I inform NW, and she gets going to the practice, probably still in time for her appointment.

AW comes back after around 15 minutes and tells me that nobody is there.

I just shrug and go back to my work.

I wonder if AW missed her appointment.

Hopefully she learned that she’s not always right.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted…

Here’s the perspective of a sleep tech…

This reader loved how she handled the situation.

Another reader shares a comeback she could’ve used.

This reader reacts to AW’s statement.

Another reader shares a comeback suggestion.

This will probably happen again.

Next time the receptionist will be armed with more snarky comebacks.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.