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Every time I get the urge to complain about some aspect of life at Harvard, I make myself pause and think, "There are people in the world who would give their left arm to be in your shoes." After about a minute, though, that feeling usually passes, and I continue on to bitch.
My gripe today is with--surprise, surprise--University Health Services. Now, let me preface these remarks by saying that my experience with UHS has generally been good. I like my primary care physician a lot, and I usually receive decent treatment from other aspects of the organization. But last week, suffering from a cold so bad I could barely think straight, I walked through the doors of the after-hours urgent-care unit and into a bureaucratic nightmare funnier and more disturbing than any Saturday Night Live sketch I have seen in the past year.
Entering through the basement door, I encountered a security guard who asked me to sign in and then told me that I should take the elevator to the fifth floor, go to the right and put my name down to be seen.
Stepping off the elevator on the fifth floor, a woman getting on asked me if I needed to sign in.
"Huh?"
"I said, do you need to sign in?"
"Uh, I already did, downstairs."
"No, I mean, do you need to be seen?"
She then told me to go to the desk on the left. I told her I had been instructed to go right, but she insisted, so I stumbled over to the desk on the left, which conveniently had no one behind it.
"Hello?" I croaked. A few moments later, a woman walked out and asked if she could help me.
"I've had a really bad cold for a week and I'd like to be seen--"
"Well, you're at the wrong desk. You need to go to the right."
Stumbling back to the right, I entered a waiting room with yet another empty desk, devoid in fact of all human life except for two other hapless patients sitting against the wall. I asked them if they knew what was up, and it turned out that they were also waiting to sign up to be seen, that there was a nurse who poked her head in every so often, and that I should just wait.
Twenty minutes later, a nurse did indeed stick her head out--and a millisecond later turned around to leave again. Lumbering to my feet, I ran after her and caught her in mid-stride. Her desire to pull away was almost palpable.
"Um, I'd like to be seen, please."
"Oh, well you have to go to the desk on the left."
At this point, a line from an old Depeche Mode song popped into my head: "Well I don't want to start any blasphemous rumors/but I think that god has a sick sense of humor/and when I die I expect to find him laughing."
I told the nurse that I has been instructed to go to the right, but it didn't seem to affect her. I decided to switch tracks.
"Uh, how long do you think the wait is?"
"I really don't know."
"Well, 15 minutes, half and hour...?"
"Well, a half hour. But actually, it's probably more."
"Thanks," I said. Then I turned around, left the building and bought a bottle of Nyquil at Christy's.
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