![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
OK, so green_trilobite had a doctor's appointment on Saturday (booked while I was still working) and he's being sent for a slate of blood tests as usual - normally he doesn't make it to these because getting somewhere under his own power before pills and breakfast - not going to happen. This time, we figured, we'd take advantage of me being ad lib; so this morning we set out early to the pharmacy to pick up the new prescription and get his tests done at the lab upstairs; only it turned out there *is* no lab upstairs from the pharmacy anymore. The pharmacists told us the nearest labs were at Royal York, and at Kipling, but that the one at Kipling was usually crowded. One of them called us a cab to go to the Royal York lab. Cab arrives and the driver says "You know it's ten dollars extra for a van, right?"
"No one's ever told us that before, and anyway we didn't ask for a van."
"The call specified a van."
"OK, I don't want to argue, I'll cover it." (To self - I will not let someone else order cabs for us again.)
So we reach the address at Royal York, climb a flight of those skeletal staircases you get in small 1950s-era office buildings (no fun for green_trilobite), then through a door and *down* a couple of stairs to the smallest waiting room I've ever seen, which contains four adult-size chairs, one kid's chair, and eight adults waiting.
It seems the lab has recently been taken over by a different company, who've either changed the database software, cut the number of employees, or both; at any rate there is one single technician there, who can blow through taking blood samples in a couple of minutes, but only after she takes about half an hour to type the client's information into the computer very slowly.
We wait. I add an additional seven or eight inches to the scarf I'm working on. Several people give up and leave. Finally she starts entering green_trilobite's info. Forty minutes go by. She mutters imprecations at the computer, complains about how many tests he needs, and phones - twice - to ask someone how to enter the amount of time since he last had his pills. We hold our tongues and focus on the thought that after this we're going straight to the Canadiana Restaurant for HUGE BREAKFAST RAWR.
Then, on her second phone call she suddenly says "Oh no. What just? - I hit a button and it wiped the whole entry!"
THAT'S IT, sez green_t, WE'RE LEAVING.
We leave.
Tomorrow we try again with a different location (Jane and Bloor); we'll be sure to bring books this time.
"No one's ever told us that before, and anyway we didn't ask for a van."
"The call specified a van."
"OK, I don't want to argue, I'll cover it." (To self - I will not let someone else order cabs for us again.)
So we reach the address at Royal York, climb a flight of those skeletal staircases you get in small 1950s-era office buildings (no fun for green_trilobite), then through a door and *down* a couple of stairs to the smallest waiting room I've ever seen, which contains four adult-size chairs, one kid's chair, and eight adults waiting.
It seems the lab has recently been taken over by a different company, who've either changed the database software, cut the number of employees, or both; at any rate there is one single technician there, who can blow through taking blood samples in a couple of minutes, but only after she takes about half an hour to type the client's information into the computer very slowly.
We wait. I add an additional seven or eight inches to the scarf I'm working on. Several people give up and leave. Finally she starts entering green_trilobite's info. Forty minutes go by. She mutters imprecations at the computer, complains about how many tests he needs, and phones - twice - to ask someone how to enter the amount of time since he last had his pills. We hold our tongues and focus on the thought that after this we're going straight to the Canadiana Restaurant for HUGE BREAKFAST RAWR.
Then, on her second phone call she suddenly says "Oh no. What just? - I hit a button and it wiped the whole entry!"
THAT'S IT, sez green_t, WE'RE LEAVING.
We leave.
Tomorrow we try again with a different location (Jane and Bloor); we'll be sure to bring books this time.
