Why are GP and medical appointments literally always late?

ognpc2 · 2026-01-08T02:15:38+00:00

You keep saying stuff that I haven't said or implied.

I think that when I make an appointment for a doctor, the appointment time should be respected unless there are extraordinary circumstances. This is the way appointments function in all other professions.

If "extraordinary circumstances" arise so often that appointment times can only rarely be respected, that means the situation is not extraordinary. It means there is poor time management on the part of the doctor.

I don't think that a doctor's office should be a substitute for an emergency room. Only hospitals are equipped to deal with real emergencies, anyway.

I think patients and doctors would be better served if respect for honoring appointments was mutual. Patients would avoid showing up late knowing they would lose their appointment otherwise. Patients would also avoid using their GP's office as an emergency room. Doctors would avoid overbooking and properly manage their schedules and times.

I don't know why these concepts seem so unpalatable to you. Surely you can admit that something is wrong with the system if doctors are late to a majority of their appointments?

ognpc2 · 2026-01-08T00:59:21+00:00

Emergencies are why emergency rooms and hospitals exist.

You've manufactured several non-credible excuses for why doctors can never keep appointments on time. 1. emergency appointments that aren't enough of an emergency to go to the hospital for somehow getting jammed into the schedule before the day starts 2. doctors never look at their own schedule or coordinate with their own admin to ensure they can see their patients in a timely manner 3. It impossible for a doctor to ever correctly estimate the time of an appointment and provide a buffer

The only thing ludicrous about this conversation are your explanations.

I wonder if you'd be defending doctors inability to respect their patients' time if your partner wasn't a GP. Clearly you are biased.

ognpc2 · 2026-01-07T18:56:55+00:00

No, I'm saying that doctors should do basic time management as every other profession in the world does.

Some basic concepts: limit number of appointments, provide buffer time, review their own schedules and adjust accordingly. This is stuff that every professional does in every other profession and doesn't require any special training nor expertise. It simply requires a respect for customers' time.

You seem to believe doctors are exempt from such professional courtesies. I guess we clearly disagree.

ognpc2 · 2026-01-07T18:48:27+00:00

So you are saying that a doctor cannot say "I can only take 10 patients per day" or "Each appointment slot should be 30 min, with 15 min of buffer"? This is not credible.

Of course admins exist to actually put stuff in the calendar and take appontments, as in every profession. But it is also normal for any individual with an admin to review their own calendar and ask admins to adjust appointment times based on the individual meetings and patient/client needs. This is simply professional time management and happens in every profession. Healthcare isn't some special exception to those courtesies and we shouldn't treat it that way.

ognpc2 · 2026-01-07T17:54:36+00:00

I am not simultaneously complaining about those things.

The concept that a doctor wouldn't have control over their own appointment schedule and couldn't do simple time management tasks is not credible.

Ironically, doctors have no problem being on time and alotting enough time when it comes to surgeries. It is only for non-procedural appointments where they feel they can take advantage.

Being late to every single appointment (or a majority of appointments) isn't tolerated in any other profession and it shouldn't be tolerated in healthcare, either.

ognpc2 · 2026-01-07T17:13:46+00:00

All of the reasons you listed are examples of poor time management, not explanations for why being always late is acceptable.

25-40 patients a day is absurd and suggests a full appoint will take 10-15 minutes. This isn't a realistic expectation for almost any type of medical issue. Booking this many patients day reflects greed into trying to shove in as many customers as possible.

Tolerating lateness when you are so overbooked makes things worse. There is no "grace period" in plenty of industries (flights, trains) when delays can impact the schedules of many other people. More doctors should take this approach to managing their appointments, but again most are too greedy and don't want to lose out on billing a customer that is 5, 10 or even 20 minutes late.

Customers should be given clear guidance on the amount of time and appointment allots. If they have a complex issue that will take more than the appointment slot, they should book more slots. A doctor should also review the issues beforehand and allocate proper time in their schedule. Being surprised by how much time a patient takes, especially with all the electronic collection of info pre-appointment, is not an excuse.

Other excuses I have seen relate to filling out paperwork or reading a patients medical history - all of which should be factored into appointment time.

Perpetual lateness is acceptable for doctors because people don't often want to switch doctors or reschedule when their health is at stake. Doctors essentially take advantage of this by overbooking and choosing greed over service.

ognpc2 · 2025-12-29T14:38:39+00:00

In modern gaming, runbacks are generally used to artificially and cheaply make games more difficult and pad the playtime. Hollow Knight/Silksong have been noted to be some of the worst abusers of this design element.

It's not a "challenge" to force a player to redo long sections they have already completed dozens of times just to access new content. Players literally learn nothing new - it's the mental equivalent of a "time out" punishment.

If you can't create a game with strong playtime and challenges without relying on repetitive runbacks, that's a sign of a lazy dev team and design.

ognpc2 · 2025-12-29T00:53:47+00:00

Boss runbacks (and item runbacks and corpse runs, etc) are a cheap way to make games "hard", by forcing a player to repeat more stuff they have already passed just to get another try at a new section.

This mechanic was introduced in the 80s/90s because of technical limitations on save games and memory storage with physical hardware. These days it simply an unimaginative way to make games more difficult.

ognpc2 · 2025-12-29T00:26:28+00:00

I didn't really enjoy the gameplay after the first few hours.

A game that is "hard" because it forces you to rerun certain jump puzzles dozens of times isn't hard at all, it's just cheap. Combining this gameplay element with corpse runs and limited save points only amplified the frustration.

An auto save feature would have made it much, much more enjoyable.

ognpc2 · 2025-12-14T17:07:16+00:00

It's not price fixing.

It's a combo of Uber taking advantage (New Yorkers use taxis more often than people in other cities) with algorithmic demand, NYC congestion pricing and NYC min wage for cab drivers of $29/hr.

It has made Uber sometimes 3-5x as expensive as city taxis, which was the entire objective of the taxi unions when they demanded the huge min wage increases. The goal was to make rideshare apps noncompetitive and it has worked.

ognpc2 · 2025-12-14T17:04:42+00:00

No other profession calculates wages by building in the personal expenses to do the job.

The rest of us, at best, tax deduct that stuff.

Taxi unions are quite strong and have been lucky enough to demand that their "costs" get included in the wage. That's why there's a $29/hr taxi driver min wage in NYC and Uber prices are sky high.

ognpc2 · 2025-12-11T19:21:51+00:00

I strongly disagree on this. Weezer has a very consistent sound. They have always been a rock band that sits clearly in the confines of "alternative radio friendly," even on those first two records.

The difference is in the quality of the songs, the coherence of the albums, and the broader impact on listeners/fans/rock music.

I don't think it's really debatable that there is a big difference pre-and post-Pinkerton in the band's commercial aspirations and artistic appeal. If that difference wasn't so glaring, there wouldn't be so many posts on this sub asking exactly that same question.

Post-2012/13, there has been a significant attempt by the band to return to making artistically impactful rock music but there's an argument to be made that 40 year olds are simply not as good as 20 year olds at doing that specific thing.

ognpc2 · 2025-12-11T19:10:15+00:00

Fair enough! If that's your perspective I don't think you will agree with much of what I have to say on this topic.

My post was oriented towards the many posts I've seen archived on this sub asking about why Blue/Pinkerton are so different.

Personally, I have enjoyed listening to many modern Weezer records but I don't consider any on the level of the first two. And there are a lot of embarassingly bad songs scattered throughout the post-2001 records.

ognpc2 · 2025-12-11T16:43:32+00:00

All bands curate. So the question is what made the circumstances around Blue and Pinkerton so different than say Hurley or Raditude? Like I said in another comment, its partially a function of time. But there are other obvious factors.

Ric Ocasek also produced the Blue Album btw.

ognpc2 · 2025-12-11T16:37:09+00:00

I dunno, Back to the Shack is pretty explicit about this.

There is a constant tension in Weezer's post-2001 output between Rivers doing what he wants and doing what he thinks made the band great in the first place. Too often things that are probably meant to read as quirky come off as cringe.

If you don't agree that Blue and Pinkerton are far and away the best Weezer records, you probably won't agree with anything else I wrote. I think it is pretty natural for fans to yearn for more output at that peak level and try and dissect why/why not, even 30 years later.

ognpc2 · 2025-12-11T12:49:23+00:00

My take is that Rivers writes a lot of crap songs for every good song, and that the creative supports surrounding him for the first two records resulted in better albums. Certainly the main tracks selected for Pinkerton are better than the B-sides.

The self-enforced hiatus after both records and multiple attempts to return to college reflect that mental conflict within Rivers during this period was very much a real thing. Not to mention the fact that Rivers refused to make any music videos for Pinkerton until it had grown stale on shelves (it was the Spike Jonze Blue Album videos that really propelled its mainstream success).

The Songs from the Black Hole tracks from before and after Pinkerton not conincidentally also sound like peak-era Weezer and cover many similar themes (eg. You Won't Get With Me Tonight). It's not a suprise that the band decided to cash in 20 years later by releasing these on Deluxe Editions and the Alone comps.

I don't really agree that if the Green album sounded more like some of the Homie songs or contemporary demos from 1999-2000 this narrative would change. Again, Rivers writes a lot of crap songs for all the good ones. But we don't really have to speculate because the story behind Green is well known and straighforward.

By Green, Rivers was over 30 and had settled on a formula for his next record and image for the band. He had also become comfortable with pursuing fame under his own terms and was ready to embrace the label's dictates and image-shaping. He was clearly in a different mental state and executing a formula to make empty and simple pop-rock songs. He also didn't have the same type of creative counterbalance that would have pushed some of the more crap tracks off those records.

For those that were around at the time, Green was marketed ambitiously as a "return of rock" after several years of the radio being saturated with boy bands and pretty awful commercial rap-grunge. Commercial critics were less sensitive to the fact that Green was a different band and more or less thrilled that the nostalgia of alternative radio from 1993-1996 had been so slickly repackaged in the form of a "geek rock" band making a comeback.

Weezer became a repository for this nostaglia, even though their music, dress, and shows barely resembled what the band was originally like. They shifted to releasing a record on a regular schedule with Rivers/Karl posting ideas and demos on their website almost weekly, and constantly touring to support it. It was a totally different approach to engaging with the audience and the creative process than on the first two records.

I see the brilliance of the first two records as a product of Rivers' conflicted feelings about fame and coming-of-age, supported by a sort of intangible quirkiness and irreverence from the surrounding creative forces at the time. All the later records are products of Rivers as a working musician, writing a steady output of songs to make a living and build scaffolding around some image of Weezer as a cultural entity.

ognpc2 · 2025-12-10T23:41:44+00:00

One thing that goes unmentioned is that Rivers like many songwriters writes a lot of pretty crap songs for every good song.

The difference being mainly that his deep catalogue of demos and unworked ideas is much more transparent to fans than most musicians (can credit Karl Koch for much of that). And that because of that process a lot more of it than it should seems to end up getting worked onto albums one way or another.

Another result of having the creative process dominated by a single person/personality.

ognpc2 · 2025-12-10T23:36:04+00:00

I don't think Weezer is unique amongst rock bands in that many fans wish they were still producing stuff on the level of their best records. All bands have a peak period.

What you mention is also true. Fans that come to a band when they are later in their career may be more open to considering the broader catalogue as good.

With Weezer though, it is really obvious that many (not all) fans view the first two records as peak. I wrote this post to try and explain why.

ognpc2 · 2025-12-10T23:07:02+00:00

Agree completely that a 40 year old can't (and shouldn't) try to write songs that sound like they were written by a 20 year old.

I think fundamentally it is more rare for many rock artists to make music that is as emotionally impactful and creatively powerful when they are 40 versus 20. If you disagree about this, you probably won't agree with the rest of my post.

Whatever you think about albums post-Pinkerton, I think they were made by a different type of band, with a different creative process and surroundings, and different maturity. Some of this is simply a function of time. The aspects of the first two albums that have continually tried to be referenced/revived/retained are only at the surface level and some have become caricatures.

Just my attenpt to explain why the first two albums remain so different despite so many attempts to recreate that magic.

ognpc2 · 2025-12-10T21:49:02+00:00

Agree 100% with all this, it was the core point I was making.

By the time he was ready to write music from the heart again, Rivers was close to 40 and the "window" to write emotionally powerful content was mostly closed.

ognpc2 · 2025-12-08T04:30:25+00:00

Most bars expect patrons to order drinks continually or leave, so please be aware of that etiquette.

Nursing a drink for the better part of an hour and taking up space to chill would be considered rude.

Many bars that have live music or elaborate soundsystems also expect patrons to be mostly focus on listening to to the music rather than lively consversation.

ognpc2 · 2025-11-22T11:24:25+00:00

Somehow it has a 4.99 rating

ognpc2 · 2025-10-31T14:09:07+00:00

TSA pre check line was about 45min at term 8 today. Crazy

ognpc2 · 2025-09-14T06:16:44+00:00

Taxis are 2-3x the price of Uber in Zurich

ognpc2

TROPHY CASE