+ death's waiting room - life.

Aloha from the waiting room.

A small introduction to my motive for composing this blog. I work at a medical office where the secretary - me - too often says "please take a seat", indicating towards the large void full of a communitty of awful non-matching chairs and an archive of magazines from the beginning of the industrial era.
Now the protocol of the waiting room is not only pure awkward, but there are some unwritten rules I've obviously observed.

(would just like to note the fake plants. guarenteed to spice up the atmosphere.)

• It's too damn silent. - No room, ever, except for maybe a morgue is ever this silent. Nap time at primary schools, or the 10 minutes silence in the car doesn't ever compare to the absence of audiable noise in the waitingroom. It's definitely an unwritten law of the waiting room that you can't talk or make other vocal noises except for your average cough & sneeze - possibly the reason for you being the waiting room, or the unfortunate case of factulence - another reason to not see a proctologist. 
• The phonecall. - Goodness gracious you just hope you don't recieve a phonecall while waiting because you are then introduced with the riskay descison of whether you A) take the phonecall and surrender your holy seat, or B) you draw attention to yourself by picking up your call but whisper in really what is a coarse yell "I'm in a waiting room, I'll call you back later." Which is really more problematic for you as the caller usually follows up that response with a "What are you waiting for? Why are you in a waiting room? Are you sick? Are you okay? What's wrong?" Therefore extending the intended brief call to a small conversation of hushed tones. So us waitees are forced to switch our phones on silent and ignore the not so silent buzz that is the vibrating setting.
• The kids. - Unless it's the kid that has the issue, you should always avoid bringing your kids. Because there is always that one that is on its gameboy or nintendo DS and keeps nudging their parent trying to appeal to their anxious and very divided attention. Where the parent usually responds with "shhhhh, quiet." Always comforting. And if they're techno-ology impaired or too young for the flashing lights and buttons, they are usually the pains in the middle of the room making a huge scene with blocks, or those stupid frame mazes, or those plush toys crawling with small parasites due to lack of hygiene that the secretary found at her sisters old toy box from when her mother was a child, or ripping out pages or pop-up pieces. More often than not there's a designated area with a little bit of 1m fencing to cage the children in some sort of zoo den, carpeted with that horrible foamy puzzle stuff usually consisting of letters or numbers. It's truely horrible. Another reason you don't have kids.
• The lack of choice of reading material. - Waiting rooms are notoroius for lack of current reading material. And when I say current, I mean from the last century. Usually if you get there later or theres a stock up of people in the waiting room you are generally left with the National Geographics or the AutoMobile magazines where the hot topics are the release of these new wizz bang 'com-puu-ters'. Whoah. If you're smart, you've brought your own book or magazine or play on your phone. But few remember...
• Chair fruit salad. - I'll just clarify for those who were deprived of a boring youth (poor you...) that the game fruit salad is when you gotta get up and move chairs really quickly. I liken this to the situation at a waitingroom. If you're travelling in a 'pack' you could say, then it's often difficult to find a row of chairs for the appropriate number of people. So you generally have to split up. Which creates that across room eye contact conversation through muted gestures that get very irratating to others who are unorganized and only have mere thought to entertain them. So once a chair frees these packs of people generally jump on it the first oppotunitty they get. Which startles some people as they think they're next in line. So it becomes a sort of game. If you're standing you'll edge around so you can quickly jump in the vacant chair, but if you're waiting for that to free you'll be on the edge of your seat simply waiting for the nurse to come out and call his name.
• The unorganized pecking order. - As a patient or a waitee you're not aware of who is next in queue. Unlike when you're waiting at a bakery, you have your number in your hand, and you can monitor your situation in the line against the number being called. An informative method. But in the waiting room this is not the case. People turn up for their appointments ridiculously early or late and even though you're appointment is at four, and you've been there since three, someone might arrive at half past three and get called five minutes later. It's unfair and it's a pain. My advice, turn up on time.
• and finally, the one you want to not so secretly kill. -There is always that individual who is munching on beef jerky, or popping their newly bought gum, or the secretaries who keep chirping away about some dissapointing love life or how something is always annoying, or the constant wine and cries of a baby, the inconsiderate loud mouth business person on the phone who openly shares that their time is better off spent doing something more imperative, or the parent who is trying to hush the two forever bickering children. There is always that one you want to kill, or you want their lottery number drawn before yours so you can wait in peace and quiet. But you refrain from throwing the pointy wooden kids block at their head and you put up with it...*sigh*

Evidently I spend too much time in the waiting room, or observing one. So hopefully next time you're in the waiting room you're prepared for the mute hell that is yet to come.  

Over and Out - Stay Tuned
life's narcissistic narrator.
+hann.