substandard service (and other things)

I don't know how many of you listen to Sonic FM (an Edmonton station for those of you who don't live in this neck of the woods), but they occasionally have a segment titled their "Salute to Substandard Service", where listeners can call in to tell their stories about substandard service, which is becoming more prevalent as it becomes harder to find employees and companies have to settle for less-than-ideal workers.

Since my cousin's too timid to call in about this (she claims our story isn't "good enough" for retelling on the air waves), and I'm normally driving when this segment comes on, I shall recount our story of substandard service, which happened last week after we celebrated our final neurology exam (longest block ever!).

My classmates and I normally go out after an exam to celebrate its completion. It's become a tradition, although I notice that we find reasons to go out for the heck of getting away from school (take, for instance, our outings following anatomy reviews to 'celebrate' the fact that we finished torturing ourselves in the lab for the last time before the bellringer). So because this time it was J's turn to select a location, and he likes to pick fancy, we ended up going to a French restaurant downtown. A nice small place, with a reasonably priced menu.

No problems yet, right? Well, as soon as we sit down and start ordering, our waiter asks us "where are [we] from?" Bear in mind that all of us speak FLUENT ENGLISH, with NO FOB ACCENT, so the obvious answer is "Canada." That being said, I think the guy was trying to make small talk, so he can't really be faulted for this. It was just kind of a sign of things to come.

As with any other meal, we get our customary pre-meal bread. The slices were smaller than normal (1 piece = 1 bite), but it was good bread. Naturally, because we're students and hungry, the bread didn't last, so we asked for more, for which we were told only if there was any left in the back. Weird answer, but at least we got more bread. This is important a bit later.

The meal comes along - decent food, no complaints there. Someone's meal is missed; the server blames the chef (although I'm sure it was his fault), but still no biggie.

Then comes the end of the meal. Here's where our server shines.

First, one of my friends asks if she can get her meal packed away. Our server says sure, goes away (without taking her meal), and comes back with a box and a soggy bag. Turns out my friend can pack it herself and bag it away in a soggy Save-on-Foods bag. No offence to this guy, but if we wanted to pack our meals away ourselves, we would have bought cheap chinese food. My friend, who incidentally works in the service industry, was not pleased, to say the least.

Next, comes the bill. Our server has neglected to tell us two things. One, that our meal comes with a mandatory 15% tip; and two, that the extra bread cost extra money! With the former, it would have been nice to tell us this in advance just out of courtesy more than anything; and with the latter, excuse me? Since when was two loaves of bread worth $3.50? And since when did restaurants start charging for bread...I've been in fancier places that will "stretch their budget" so that we get our fill.

To make matters worse, the guy can't split our bills, because he claims the system can't do that (I'm thinking he's too technologically inept to do it). That's not a big deal, but then when it comes for us to pay our separate bills, he has the nerve to give one of us a calculator to make sure we don't underpay him. So, here's one of my friends, sitting with all of these receipts in his hand, calculating away to make sure that we've paid our bill. It was a funny sight, but at the same time, I'm thinking "You're making us pay a 15% tip without telling us in advance...shouldn't you work a LITTLE to earn this money?"

That brings us to the end of my substandard service story. My friend J swears to this place's food, so I'm hoping this was just an isolated incident. The server looks like he's been there for a while, so I hope he was just having a bad day.

Anyways, that was a few days ago by now. I just needed to get it out of my system. The last block approaches. I tell people that I like (learning about) cancer, so I'm hoping this will be my favourite section of this year. I'm not too stressed out yet about our comprehensive exam and final clinical skills exams, but it seems like some of my classmates are more than compensating for my lack of worry, so I'll let them take all of the stress.

Memorial Service

Now that Anatomy is finally done, I found that going to the memorial service held for the families by the faculty added nice closure to the whole ordeal. As much as I despised the course (particularly the smell), I can appreciate why we go through the process, and I don't think I would have learned a lot of the concepts that we learned this year without the anatomical understanding that came with the labs.

I have to say that I was impressed with today's service. The visual display was well done, the choir was in tune, and the speeches not too long. The only downside was the cellphones ringing at the beginning of the presentation. Who the heck answers a cell phone when it rings at one of these things? I can understand forgetting to turn it off, but to actually answer it to cause further disruption is just disrepectful.

Presenting to you...Dr Gee!

Okay, not yet. But apparently, someone already thinks I am a resident.

I signed up for an elective this summer just to gain/hone/improve (pick one, although the first one is probably most accurate) my clinical skills. It's been a bit of a bureaucratic process; my initial email has been forwarded to a couple of different people, so as you can probably imagine, something could break down in the communication. And it did!

I got an email today from someone (who I've never been in communication with, even) needing to confirm my dates for my elective, because she needed to 'put me on the call schedule'. What threw me off guard was the first line "Hi Dr. Gee" followed by "I'm xx and I look after the evening resident on-call schedule here at xx." She then went on about how she needed my pager number, yada yada.

I replied rather quickly, emphasizing that I was only a second year medical student, and, oh, incidentally, I don't even have a pager yet. Can you imagine how detrimental it would have been if they had put me on their call schedule as a resident? Paging "Dr." Gee, code blue. Wtf, why are you wearing a student's clinical jacket? Oh dear.