evanevanevan

The waiting room of my doctor's office seems to have been furnished in the mid-sixties and left frozen in time. There was no sign of life at all in the room when I entered, save a child's Chicago Bears Starter jacket hanging on the coat-rack. The receptionist - who from my brief phone conversations I had gathered was an elderly black woman named Hattie - had apparently gone home sick. As I waited for 40 minutes for someone to enter, I perused the reading material - mostly made up of years-old Time Out Chicago issues and this children's book from 1959:

I'm disappointed that I didn't get to meet Hattie, but there's always next time. The doctor himself was a very kind older gentleman, moving about at a snail's pace, but lovably so. Co-worker dynamics have always been a funny thing to observe in the offices where I've worked. It's odd to think about the kind of relationship that must develop when the doctor and receptionist are the only two employees ever there, day-in and day-out for, in this case, probably all eternity. They spend practically as many waking hours with each other as they would with their spouses. Do they have private jokes? Secret handshakes? Have they inherited the same mannerisms from each other? The same love of Lawrence Welk and disdain for letterboxed movies? I wonder if it's anything like the relationship between psychologist Bob and receptionist Carol on The Bob Newhart Show.

Incidentally... my doctor's office is in the very same building as Bob's was. Hmmm: