Is anyone else fed up of things always running late?

27 replies

Youwantlove40 · 15/04/2025 15:10

We're always expected to be bang on time, yet over the last few months I've had the opposite.
Hairdressers, dentists, training at work and so on, I understand things happen and previous appointments run over, but I'm sick of being told to arrive for a certain time only to be left waiting 20-25 minutes if not more, sometimes without even an apology or acknowledgement.

Yet if I were 25 minutes late to the dentist appointment more than once I'd be blacklisted.

OP posts:

Original poster

Youwantlove40 · 15/04/2025 18:26

No I'm sorry, people aren't selfishly 'happy to take as much time as they need.', as someones said- I'm obviously not going to walk out with half a haircut or half of my dental work done, I've paid for a full service and it's up to the person to book out enough time for it, provided I've turned up on time.

OP posts:

StrawberrySquash · 15/04/2025 21:18

Yotoyoto · 15/04/2025 17:25

Probably going to get flamed for this but I’m a GP and by the end of my morning I am pretty much always running 30 mins late. There is too much work to keep to time. I do apologise and genuinely mean it. I don’t like the pressure of keeping patients waiting either.

But, I do allow multiple ‘issues’ per appointment, see a lot of people with mental health problems or complicated issues that take more than 10 minutes to unpick, and would always examine people on the same day (some colleagues for example would make a woman come back for a gynae exam as there is no way to do that in 10 minutes alongside everything else.)

On top of that we have a lot of urgent tasks / phone calls I might have to take in between patients or other issues to sort. Eg the nurse may want me to check an ECG or talk to a paramedic on the phone. These are variable each day so it’s difficult to plan for them.

I’m not a partner so I don’t have a huge amount of control over my appointment times. I can’t really spread my morning clinic out any longer as I have to finish in time for meetings / home visits etc.

Honestly I think people are slightly self centred in that they are more than happy to take as long as they need themselves, but reluctant to wait for others. 10 minutes really isn’t long enough to deal with anything other than simple issues.

I really don't see what a GP is to do. There's far too much to get done.

Obviously I don't like waiting but for something like a GP appointment I feel it had to be slightly asymmetric; if us patients are late then you can't really work with that. The only way to keep it working is if we are all on time. And I just kind of accept that a doctor can run later than I can. Not ideal, but whatever else can you do?

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