Ex-squeeze me?

It's high time that medical professionals drop their `our schedule is so jammed up' posturing. Plus: rueful ruminations on last week's `impactful' lapse.

What’s up with these medical practices that are supposedly so darn busy?

Whether it’s the dentist, optometrist or some other MD, it feels like there’s a rise in the whole song-and-dance about schedules being so jammed that it’ll take divine intervention to get squeezed into an appointment this century.

Then they’re reaching out because—wow, wouldn’t ya know?—an opening just popped up because another patient canceled.

The about-face is enough to induce whiplash. Puh-lease with all the posturing!

This is all fresh in my mind because on Thursday I contacted a provider for a routine annual check-up. I figured they’d have something open in the next week or two; at the same time, I’ve played this game long enough not to be surprised when the response was that the first opening was July 30th.

Rolling my eyes but keeping a respectful tone, I duly noted the day on my calendar and asked to be placed on their call-back list if any other patients nixed earlier appointments.

LOL and behold, it was only 2 hours and 22 minutes later when the office rang me back: They had not one, not two, but three available half-hour time slots toward the end of the same day.

Not sure if this is ironic or fitting, but I was too busy to even see that call, let alone hear the message until later in the evening. I wasn’t worried that I’d blown my chance, though. Sure enough, the next morning (less than 24 hours ago), I got another voicemail alerting me to a few other openings next week.

I called back and booked it, bringing things full circle to the timeframe I’d anticipated from the start. A few post-game reflections:

• On the one hand, having been self-employed for most of my adult years, I understand the importance of not seeming too available, even when business is slow. Then it seems like you’re struggling to attract clients (or patients, or whatever it is you’re trying to attract), which can send your practice into a deeper tailspin.

• On the other hand, if you’re going to play so hard to get (an appointment), it’s probably not a great idea to turn around and offer up more than one teensy-weensy opening—and certainly not so quickly.

• I can’t be the only one who’s noticed an increase in this cat-and-mouse game, particularly with medical providers. Or am I?

About that `impactful’ lapse…

Last week, I used “impactful” in the subheadline at this column’s outset.

To the casual observer, this might seem an uneventful moment. But for me, it was the regrettable culmination of a decades-long journey.

Impactful has gone from nails-on-chalkboard foe … to grudging acceptance when others use the term (though I’d never, ever stoop to such a sloppy linguistic level) … to, well, last week’s lapse.

Like any other reasonable human being, I’ve deployed “impact” plenty of times—more times than was necessary, for sure. In my speech, in my writing, incessantly.

But I’ve always drawn the line at affixing “ful” to it like some cacophonous caboose. It strikes me as a lazy riding of impact’s coattails, like slapping Scotch tape on a Swiss Army Knife and claiming this new adhesive holds the key to this tool’s utility and versatility.

My disdain grew as the word picked up steam in the 1990s and early 2000s. For those who were around and alert in the 1980s or earlier, let’s get real: impactful never reared its head back then.

Then, insidiously, it began to blend into our lexicon as a perfectly reasonable, if seldom employed, garnish, like those pickles in the fridge door that call out to you from time to time.

In summary: I hoped that we’d come to our collective senses and impactful would slither back from whence it came. But it didn’t. Obviously, as something—weakness? fatigue? it certainly wasn’t brilliance—told me to slip it into the subheadline.

It’s past 3 a.m. as I write this now and let’s take another run at “But the most impactful remarks were delivered by one of her classmates.”

How about: “But it was a classmate’s remarks that delivered the most impact.”

How tough was that? Beyond the wholesome benefit of ditching “impactful,” this brings us from passive to active verb tense—usually a good move.

Aside from one friend who has long been overly fond of impactful—and with whom our divergent outlooks have been a running joke—few in my life have been aware of how much venom I reserved for it. Likewise, neither was I aware that I’ve been in good curmudgeonly company.

You see, in this morning’s wee hours, I did a little online digging and found this delightfully raked-over-the-coals assessment in the online Merriam-Webster dictionary:

An excerpt: “…impactful is a word despised by many. And it’s for that reason alone that you might want to avoid it. If those you’re communicating with are distracted by your use of a hated word, then your ability to communicate is limited. You’d do better to choose another one.”