Miss Manners 6/30

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have to visit my doctor approximately six times a year. Everyone at the office knows me, and I’m always greeted politely by name.

Yet every time, medical and nonmedical staff want to play 20 Questions. It’s plainly evident that they are not reading my records beforehand. I keep mine current and accurate through the office’s website, which I also use to prepay all co-payments.

For example, whenever I go to an appointment, someone always asks for my co-pay. I feign a perplexed look and assure them I took advantage of the website option.

The last time this happened, the staff member let out a sigh, looked at the computer and mumbled, “Oh, yeah. There it is. You can go,” as if my bail had been posted, and I was getting out of jail. How should one respond?

GENTLE READER: Asking a question once, and listening to the answer, is basic customer service. It was never, unfortunately, the norm in the medical industry, where some doctors – who are paid to know better than you what is wrong with you – developed a habit of not listening to patients.

This was sometimes justified by noticing that the patient did not always give consistent answers. Unfortunately, the habit turned out to be infectious. Legislators and hospital administrators – motivated by good intentions, like ensuring patient privacy and consent – required extensive, and repetitive, documentation.

This might explain why you are asked to repeat a list of medications or insurance information, but it does not make doing so less tedious. But many doctors have now recognized that ignoring patients led to bad medicine and have tried to mend their ways.

The solution, if the medical profession feels the need to repeat itself, is to train everyone to distinguish between things that require repetition and things that do not – and to apologize for both. You can assist this process by noting more flagrant violations – like the co-payment requests – to the staff member’s supervisor.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I was invited to a beach picnic, just me and the host. Looking forward to good food, I arrived hungry.

As I was eating, I noticed my host was not. She said she was stressed and had little appetite. Unsure what to do, I stopped eating and we just chatted. Would it have been OK to continue eating?

GENTLE READER: Etiquette has rules – do not start eating until your host has started, for example – but it also has gray areas, including the one you mention. Modifying that rule to allow consumption only while your host is eating, while perhaps fun for children enamored of “Simon Says,” would not be practical.

But Miss Manners agrees that there is something unseemly about filling up while your host is exhibiting signs of distress. The solution is to eat slowly – as if your whole attention were focused on the important conversation. If you happen to munch on a celery stick while listening, no one (except, perhaps, the celery) can have cause to complain.

Send your questions to Miss Manners at her website missmanners.com.