Waving the cyber white flag: death by reminder/confirmation bots from docs and others. Send help!

I am sure this was once a good idea, but now it is sheer harassment and annoyance: the non-stop barrage of confirmations, reminders, emails, texts, calls for a single appointment.

Every now and again I am motivated to clear out my text messages. It’s a disaster zone, a digital accumulation of debris from important stuff to memes to junk looking like that icky corner of the pier trapping trash, dead fish and WTF stuff.

My motivation came Monday, when I was sitting in the waiting room of a doctor’s office for an annual appointment. I was unable to mentally partake in the interior design horror show on HGTV blasting from the TV to my left, so I did what every good human does to pass the time: find entertainment on my phone.

It was then the full scope of my digital torture by service provider came into view. The amount of text messages, with some emails and calls thrown in, for this single appointment numbered 12 over a span of 2 weeks. Eight texts, two emails, one robocall (at 9:30 p.m. on the Fourth of July no less!) and one human call from the office (which had confused me asking who was calling, because they never ID’d themselves and nothing was up on the caller ID).

Every text message asked me to confirm I was coming. And then sent a response to the response. Rinse, repeat every 2 days. I AM COMING. STOP CONTACTING ME.

My entire appointment lasted 15 minutes, start to finish. All good. But what in the name of Al Gore’s interwebs is happening to harass me to show up. I WAS ALWAYS COMING.

I made a small chart from my phone, clearing out the texts (one brilliant convo shown above), to document what it is like to have a dental, doctor, or hair stylist appointment. I never consented to being texted me over and over, then following up with emails, and then a push message to check the email, and then a robo call mangling my name into some Russian-sounding AI slop.

Is this what the public really needs to show up for an appointment we scheduled with a provider? Most importantly, outside of screening and blocking…how do I stop being harassed?

In order to protect the innocent, which are the staffers in the offices, I am not going to reveal who said what when I asked for my freedom from tech reminder terrorism.

What I learned:

• The front office has no idea what is going out when, as it is a function of a third party doing it, aka their booking software provider. It mines your email, cell phone and goes to work on you. Settings are from the provider, so they usually choose all forms to maximize the software. (SIGH)

• They agree it is annoying, and yes, I am not alone in bitching about it.

• There is nothing they can to filter/prevent the communication. Like the rain, it just happens. Bring your umbrella.

• And they are sorry.

The doctors/providers have even less clue what is going out from the front of the office. They’re just trying to keep their heads above water, stay on schedule, and not wish death upon insurance providers or ignorant politicians every five minutes.

My biggest question to all of them is….does all of this “communication” get people to show up more and on time? Answer? SHRUG. As the Monday’s lovely front office people said, while sweating inside their stuffy major medical center professional building offices with broken AC, “the people who were going to show up do, and the ones who were going to forget still do.”

It’s a mid-minor annoyance in the grand scheme of things. I can delete the messages, filter the calls, get rid of the emails. But the damage is a little more subtle. I don’t want to interact with the spaces that choose to treat me like I have no idea what I committed to in terms of appointments. I have tried not responding at all, which leads to an increased wave of texts asking for a response. I’ve opted out, and they still keep coming.

This “innovation” to harvest my personal info recorded by the office and then weaponize it with stuff I don’t want/need does not make my experience better. It does not improve the life of the front office staff. It does not help the doctors, hair stylists, diagnostic staff be more efficient in their work and schedules.

It’s irritating the public, which in turn flows to the staff. I have a special level of empathy for front office staff, as I worked that job enough growing up at my dad’s dental practice. I did the reminder calls. I helped schedule the appointments. I answered the phones. It’s a pain to deal with the public. But it’s also a not an elite move to antagonize people in the name of alleged efficiency.

I think I may be moving the docs and others in my life into the special political text friend zone - nobody home and please leave me alone. The junk text button comes real easy. Time to use it more, because I don’t have time to spend more on responding to the pre-appointment communications than the real moments in the office.