Grumbled to myself about "Dammit, I got an appontment for a booster shot, not for waiting in line!" for the 10-15 minutes it took to be let in the front door and then after a couple additional minutes of queuing indoors be sent to a booth with a nurse. After the nurse had scanned my ID card's barcode she asked, "Shall I cancel this appointment you have in February, then?", and I was rather confused... Had someone else already booked me in, before I did the day before? (I was thinking, maybe the THL or some such had pre-booked people belonging to "enhanced risk groups", i.e. me for being diabetic.) Or had I somehow managed to inadvertently book two appointments? (Should that even be possible; what kind of crappy Web UI allows allows that?)
When she showed me that appointment booking that the scanning of my ID had put on her screen, the horrible truth dawned on me: I didn't have an appointment that day at all! What I had thought was a booking for the next day was actually for, I think it was the tenth, of February. It was the only booking I had, and for the exact time of day I had. I must simply not have noticed that the first time slots the Web UI offered were not for the following day (IIRC I made the booking late in the evening), but the first available at the rough time of day ("Early afternoon", IIRC) I had selected in the previous step -- and those were six weeks out at the time.
Very pragmatically, though, the nurse just cancelled my upcoming appointment, told me to roll up my sleeve, and gave me the shot anyway. She had an air about her as though mine wasn't the first case of patient screw-up, or perhaps patient line-jumping. A net time saving for all concerned, I suppose -- saved me the future trip and queueing, and some other nurse another whole hello-sit-down-scan-the-ID-roll-up-your-sleeve-swab-jab transaction, which she had already pretty much completed -- so smart that way, but damn embarrassing to have jumped the line like that. During the obligatory fifteen-minute sit-down in another big hall, I checked the confirmation SMS I had received, and yes, of course it said February. I just hadn't even noticed the actual date there either, blithely assuming it was for the next day. Assumption is the mother of (almost) all fuck-ups.
That'll teach me to grumble about waiting in line... No wonder the process gets a bit clogged, when fuckwits like me arrive at time slots they haven't booked.
When she showed me that appointment booking that the scanning of my ID had put on her screen, the horrible truth dawned on me: I didn't have an appointment that day at all! What I had thought was a booking for the next day was actually for, I think it was the tenth, of February. It was the only booking I had, and for the exact time of day I had. I must simply not have noticed that the first time slots the Web UI offered were not for the following day (IIRC I made the booking late in the evening), but the first available at the rough time of day ("Early afternoon", IIRC) I had selected in the previous step -- and those were six weeks out at the time.
Very pragmatically, though, the nurse just cancelled my upcoming appointment, told me to roll up my sleeve, and gave me the shot anyway. She had an air about her as though mine wasn't the first case of patient screw-up, or perhaps patient line-jumping. A net time saving for all concerned, I suppose -- saved me the future trip and queueing, and some other nurse another whole hello-sit-down-scan-the-ID-roll-up-your-sleeve-swab-jab transaction, which she had already pretty much completed -- so smart that way, but damn embarrassing to have jumped the line like that. During the obligatory fifteen-minute sit-down in another big hall, I checked the confirmation SMS I had received, and yes, of course it said February. I just hadn't even noticed the actual date there either, blithely assuming it was for the next day. Assumption is the mother of (almost) all fuck-ups.
That'll teach me to grumble about waiting in line... No wonder the process gets a bit clogged, when fuckwits like me arrive at time slots they haven't booked.