An internal account of an internally racialised encounter
I rush to 9am doctor’s appointment having had to faff a lot longer than I expected to get an EV cable to release. As someone who’s very sensitive to power dynamics and social tension, I find it hard to be out of control and see the implicit disrespect inherent in the system; my doctor’s surgery is a rich site for this.
AI image
The little standup check-in screen says ‘not functioning – please check in at reception’. But I see that just behind it, there’s a second lollipop with an apparently functioning screen.
Worried I’m running late, I pivot to the receptionist, her cut-out diagonal from the screened, privileged admin space half-closed with Perspex. Unfortunately the reception desk is also her workspace, so as I’m looming over her and she’s not catching my eye, I wonder what the elegant thing is to do to signal attention. A lot of the social anxiety here – and I wouldn’t say it’s ‘just in my head’ or I ‘suffer from it’ – is trying to find the elegant line and get your needs attended to without being disrespected, without having to confront anything, without dominating, bullying. I just sort of hover.
In an acceptable period of time, she makes eye contact.
‘Excuse me, do I need to check in here, or is that working?’
‘It’s working’
‘Thanks’
So I check in, look for a seat in the bolted plastic rows that is maybe less used by my germ- and disease-carrying neighbours, note that the second set behind the awkward pillar has a number of ‘broken-do not use’ signs and tape of the home-made but competently done sort, and sit in probably the most used chair, front row, looking at two clearly distinct sets of signage for calling people in for appointments – neither of which seem to be working, but they might flicker into life and I need to catch my name if they do – and wait.
I check my watch – 08:52. I’ve been a good citizen! I get out my phone. Nothing much happens as I read some emails – something did – was someone called – did I miss my cue? It’s actually been ten minutes of waiting now. I wonder about asking the receptionist if it’s OK to turn the first check-in machine to face the wall, not the door – that way nobody will use it and people will naturally just use the second. How could I phrase that without overstepping, demanding? Again the elegance defeats me.
Time creeps on, people are definitely being called, but certainly not me. I have an appointment with a name I don’t recognise, just a surname. On some automated system from the NHS it says ‘checkup’ – am I seeing a nurse? They operate in a different space, and are cheekier and more relaxed than the doctors. At 09:15 I stand lugubriously over the receptionist again. After a reasonable but also assertive few beats, she looks up.
‘I was…’
And then I’m called. Usual doctor’s office, she must be the locum I see listed somewhere.
She lets me in, a slim, slight Black British woman, London accent, wearing blue plastic gloves. I really hope she’ll give me a word of apology as she gets me seated. I’ll feel myself slighted and the system uncorrected if I don’t say something, 15 minutes late on the first appointment of the day.
She said as I came in ‘good morning – or good afternoon’, was that a jokey acknowledgement of the wait? And she’s bustling, sort of implying being busy – presumably that means she does realise? After a while, still in the greeting phase though, I say ‘good morning – or should I say good afternoon?’
She stops – queries me. Oh no – we weren’t on the same page! ‘The wait’, I say – self-explanatory.
‘I thought you might offer a word of apology as I came in, it’s 9:15’. That was reasonably well-judged – I minimised the ask. ‘A word’ would be social lubrication, not subjugation.
She does not apologise. But here’s a large white privileged grey-haired English man trying to scold her. The type who might be arsed and competent to make a formal complaint, and who seems slightly agitated. Who probably isn’t racist, but…
She seems genuinely surprised, and certainly not sorry. Gestures to her task-master, the computer.
‘I like to get the calls done before I start seeing people’. There’s some accommodation in that, I guess – but no apology! I bite the bullet.
‘Well, perhaps you should make the first appointment 9:15 then?’ I kept it calm, though the confrontation is stressing me.
Another widening of the eyes, which I think is genuine. There’s nowhere else for the conversation to go, after the moment where I might become unreasonable has passed.
We get to business, and I’m relieved to see – unlike with the Romanian dentist – there’s no active animus now. She’s very good at her job. Must have been a hard journey – and coming into the room she presented much more like a nurse than the usual upper-middle class white English or Asian British doctors who settle in with some relief when they see my face – ‘a customer appointment with no code-switching, shared social norms. Ahhhh’. And entirely surface level, of course.
My heart rate is definitely up because I raised the late start – internally I speculate on a novel where an entire medical sequence is begun by such an encounter and an artificially raised blood pressure reading. Sure enough, I’m ‘ooh, a little bit high there’.
Then she starts dropping the middle-class references, being matey. Refers – apropos of not much, but an assumption my upcoming travel will be a nice holiday – to Howard’s End, then to Emma Thompson’s oeuvre, her love of films. I note she doesn’t stretch all the way to ‘love of film’, she’s titrating the code carefully – I think she’s also being authentic. I join in on the film, lauding The Remains of the Day, even though I can’t remember which is which. Both about class and social dynamics, of course. As a sign of willingness, I lean in to her holiday assumptions, chuckling fakely at the prospect she offers me of sun, good food…
We wrap up the appointment, one of the more successfully. She listened thoroughly, played back, set up basic tests. I ask her ‘door closed or open?’ – a grace note that seems to be appreciated – and she says ‘closed’.
I was thinking earlier to brave the receptionist and actually try to make a point about the 9:15 thing. Then during the appointment I thought the better thing to do would be to just say ‘that doctor was excellent’. In the end someone is at the desk, I just leave.
I hate being in a racialised encounter. Obviously you can read this as me perseverating – but it’s not just that, is it? I wonder what I could have done to actually open up the genuine conversation? Probably to open up my thinking, share how I think the encounter was framed. Not easy – perhaps I could have done it. Better blog about it…
chosen path 