Twenty Five Signs You've Chosen a Bad Doctor

Doctor

by Marko and Laura Peric

No one likes going to the doctor, apart from severe hypochondriacs. Between the poking and prodding and the taking your pants off for no good reason and the backless johnny shirts it's just not a fun experience. And of course there's the waiting. There wouldn't be a waiting room if there wasn't going to be waiting. Not long ago, while my wife and I were waiting in our doctor's office, we started joking about signs that you may have chosen a bad doctor. What we came up with is below.

His last name is Frankenstein, Feelgood, Fever, or Federline.
His office is decorated with skulls, spears, and tribal masks, and he's wearing naught but a loincloth.
Instead of the usual public health posters, the waiting room is decorated with X-rays.
Same as above, but all of the X-rays appear to be of patients with foreign object inside them.
You've never seen someone wearing a tie with scrubs before.
The waiting room reading material isn't medical pamphlets and old copies of Reader's Digest. It's funeral home brochures and copies of Tolstoy novels.
Instead of costly casts, splints, surgical tape, and bandages, he uses duct tape at every opportunity.
It took you a few minutes to realize it, but you're almost certain that the background music in the waiting room is an instrumental version of "Don't Fear the Reaper" by Blue Öyster Cult. On an endless loop.
Many of the gauntlet of 150 or so protesters picketing the entrance have signs with your doctor's name on it.
Your doctor explains that it's take your child to work day, but Little Jimmy has five o'clock shadow at 10 am and looks like he wandered off the set of The Sopranos.
His framed diploma is from Hollywood Upstairs Medical College.
His last name is Doom, Demento, or Dre.
While his lab coat does give him a certain air of professionalism, the stretchy pants with stirrups completely undermine it.
As you wait in Dr. Abagnale's office you notice the pilot's wings on his desk, the licence to practice law in the state of Louisiana, and the copy of Catch Me If You Can on the bookshelf.
You've been waiting for nearly an hour, but you know the doctor is around somewhere. Just ten minutes ago he told the Channel Eight Investigative Reports news crew "No comment, and get out of my office."
He's wearing a T-shirt with the slogan Not a Doctor.
Tongue depressors are supposed to be wider and shouldn't have a faint residue of artificial grape flavouring.
You're in for a routine physical, but your doctor has had to look stuff up in his well-worn copy of Gray's Anatomy six times already.
You're pretty sure it's a costume, but that just raises more questions, such as why the receptionist is dressed up as a gorilla.
His last name is Kevorkian, Killer, or Kangaroo.
His bright yellow and blue stethoscope carries the brand of that reputable maker of medical equipment, Fisher-Price.
You could accept the fact that he's wearing a Mexican wrestling mask more easily if your doctor's last name wasn't Suzuki.
He suggests "Why don't you take the light and look in my ears now?"
You're in for prostate surgery, and as your eyelids start to droop as the gas takes effect, you hear your doctor say "You know, I really prefer the silicone implants over the saline ones."
A fish tank is a nice piece of office decor, but his holds 250 gallons of water and 30 piranhas.