Attention patients:

Those of you who've met Mary and Annie know my staff is pretty awesome. But, due to some recent confusion, I'd like to point out what my staff is NOT here to do:

1. Arrange tee times, make restaurant reservations, and look into available flights. We are not the hotel concierge desk.

2. Drop-off or pick-up your dry cleaning. This is not a service my practice offers.

3. If you have a letter to mail, and want Mary to put it with the rest of our outgoing stuff for her daily run to the mailbox, she doesn't mind. Asking her to look up addresses and postage rates, or to supply you with free stamps, is going too far.

4. Babysitting. This is a big one. WE ARE NOT HERE TO BABYSIT YOUR KIDS. Pissy and I only see adults, and consequently do not keep toys or copies of Ranger Rick in the lobby. We do not want your kids drawing all over our magazines, walls, and lobby furniture. Supervising them is also not the responsibility of other patients in the lobby - I see Alzheimer's patients, for fuck's sake. If you can't control your kids you will be asked to leave and given the option of rescheduling when you can get a sitter, or just seeing Dr. Darth across the street.

5. We are not going to help your kids with their homework. This is a medical practice, and my staff is busy. If junior needs a piece of scratch paper or to borrow a pencil, that's fine. But we are not here to teach spelling, algebra, or quantum mechanics.

6. Look up movie times. I mean, I can't remember the last time I saw a patient who didn't have a smart phone. There's an app for that. The fact that you handed your phone to a toddler to keep them busy is not an excuse.

7. We absolutely, positively, do not keep diapers (for ANY age) on hand. Either bring your own or hit the Target down the block. And DO NOT even think of changing them in our waiting room. There's a bathroom 15 feet down the hall.

8. Call your order over to Starbucks, Chipotle, or wherever. It's not like you even offered to treat us.

9. Give advice on pet care. We are not the vet. They are 2 blocks over, and do a great job. The fact that between us the staff has 8 dogs does not make us an animal hospital.

10. Pick up your trash. There's a trash can out in the lobby. Leaving the detritus of your McGrease lunch or little balls of snot-loaded tissues on the lobby table is rude, gross, and unacceptable.

11. Find you a pharmacy, or therapy place, or hospital, or pretty much anything in Montana. Or Canada. Or South America. Or anywhere outside of Grumpyville. Let's face it, we have enough trouble figuring out what pharmacy to call HERE when you give us directions like "it's near the place with blue awnings," "the one by the Denny's," and (my favorite) "across the street from the homeless guy in the baseball hat."

12. Call numbers you got from Craigslist of people selling furniture, clothes, themselves, etc., then reporting back to you on what we found out.

13. Buy shit that your kid is selling for a school fundraiser. Don't even go there. You wouldn't like it if we hit you up for cash outside of your office co-pay.

14. Answer your cell phone while you're with the doctor, and take messages. They do this all day for me, and I'm paying them. You are not. It can go to voice mail.

Thank you.

Ibee Grumpy, M.D.