Walking along the street toward work in the morning darkness, I watched the seconds on my phone stopwatch slowly tick toward 8:15am. Only 45 seconds to go. I was ready to make the call. Careful to keep my footing on the icy pavement, I watched the seconds creep by…tick…tick…tick.
But what was it I had to remember to do when I got in to work? That’s right. I made a mental note and started planning my day. Suddenly, I realized my distraction. Dammit! I thought. It was already twelve seconds over 8:15am. Now I’d be on hold for at least an hour, listening to that interminable music and the slower than slow countdown…
“You are now number eighty-five in the queue…you are now number eighty-four in the queue…”.
If you want to see a doctor in Nuuk, there is one option. On weekdays, between 8:15 and 8:30 you must call the doctors’ clinic in the hospital, where a doctor or nurse will take your call – eventually – and assign you a time to see a doctor, if deemed necessary. Occasionally you’ll get an appointment on the same day, sometimes the same week, and not uncommonly, it could be in a month. But before getting to the appointment, the first hurdle is getting to the top of the telephone queue. The key is to call at exactly 8:15, to the second. Every second counts, as illustrated by the above graph based on calls made to the clinic.
Interestingly, there is a strong consistency between when you make the call, where you’ll be in the queue, and when the call is finally answered. A call connected 4 seconds after exactly 8:15am was twelveth in the queue and was answered by a doctor in ten minutes. A call made 8 seconds after 8:15am started forty-fifth in the queue and took over an hour. And a call made 50 seconds after 8:15 started at around one hundredth in the queue and was answered after two and a half hours. If you call close to 8:30am, forget it. It’s more likely that the call will time out than reach a doctor – all calls made in that fifteen minute time period will go on hold, but after several hours, they close down the whole system and you will probably be cut off.
The correlation between calling-in time and when your call will be answered suggests that hardly anyone on hold actually gives up waiting. The one exception to this rule is pay day – the last Friday of the month. On payday you’re likely to get through much faster, even if you call minutes after the lines open. The moral? Best to get sick on payday if you can manage it. But on payday, don’t even think about trying to call a taxi, especially if the weather is bad. You’ll be in for a very long wait.
