Singaporeans are known to chope hawker centres or food courts spaces with any object they can find, like tissue paper packets or water bottles.
However, people visiting a clinic in Bukit Batok took this even further, and used spare items to chope their spaces in line, leaving plastic bags and water bottles on the seats to “queue” in their place.
Obviously, some people were unhappy about this, complaining about the phenomenon to Shin Min Daily News.
People Used Water Bottles to Wait In “Queue”
At Thong Chai Medical Instiutiion’s clinic in Bukit Batok, the uncles and aunties tired of queuing for a consultation came up with an ingenious idea of using plastic bags, water bottles, backpacks and other personal items to hold their place in the line.
They placed these on the seats outside the clinic, spurring other visitors to complain that this was unfair.
60-year-old cleaner Chen Ming Hua said in an interview with Shin Min Daily News that when he visited the clinic to collect his medication at around 9 am last week, he saw the seats outside were all taken up by these objects. Their owners, however, were nowhere to be found.
“This isn’t even the first time. Last month, I came at the same time for a consultation, and there were around ten people in front of me, who took up all the chairs. They put their things on the chairs and left, but I still had to wait in line behind them. I think it’s unfair,” he expressed in Chinese.
What The People “Guilty” Of This Say
Shin Min Daily News visited the clinic on 19 April, and observed that two chairs had already been reserved with these items.
One of the “culprits”, 80-year-old Mdm Shen, said she had arrived at 7 am to reserve a seat, hoping she could receive a slot for acupuncture in the afternoon.
“The number of doctors who do acupuncture in the afternoon is limited, so I have to do this,” she explained.
She had apparently told the clinic they should allow her to retrieve a queue ticket for an afternoon acupuncture appointment early in the morning. However, the staff said it would be unfair to patients who lived far away, though this practice was allowed at the clinic’s headquarters at Chin Swee Road.
67-year-old Mr Cai used a few packets of tissue to occupy three seats, and explained that this was because he was due to see the doctor in the morning before receiving acupuncture in the afternoon. However, he wanted to eat lunch before his acupuncture session, so he reserved the seats first, intending to retrieve his queue ticket after his meal.
65-year-old Mdm Pan also arrived early to reserve a slot for acupuncture in the afternoon, but she did not use her items to chope a seat, and instead sat there and waited in line.
“I think reserving a seat like that is unfair, so I brought food here to eat instead while waiting for my afternoon acupuncture appointment,” she said.
Teleconsultations, or teleconsults, have revolutionised healthcare in recent years. Patients can now see a doctor from the comfort of their homes, without having to go down physically to wait hours at a clinic or hospital.
Almost all government hospitals and polyclinics even offer the service now, including National University Hospital (NUH), Ng Teng Fong General Hospital (NTFGH), to help patients save travel costs and save waiting time.
Teleconsults for Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) are less common, but they are available, with certain TCM clinics even offering the service for free to their existing patients.
However, technology still isn’t at the point of facilitating an acupuncture teleconsult, despite a blue cat claiming in a Youtube title that AI (or ChatGPT) will soon “destroy mankind”.