Joel Hainley : San Francisco Bay Area Software Consultant

In May, when it looked like I was going to continue to go to school, i went to a drop-in appointment at the Diablo Valley College counseling center. I wanted to make sure that the classes I were picking made sense for what I wanted to accomplish at DVC.

I signed in and was told that they couldn’t see me before 5pm ( it was 4:15pm ), but that I was the first appointment for 5pm. I thanked the person working at the desk and said i’d be back in 35 minutes. She got indignant and informed me that it was policy of the counseling center that students remain present after they have signed in, in the event that a spot opened up earlier. I asked her to confirm that I had an appointment for 5pm, and she said yes, i had an appointment for 5pm.

I said that i was happy to be seen at 5pm and that if someone else wanted to wait they could go ahead of me if a new spot opened up, but that I would be there 10 minutes before my 5pm appointment. To which she replied : “if you’re not here when we call your name, your name will be removed from the list”

I thanked her, suggested that she might want to get a dictionary and look up the word appointment and left.

Returning at 4:50 I sat down, and waited, at 5:05 i hadn’t been called. Then at 5:10pm a counselor walked by yelling across the room to the woman working the counter.

counselor : “What do I have on my schedule at the moment?”

counter: “You have drop-ins starting at 5pm”

counselor : “They’ll have to wait a few minutes I have something I want to do first”

5 minutes later, the counselor walks past the counter to her office, gets a cup of something or another and strolls out and calls my name.

I grab my bag and head to her office, the counselor starts talking to me over her shoulder as we’re walking

counselor : “what did you need to see me about?”

me : “well i’d like to talk with you about….”

counselor : (interrupting) “please hurry, we have a lot of people waiting…”

me : “right…so as i was saying, i would like to talk with you about confirming my choices for what i’m trying to accomplish at dvc”

counselor : “well we don’t have a lot of time to be doing things like that, since this is a drop-in, if we didn’t have a lot of people waiting i could go through things in more detail…”

( at this point we had arrived at her office, and there was papers, coffee cups, and shit all over the floors her desk, the shelves, it was a disaster, she started in again on not having a lot of time, and if I didn’t have specific questions i should just make a regular appointment. I didn’t even look at her at first, i just looked around the office while she was blithering, and when she got done i turned and looked at her and said “this place is a pigsty”, and sat down )

She completely changed her demeanor, answered all of my questions, except for one that she said would require some research, but it was easily done in a regular counseling appointment. I thanked her and left.

Not sure what that was all about, it was very strange.