Waiting Room Leadership

by Matt Monge

…Then I’m afraid you’re likely missing some opportunities.

Thanks to kidney cancer, blood clots, and the like, I’ve come to be a bit of an unofficial waiting room aficionado. In other words, I am the most (un)interesting man in the world.

Waiting rooms are to me what fine wines and cigars are to other (normal) people. Waiting rooms have their own particular ambiance. There’s a particular way they smell, sound, and feel. You’d be tempted to say they all smell, sound, and feel the same; but you’d be wrong. Trust me. Having been in as many as I have been, I’ve picked up on the nuances of the various holding pens waiting rooms.

Upon entering one, I close my eyes, allowing the essence of the room to interact with my auditory and olfactory senses. Ah yes, I say quietly to myself, a vintage 1987 oncology waiting room. The light blue hues on the wall sluggishly trudge down the hallways, dragging the dated, 50-shades-of-gray carpet along with it into every room.

Take a deep breath and you’re treated to a scent that can only be produced when that which is old and stale is forced to mingle with that which is just recently sprayed out of a Febreeze bottle. The mutant offspring of this scentsless affair (see what I did there?) isn’t what those Febreeze commercials would have you believe it is. Nay, my friends. It is more akin to the pungent fragrance that permeates a school bus full of adolescent boys who have layered some god-awful body spray on top of their sweaty lather following a basketball game.

It’s within that context that we sit. It’s always sobering for me. As my eyes transition from taking in the decor to glancing at the other folks sharing the space with me, that vintage ’87 atmosphere gets heavier.

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