For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for September 04, 2016

And Chris comes in on a dentist’s lunch break for a medical opinion? Good grief.

Putting the bite on a dentist.

He must be one cheap SOB or a terrible lawyer.

Doesn’t have to be a lawyer. I’ve known a few people like that…total users.

I used to sell auto parts, people wanted free mechanical advise. When ever I could I “gave it to them”.

Mechanics, electricians,…most any skilled laborer gets this all the time, “I don’t want you to fix it for me, just tell me how to fix it.”

hmmmmaybe when he gets his daughter in for her first appointment, you should up the fee’s, like real high…..

Send him a bill, John.

Don’t even get me started on people asking musicians to play for free or for “the exposure”. “You love what you do, right? Why do you think you need to be paid?” Sigh . . .

Lynn’s Notes:Here is another real life situation. My dentist husband was cornered, from time to time, outside his office and asked to give his expert opinion on someone’s dental work. As a new practitioner, he would do this as a favour and I often saw him at parties, for example, with his fingers in someone’s mouth! Eventually, he refused to do this and asked folks to please make an appointment. The nuisance, the intrusion, and the possibility of saying the wrong thing eventually made him realize that the clinic was the best place to do a check-up! Nothing was more convincing, however, than the above scenario! This really happened and it was fun to recreate the scene in the strip. If the culpable lawyer ever read the comics, I doubt he’d have recognized himself!

Gee, Chris. She could probably use braces, but if I were you, I’d spend the money on plastic surgery.

It started when people found out I could fix there tv sets back when I was in Junior High back in the mid 70s. Now it’s computers, hardware, software, smartphones.

Looks like father AND daughter could use braces!

Typical lawyer……..

Chris looks like he needs braces!

People do that to me. I give them my card and ask them to call the office and set up an appointment.

I know NOT to ask for answers of friends in certain occupations. (well, I can with certain ones; you have to know which ones tolerate it) I am the one who has to listen to their complaints about people who do this to them all the time. If I had the knowledge, I’d share it and enjoy it. It would certainly make me feel superior, and I would like that too.

It happens to lawyers too. Maybe even more, because it’s easy to ask legal advice in casual conversation. And I’m an engineer, but nothing to do with PCs, but people expect me to know how to fix theirs site unseen. Like, “My computer says there is an error, what do I do?”

I’d bill him for the “check-up” at double the normal rate for doing it outside of the office

I guess that John had the word “Sucker” on his forehead.

My doctor in Canada had practiced under both systems. He summed up the difference as, “I don’t think I practice medicine any differently now that I no longer worry about being paid.”