For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for April 21, 2015

John sounds like my dad. Elly’d better get those old magazines out now, before Michael, Elizabeth, and April have to clean out those same magazines 50 years later from their parents’ basement – when they’ll still be unread!

Since it is John’s office and John paid the subscription fees, then it is John who has title, use, control and freedom to dispose, not Elly. She can provide suggestions, but ultimately it is John’s decision to make.

This is like my nightstand: very close to an archeological dig.

@verticallychallenged. Maybe the kids can sell them on eBay 50 years later. Also I can relate to the above person. My nightstand is piled 2 feet high with mags “I want to read”.

My father had his own dentist office, much like John. My parents were perfectly capable of doing it together, like Elly and John are trying to do. My father was able to focus on being a dentist, while my mother made the rest run smoothly by decorating it, keeping it organized, and, yes, making sure the reception area was pleasant and up-dated.

I have no idea why some here think that the divisions in a family need to be so cut-and-dried. In my family, it was usually “whoever is best suited or has the time, does the job”

Put the magazines by John’s easy chair or in his office so he can read them when he has time. Simple. I’m sure his patients have read them multiple times and have wondered when there will be new ones. I know I do when I am in a waiting area.

Yeah, the nerve of her, trying to make the place more professional.

“Reception Area” Translation: Waiting Room, where you wait a minimum of one hour, because they schedule 4 people for the same time, so if there is a no-show, they will still make the maximum amount of money.

Maybe it’s because he pretty much begged her to help out in his office until his assistant returns from maternity leave??? So as he’s assistant she has to actually run the business in a professional way?

Man, The Dobbie Brothers broke up!

Most of the mags in doctor offices I’ve been in have addresses for other patients that have been blacked out. The stuff the doctor put out are precription ads and howto care for whatever.

It would be a pleasant change if doctors and dentists thought enough of patients to keep current general reading material available so they could try to concentrate on something other than their fear of an upcoming procedure. Most medical offices have either ancient magazines or ads for prescription medicines. Neither help a patient with self-distraction.-A family member taking an interest in the wellbeing of patients would normally be seen as a family member who is supportive of a business, and trying to help the business to succeed.

So that’s why there are old magazines in doctors’ offices!

Get some “Sweet Pickles” books!

The idea that the dentist wants to keep old magazines on hand because he hasn’t read them yet suggests, to me, that he is less concerned with helping his patients escape their fears about an upcoming procedure, and more interested in his own entertainment. While old magazines aren’t a deal breaker as far as deciding which dentist to use, higher levels of anxiety are.-For me, (and I have a lot of medical complications) the fact that one dentist offers earphones with music while he’s working on trying to repair a broken tooth while another does not made a difference. For someone else, it might be the chance to ‘get lost’ in a new Reader’s Digest and not hear the patient in the chair groaning…

Perfect magazines for a Doctors waiting room!

Could John be a bigger loser than Jon Arbuckle (from Garfield)?

goweeder: Are you monitoring my movements? This morning, I waited 55 minutes in the waiting room and another 20 before seeing the doctor (although three different nurses popped in to spend 5-15 minutes at the computer during that time). In to out, 1 hour, 50 minutes. Needless to say, I bring my own reading matter.

I make it a rule in my house anything over a few months I throw out.

firebrand1: Most of those are McCarthyist lies. It started downhill in the 1940s when it no longer reprinted condensed articles from other periodicals and begin planting their own in other magazines and then “reprinted” them to continue the pretense.