Wow, for some reason I seem to encounter the WORST clients. I have dozens of stories. I'll try to pick the best; maybe I'll post a few more later.
Over summers I work at a small 1-doctor clinic that's run out of the doctor's home. She only has daytime/evening hours, and doesn't see clients on weekends. She often has crazy people come and beat down her door trying to drop off animals or demanding treatment for her pets, and became very careful about security after her house was broken into. Once my aunt's neighbor left her daughter's pomeranian tied up on her driveway, in a neighborhood with larger dogs that have been known to get out of their yard before. Needless to say, the poor little dog was mauled by a few loose dogs (I'm fairly sure one was the neighbor's german shepherd). The woman freaked out, scooped up the dog, and drove the 2 minutes to the doc's clinic/home. She started beating at the door in an understandable panic, and was (according to her) screamed at through a closed door to GO AWAY. After arguing with faceless voice for awhile with a bloody little dog in the car, she finally decided to drive to the e-clinic the next town over. The dog passed away later that night.
Now, why do I know this story? I certainly wasn't there when it happened. In fact, I hadn't been at the clinic in months. Well, I was back home to attend my father's wake and funeral. So I was at the wake, obviously distraught, and for some reason my aunt thought it was appropriate to bring this woman to the wake, and for some reason this woman thought it was appropriate to berate me at said wake. So there I was, trying not to cry and calmly explaining to the woman that I only work there part of the year, that the doctor lives there and has had problems with break-ins and the like in the past, and that since it was a weekend the doctor probably was out of state showing her dobies and that it was probably the cleaning lady that didn't know how to properly respond. I also reminded her of the existence of several 24/7 e-clinics on the island that would have been more prepared to handle the, well, EMERGENCY; that if she called our clinic she would have gotten the numbers and addresses of said clinics; and that if she went to the front door of the clinic (and not around back to the doctor's home) the same information would have been on the door, along with the office hours. Of course apologizing for her loss etc. the whole time. For well over a half hour. At my father's wake. A month later and I'm still baffled at how that could even happen.
Once during my first summer at this clinic on an incredibly busy day (no lunch for me!) there was a woman who brought in her female red dobie for a pregnancy exam/x-ray and complaint of vaginal discharge. The dog comes in, turns out to have a (really bad) pyo. The doctor explains to the woman that her dog is in fact not pregnant, she only appears pregnant because her uterus is just that swollen with pus, and that an emergency spay had to be performed right then or the dog may die. I'm trying to pin down the woman's hyperactive child who is running around the exam room while the woman complains about how there's no way we can do that, how can we be sure that she has a "pus-sy uterus", what's gonna happen to the puppies (did we not just establish that she wasn't pregnant? 😕) is she gonna be able to have any puppies, etc. She cursed the "daddy" since it "was all his damn fault, isn't it" and proceeded to whine about how she was never going to be able to have a piece of her sweet Bella when she was gone, since she would never have any puppies. It took doc nearly an hour to convince the woman to allow the surgery. (Remember that this is a 1-doctor clinic, and the waiting room was already packed with clients since we were behind on schedules to begin with). That was just another nightmare client on a nightmare day.
