Office Visit Part 2

  I'm in the office now, a big room with seats arranged all over  the place. The best word to describe the scene is desultory.  No one is complaining; everyone looks resigned, repeat customers most likely.   There are numerous doctors in the practice, with their  offices on both sides of the room.  About a dozen or so people are sitting in various areas of the colorless room.   They would have already checked in and so are waiting to be called.  Several people are standing in line, a distance back from the half dozen windows lining the front of the room,  obeying the sign on the large centrally located posts which tell all comers where to stand while waiting to be called.
    From time to time, a doctor or other professional crosses the room, from one office to another. They all have the same comportment:  walk quickly, purposefully and  avoid eye contact with any of the people they walk among. A youngish man enters the room just as one of the most vaunted  doctors happens to be crossing the room.  The man has the temerity to stop him in his path and ask him where he should go for a bloodtest.  He must be a new patient. The doctor tells him he needs to check in.  And that is the issue that irritates me the most; the line is the same for checking in and checking out. After my test of the day was over, the technician handed me the discharge sheet or whatever it's called and told me to hand it in at the  desk.  So I waited, in line, the 8th of 7 others, until I was called. I walked to the window, silently handed in my paper, and that was it.
   At my last visit there, I noticed a sheaf of handouts at each of the windows. The paper was an announcement of the "New PHR Portal."  I previously had signed up for this office's Patient Portal, which was mostly non-working even before they replaced it with the PHR. I'd brought the information sheet home  to activate it, but was unable to because it depended on a new  username and temporary password supplied by the office. I called the office for the info as instructed, but my calls were never returned. You can't contact this office directly unless it's an emergency. so I asked at the desk today how I could activate it---the sheets promoting the PHR Portal are prominently displayed on the counters of each.
 window.  She didn't know,  and she didn't respond when I said nobody ever calls back when I leave a message.  She asked another rep, who didn't know either, but told her to verify my email. Which we did,  and she said she'd email me a new password, which she did not.