2850: Doctor's Office

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Doctor's Office

Title text: "The police told me I can't be a doctor, but whenever they show up I just go into the Google Maps settings page I found and change the house to 'Police Headquarters' and then they have to do what I say."

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

In this comic, Beret Guy has discovered how to add public labels to locations on Google Maps. He has used the tool to label his house as a physician's office, and then proceeded to impersonate a physician, making this another comic with one of his special businesses.

It seems that Cueball has seen and trusted the label, and has arrived for a medical consultation. He apparently is a walk-in (that is, he does not have appointment), an unheard-of situation for a physician's office in contemporary United States of America that is not an urgent-care facility (for which Beret Guy makes no claim). Thus, Cueball has bought into Beret Guy's bizarre vision, as is typical for Beret Guy comics.

It is soon apparent that Beret Guy has no medical credentials. His "librarian for bones and blood" line in the first panel is nonsensical. The terms he uses while taking Cueball's temperature (second panel) are simplistic, and his prescription for Cueball's fever farcical. In the third panel, he hands Cueball what's supposed to be a medical consent form, but is in fact a New York Times crossword puzzle. The New York Times crosswords are designed to get progressively more challenging over the course of each week, but the week starts on Monday. Beret Guy's claim on this subject, at least, is accurate.

In the fourth panel, Cueball finally questions whether Beret Guy's claim is accurate, and the facts of the situation are revealed - while Beret Guy wheels in a (section of a) Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) device (usually a feature of a hospital or medical laboratory, not an individual physician's office, and, assembled, far larger/heavier than one person can manage on a dolly) and wonders aloud what it is for. He also comments that he bets it is loud, implying that he does not yet know and that this will be the first time he uses it. It should indeed be loud. Typically many loud noises are made, by both the actuators and from the hardware that controls and produces the magnetic fields, especially from the perspective of one laid inside the device.

In the title text, the police cite Beret Guy for impersonating a physician, but Beret Guy returns to Google Maps and relabels his house "Police Headquarters", thus (by implication) making himself Chief of Police to whose authority the officers must submit - by withdrawing the "impersonating a physician" charge. If this works as claimed, it's another of the strange powers of Beret Guy, and a substantial one. However, we have only Beret Guy's word that it does. Declaring oneself a physician, in an office of one, is different from declaring oneself the appointed/elected leader of an armed force. If it does work, maybe Beret Guy's next house label is the White House. The implications are nontrivial.

Beret Guy's comment that "It's a Monday, so [the crossword]'s not too hard" refers to the observation that New York Times crossword puzzles increase in difficulty through the week, with the easiest on Monday and hardest on Saturday (there's also a larger Sunday puzzle, but it's in The New York Times Magazine rather than the newspaper, and is designed to be about as hard as a Thursday puzzle).

A physician imposter was also featured in 699: Trimester, while possibly authentic physicians behaving badly appear in 938: T-Cells, 1471: Gut Fauna, and 1839: Doctor Visit. One can only hope that Randall doesn't have real-life models for these situations.

Transcript

[Beret Guy is sitting at a desk, wearing a lab coat. Cueball is walking in from the right as Beret Guy stretches an arm out towards him in greeting.]

Beret Guy: Welcome to the doctor!

Beret Guy: We're like librarians, but for your bones and blood.

[In a frame-less panel Beret Guy is standing in front of Cueball while holding a device in his hand, which are attached with a coiling wire to a thermometer in Cueball's mouth. He reads something of the device while holding a pill bottle in the other hand.]

Beret Guy: Uh-oh! This beeper says you're too hot.

Beret Guy: You should eat some of these little snacks that make you colder.

[Zoom in on the two persons where Beret Guy is holding a pen up towards Cueball who is holding a clipboard with a newspaper page stuck to it. Cueball is looking down at the page, which has a black picture in the top left corner and lots of unreadable lines across the rest of the page.]

Beret Guy: We can make holes in you, but you have to fill out this form first.

Cueball: This is a New York Times crossword.

Beret Guy: Don't worry, it's a Monday, so it's not too hard.

[Cueball is watching as Beret Guy walks past him rolling a machine labeled "MRI" on a dolly.]

Cueball: This is a doctor's office, right?

Beret Guy: Yeah! It used to be my house, but I found the setting on Google Maps to change it.

Beret Guy: Hey, wanna help find out what this box does? I bet it's loud!

Label: MRI

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Discussion

Why wouldn't Randal post this on a Monday instead of a Friday?162.158.166.65 22:05, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

added transccccccccc Me^{[citation needed]} 22:06, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Should 699: Trimester be mentioned in the explanation anywhere?--172.69.58.190 02:11, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

eh. probably. Me^{[citation needed]} 02:15, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Here before fans inevitably figure out which crossword number it is someone, i guess^{(talk i guess|le edit list)} 02:45, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

What terms, exactly, are malapropisms in the second panel? Did someone misuse a fancy word and nobody else bother to check it's meaning, or is there something I'm missing? DL Draco Rex (talk) 04:10, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

You are correct. A "malaprop" is susing a word that sounds similar to the correct word. Beret Guy is just misunderstanding.Nitpicking (talk) 11:42, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Rearranged the section about other similar comics, and added 1471 [Gut Fauna]. 699 [Trimester] is the only one explicitly confirmed to be an impostor. 172.69.22.223 07:09, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Although I'm really very good at US/UK English differences, "doctor's office" always wrongfoots me. As doctors have surgeries, not offices, it adds to the overall feel of "not really a proper doctor" in the comic. Yorkshire Pudding (talk) 13:53, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

I know what you mean. And much of the US healthcare structure also seems to only work very well for those for whom it works at the expense of not working at all for most of the rest. I'd almost not be surprised to find a 'pop-up' surgery like this for either those ready and eager to pay or completely without the means and desperate (the latter might not have the MRI scanner at hand...).

The disparities in US health care are well documented (apologies if you hit a paywall). As for the 'pop-up' surgeries/medical care "offices", you may be referring to urgent care centers, which are commonplace in the US now, and expensive but (maybe) better than going without. True 'pop-ups' (e.g., temporary facilities under canvas) are not unknown, and not just after natural disasters. 172.71.142.100 17:02, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

For all the problems with the UK healthcare systems (and the gods know that there are indeed some), I can't see Beret Guy's system working here, at the same level of hypothetical. (Same with policing matters.) 141.101.98.33 14:10, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Just imagine how Americans feel when we read about members of Parliament holding surgeries for their constituents. Very confusing. --172.70.127.7 15:58, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

It's helpful (at least to me) to read the etymology of the word "surgery", especially how, in British English, it came to mean "a (place for) consultation." Combine this with the realization that, whereas in the USA a physician holds a doctorate degree, a physician in the UK holds a bachelor's degree - UK secondary school graduates, if they qualify, go directly to medical school, bypassing the bachelor's degree step forced on would-be physicians in the US. Thus, a "doctor's office" in the USA is a place where the physician holds a doctorate degree (technically "is a doctor"), and is found in an office processing the paperwork that dominates the doctor's day, whilst a "doctor's surgery" in the UK is a place where the physician might not hold a doctorate degree (technically "is not a doctor") and in which, in the modern day, surgeries seldom (never?) take place. 172.71.150.82 07:33, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

"We [English] have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language." - Oscar Wilde, 1887 172.71.142.104 16:41, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Maybe the "We're like librarians, but for your bones and blood" refers to medical studies, that involve a lot of rote memorization. Among the things medical students need to know by heart are the names of bones and blood vessels. 172.71.186.18 00:17, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

The Google Maps stuff sounds a lot like Wiretapping the Secret Service can be easy and fun to me. Jadatkins (talk) 15:24, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

I would argue that "making holes in you" is much more likely to refer to the use of needles and syringes, first to withdraw blood for lab analysis (to determine the root cause of being too hot), and subsequently to administer medication to combat whatever infection is detected. Joe Perez (talk)

I agree; I've made that addition. BunsenH (talk) 18:48, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

There are smaller MRTs just for arms and legs, about the size as shown in the comic. For example the GE Optima MR430s. 172.70.85.222 12:30, 8 November 2023 (UTC)