u/ubivator519

Had my annual checkup last week. New doctor, mine retired. She's fine, thorough, asked all the right questions. Then she gets to the family planning section and I say what I always say, no kids, not planning on it. She pauses, looks up from her screen, and does the thing. "You're only 29, you have time to decide." I told her I've already decided. She tilted her head in that specific way people do when they think you're confused about your own life and said "well, you might feel differently once you meet the right person." I have been with my partner for six years. I mentionned this. She said "that's sweet, but people surprise themselves." I genuinely did not know what to do with that sentence so I just stared at her until she moved on. The part that gets me every time is that these conversations are never actually about me. Nobody is curious about my reasoning or my life. It's always just this reflex, like the idea that someone might not want children is a glitch that needs to be gently corrected by a stranger with a clipboard. I've had this exact conversation with hairdressers, coworkers, my dentist, a woman behind me in a grocery line, and now my GP. At some point you stop being surprised and just start mentally cataloguing it. This one goes in the medical professionals folder, right next to the gyno from 2021 who told me I'd "understand when I held my own baby." I'm good thanks.

The call lasted nineteen minutes. I remember because I was walking home and I checked my phone after we hung up. She said she had reviewed my background, thought I was a strong fit, wanted to move me forward, and that I should expect to hear about next steps within the week. She used the phrase "we're excited about you" which I wrote dow afterward because I was genuinely encouraged and I didn't want to misremember it.

Week two I sent a polite follow up. No response. Week three, another one. Nothing. At that point I had been in enough hiring processes to know that silence usually means no, so I accepted it and moved on, kept applying elsewhere, stopped thinking about it. Then week eleven, almost three months later, I was cleaning out my drafts and saw the thread and just decided to send one final message asking if there was any update. Figured I had nothing to lose.

She responded within four hours. Said the role had been filled and she was sorry she hadn't been in touch, that things had gotten busy during the hiring process. Eleven weeks. The role was filled and she was busy. I went back and looked at my sent folder and I had followed up three times over the course of that period and received no response to any of them. Not a form rejection, not a "we went another direction," nothing. Just silence and then an apology for being busy when I eventaully forced the issue myself. I'm not even angry at this point I'm just genuinely fascinated by the complete absence of any awareness that this is a strange way to treat a person who took nineteen minutes of her time in good faith.