A medical doctor (who shall remain nameless, of course) asked me to connect on LinkedIn. I am a member of various lists that encourage linking, so I accepted his invitation. His business was around healthcare with an emphasis on healthy living, so I enquired about it, thinking that it was some sort of motivational method. I got back an email which made it plain that you had to buy some food from him to do this method, and that since he couldn’t ship it to the UK (for some unspecified reason) I would be able to get some by having it shipped to an address in the US and then reshipped here.
I thought to myself, “That’s more complexity than I want to handle,” and emailed him to that effect, and said that when and if he shipped to the UK I would revisit the subject.
In return, I got this email:
I got that. Just let me know when you decide that a fortune robbing, premature, painful, prolonged death is, indeed, more complex than the simple details of shipping to you the solution to your health problems.
Gobsmacked, I replied:
Goodness, your bedside manner leaves much to be desired. Please don’t communicate with me any more, thanks.
and proceeded to delete him from my LinkedIn contacts list.
I suppose that he was sick the day they taught bedside manner in medical school.
Sounds like a scam to me. If I got a message like that from a doctor (especially one with whom I had no professional relationship as yet) I’d give serious consideration to sending a complaint to whoever issued him a license to practice medicine.
Well, complaining to the US board of medical examiners of his state is probably more trouble than it’s worth. Yes, it sounds like a scam, but I wasn’t stung by it, and if his “bedside manner” shown in that email is typical, then he won’t have stung many people.
Heh. Sounds more like “high-pressure sales tactic” than “bedside manner”.
Also sounds like good riddance.
BTW, sorry about not getting in touch when the sweetie and I were in London. We were on a bit of a high from the Bingham Cup, our phones were not on their best behavior, and I really wasn’t in the mood for heavy doses of internet cafes. Next time we’re in the UK, I’ll have a laptop, which would make communications much easier.
That’s OK. Give me some advance notice and we’ll have dinner or something like that there…