The squeak of my rubber soles against the waxed linoleum at 4:44 PM feels like a broadcast of my own intrusion. It is the sound of a person who is technically invited but functionally in the way. The waiting room is a sea of 24 empty chairs, all upholstered in a shade of teal that looks exhausted under the dimming fluorescent tubes. There is a specific silence that descends upon a dental clinic when the day is gasping its final breaths. It’s not the peaceful silence of a library; it’s the heavy, pressurized silence of a stage crew waiting for the lead actor to finally finish their last monologue so everyone can go get a beer. I sit there, clutching a magazine from 2014, feeling a prickle of guilt. I am the reason the receptionist can’t close her spreadsheet. I am the reason the hygienist is currently scrubbing a tray instead of sitting in her car, listening to a podcast, and exhaling the scent of fluoride and latex.

I’m reminded of Logan R.J., a man I met while waiting for a flight in a terminal that smelled faintly of burnt cinnamon. Logan is a carnival ride inspector, a job that requires him to look for hairline fractures in the steel spines of Ferris wheels and the rusted bolts of the Zipper. He is 54 years old and has the kind of eyes that look like they’ve seen too many safety violations. … Sitting here in the dental chair, I see the same thing in the hygienist’s eyes. She’s not being rude, but the ‘customer service’ mask has slipped just enough to show the 64 ounces of coffee she’s consumed since dawn.

The Honesty of Exhaustion

We tend to view this as a failure of the patient experience. We want the 4:44 PM version of a professional to be just as bubbly and attentive as the 8:04 AM version. We expect the reservoir of empathy to be bottomless, as if being a caregiver means you’ve signed a contract to forfeit your own physical fatigue. But there is something deeply honest about this hour. In the morning, you get the performance. At the end of the day, you get the person. You see the way they lean against the counter, the way they rub their lower back, the way they talk about their dinner plans with a colleague in the hallway. These are 144 small signals that they are human.

If we are honest with ourselves, it is a privilege to see the human beneath the healthcare provider. We spend so much of our lives interacting with curated versions of people that witnessing true, unfiltered exhaustion feels like an intimacy we didn’t earn.

The Obligation of Old Condiments

“Earlier today, I threw away 4 bottles of expired condiments from the back of my fridge. There was a jar of spicy mustard that had survived 4 moves and 14 different roommates, its expiration date a faded ghost from 2014.”

I realized as I tossed it into the bin that I had been keeping it out of a weird sense of obligation, a fear of the void that would be left if I cleared out the things that were no longer serving a purpose. We do the same thing with our expectations of service. We cling to the idea that every interaction must be ‘revolutionary’ or ‘seamless’ because we are afraid of the awkward reality of human limits. When the hygienist stifles a yawn while asking about my flossing habits, she isn’t failing me. She is simply existing in a body that has worked for 504 minutes without a real break.

There is a technical term for this: emotional labor. It is the effort required to suppress your actual feelings to produce a specific state of mind in another person. By the time the clock hits 4:44 PM, that labor has become a heavy lift. The staff at a place like Millrise Dental are acutely aware of this balance, striving to maintain a standard of care that doesn’t collapse under the weight of a long Tuesday. It is a delicate dance… You feel like a burden because you are, in a very literal sense, the final barrier between them and their private lives.

Relief in Being a Data Point

I once made the mistake of thinking the receptionist’s blunt tone was a personal slight… It wasn’t until I walked past her desk on the way out and heard her sighing about a broken dishwasher at home that I realized I wasn’t even a character in her story. I was just the 34th person to stand in front of her that day. I was a data point. My ego wanted her to be ‘on’ for me, but her reality was elsewhere. This realization didn’t make me feel small; it made me feel relieved. It’s a lot of pressure to be the center of everyone’s attention. Being the last appointment of the day is a lesson in humility. You are not the protagonist; you are the epilogue.

Logan R.J. would probably say that the wear and tear on a human is harder to spot than a hairline fracture on a roller coaster… There is a specific kind of beauty in that hope. It’s the hope of the transition. We are all constantly moving toward the next thing, trying to discard the ‘mustard’ of our day to make room for the evening.

The 104 Percent Culture

We live in a culture that demands 104 percent from everyone, all the time. We’ve been told that if we aren’t ‘crushing it’ or ‘leveling up,’ we are failing. But humans aren’t built for constant output. We are built for cycles. We are built for the 8:04 AM energy and the 4:44 PM slump. When we enter a clinic at the end of the day, we are entering the slump. Instead of being frustrated by it, we should find comfort in it. It is proof that the people caring for us are actually like us. They have homes they want to go to, families they want to see, and expired condiments they probably need to throw away.

He wasn’t a ‘provider’ in that moment; he was just a guy who had been standing on his feet for 94 percent of the day and was ready to sit down.