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Dentally Incorrect

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Dentally Incorrect  

Lessons Learned

(A NEW YEAR’S NEWSLETTER TO STAFF)

Now that we’ve stumbled into the New Year, I wanted to look back and reflect on the past year, one quarter at a time, and try to squeeze some lemonade out of the lemons that seemed all too ripe and abundant. Let’s all move forward by going backward through the previous year.

In Q4, I learned that dressing up as Santa was a bit too convincing. Too many of you didn’t realize it was me and asked for a better job. Also, despite its increasing legality and waning stigma, it wasn’t the best idea to allow cannabis-infused stuffing at this year’s holiday party. Consequently, whoever told me that some chocolate would ease the paranoia was not only a liar but also an accessory in busting the glass out of the vending machine at the dry cleaner next door. Lastly, we won’t be doing a candy buyback in 2022 after it was discovered that some of you were just slipping the candy back into the system. (I thought those hygiene to-go bags looked lumpy!)
In Q3, I learned “mechanically separated animal trimmings pureed into a liquified brown emulsion, then extruded into cellulose tubing” is the exact wrong way to talk about our first and last hot-dog-eating contest. Let’s just go back to almost blowing each other up in the parking lot with firecrackers, OK? Likewise, our summer’s “fun in the sun” program was a failure: Turning the office lawn into a natural tanning bed/lobby was well-intentioned, but after we forgot about that kid for three hours, I think we should bring patients back inside, out of the sun, and try to get the image of blistered flesh far from our minds. (Great, now I’m thinking about hot dogs again.)
In Q2, I learned that my long-held belief that none of you understood baseball puns was a fallacy when someone described me as the catcher on the team because I’m “always sitting behind a plate.” I’d have been more offended if I wasn’t so proud of how clever that was. Runner-up goes to my wife, who described our first date as being just like a ballgame: a three-hour mix of boredom and anxiety that ended with me stranded on third base. Also, I’m likely committing an array of accidental tax fraud after I forgot to submit some rather crucial forms to the IRS. The good news is that for now there’s more money in all of our pockets.
In Q1, I learned that we need to do a deep clean of the office more than just once each spring. It’s time to start policing the breakroom fridge for the two most common problems we ran across: things that have mold and the scarier things we found that were eating the mold. It was ... let’s call it humbling to hear the pest-control employees say they’d “never seen a mouse look so at home in all his life.” And finally, after another year, another one of these newsletters and a deeper understanding of social media, I’ve learned not to sign my name on this or use the office’s official letterhead … again.
Dentally Incorrect
Dentaltown Magazine
September 2025
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