Dan,
Too bad the rheumatologists in my area don't have at least some of your attitude. We can't get them to take the patient in the first place without the doctor reviewing my note and the demographics, deciding whether they think it is worth their time to see a patient I want to refer to them, and then telling the patient they have to bring cash up front before they will be seen. And, yes, there are a number of plumbers and others that refused to do repeat jobs for my husband. I went for months not telling my knows-how-to-do-anything repair guy that I was a doctor because he had said in passing early on he will not work for doctors because they tend to be PITAs. I am the daughter of a fifth generation haberdasher and was raised in a home where it was drilled into us "The customer is always right" but I watched my abused father drag down to the store on a Saturday night or Sunday afternoon so a customer could pick up the suit the tailor had finished the week before because he now needed it for a party that night.
Sorry, Dan, but to me providing a service does not equate with being made to service idiots and ingrates. And, my restaurant experiences would be better if waitresses did refuse to seat miscreants and loud-mouths. Our society has become so afraid of offending those who offend us, of not being politically correct. JMO
