Doctor Curmudgeon® Just Agree and Sign!

By Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D. FAAFP

There are automatic updates.

There are update notices.

There are updates that I prefer to install manually (Just don’t ask! I am a troglodyte, as most of you know)

There are new programs to be installed.

All kinds of things to slap onto my already over loaded, over programmed, over app-ed computer.

And each time, I am about to install something, there is that thousand and one page document.

It daunts me.

It annoys me.

It upsets me.

And, please don’t tell my wonderful attorney; I never read the darn things. (But I am certain that, knowing me, he has his suspicions).

I don’t even scan them

I just click “agree” and go on my merry, or often, not so merry way.

These impossible documents, or EULAS, end user license agreements, are beyond my comprehension, beyond my patience to peruse, and way beyond my legal knowledge.

If I sent each one to my attorney before I signed them, I’m sure he would groan, do a face slap and sigh very loudly

And, yes, I have been told never, never, never to sign something without sending it to him first.
But these abominations are different!

I have never met anybody who has read them. I’m sure there must be people out there on this planet or some other planet, in this universe or an alternate universe- who actually read these idiocies, word, by word by word, by sentence, by paragraph, by the boring page after page.

I just leave them to the innards of my computer to figure out. I know that, despite our sometimes difficult relationship, my computer really does the best it can and sincerely wants to help me.

While I write this, a program is installing. But…no… as my fast and furious finger clicked on the “agree,” a phrase passed quickly by at the bottom of the agreement:

I, the undersigned, do hereby agree to forfeit all chocolate, twenty five percent of my net income, all rights of ownership of my practice, and censorship of my writing….forever….to….

Doctor Curmudgeon® is Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D., a physician-satirist. This column originally appeared on SERMO, the leading global social network for doctors.

SERMO www.sermo.com “talk real world medicine”

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