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SELINOZSAYAN LTD

Making an appointment. Four things in the first message, one offer at a time, and a confirmation that names six.

Page
Appointments
In writing
Always
Offer stands
Three working days

The first message

An appointment is arranged in writing, and only in writing. The diary and the file are both written documents; a spoken arrangement leaves nothing to enter, and the office would have to write it down from memory before it could confirm it. So the first message carries four things, and nothing else is needed to begin.

  1. The days you can attend. Named days, not a phrase. Monday and Thursday is an answer the diary can act on; weekdays is not, because the frame is not the same on every weekday.
  2. The earliest and the latest hour on those days. Two clock times. The office compares them against the frame it keeps the diary to and replies with the overlap, or with the fact that there is none.
  3. The length you want. A session is arranged at a length settled in advance, in minutes, and the same length each time after that unless a message changes it.
  4. The written address to reply to. One address. The office replies to it and to no other, and it stays the address on the file until a message from that address changes it.

The offer, and how long it stands

The office offers one day and one start time at a time. Two offers held open at once can both be accepted, and then one of them has to be withdrawn, which is worse than waiting. An offer stands for three working days. After that the hour goes back into the diary and the offer is recorded as lapsed rather than refused, because those are different things and the file keeps them apart.

AOffer and acceptance

Agreed

The office names a day, a start time and the length it is offering, and gives the date the offer lapses.

Accepting it is a message that repeats the date and the start time back. The repetition is not politeness: it is how a misread hour is caught before it is confirmed.

Written down

  • the day and start time offered
  • the date the offer was sent and the date it lapses
  • whether it was accepted, refused or allowed to lapse
  • the date the acceptance arrived

What the confirmation names

A booking exists when the office has sent the confirmation, and not before. The confirmation names six things, always in the same order:

If a confirmation has not arrived within three working days of an acceptance, write again. The office would rather answer the same question twice than hold an hour that nobody else knows about, and a second message costs the diary nothing.

What is not asked for

To put a date in the diary the office needs the four things above and an acceptance. It does not ask for a date of birth, a postal address or a telephone number, because none of them is used to hold an hour and none of them is kept on the file.

Where something further is genuinely needed — an arrangement that has to be made at the address before the day, for instance — the message that asks for it says what it is for and what becomes of it afterwards. The questions the office will answer in writing about the address are set out under access and arrangements.

The sheet on the front page works out how many whole slots a day of a given shape can hold. It is useful for seeing why a request for five in the afternoon on a Friday cannot be met; it is not a list of free hours and it offers nothing. What the diary holds on a particular day is only ever answered in a reply.