Bland and infantilizing

I tend to take these things seriously

Secret confesh, I didn't visit a dentist throughout the entire pandemic. (High-fives for it being officially over!) I hope you're like, "Me neither" instead of "Gross, Phoebe."

In my defense, dental visits were reported to be one of the quickest ways to catch COVID, right after frenching someone with COVID, and inventing COVID in a laboratory then accidentally spilling your test tube of COVID.

Since I'm bad at keeping up with basic health admin in the best of times, oral health fell by the wayside while my teeth and mental health did their best not to fall apart (TBD on the latter).

I was excited to try Tend for my big return to pre-pandemic hygiene. They had been courting me for months with relentless Instagram ads (do people humblebrag about their ad algorithms now?) until I stopped playing hard to get with my literally dirty mouth and jumped down their sales funnel.

Just like I willed Capsule into existence with a tweet, I've always wished some motivated entrepreneur would disrupt dentistry already. Who will be the first millennial bland to say they are "Dental care made easy?"

Turns out it's not Tend.

They opted for another overused bland slogan, "Dental done differently.” And “different" doesn't actually mean "easy" so technically they're not lying.

Here's how my experience was "different," for better or worse:

First off, the “studio” is not one in a row of identical offices in an anonymous building. You don’t show your driver's license to a sedentary security guard in the lobby so they can buzz you through a magnetic kiddie-gate outside an elevator bank, then bark at you across the all-marble, echoey public stage because you're pushing the wrong side of the kiddie gate. Or worse, you’re pulling instead pushing you hopeless idiot.

(For non-NYC readers, this the experience of visiting pretty much any office lobby in our fair metropolis.)

Instead of all that, Tend is more like walking through a boutique storefront, as easy-breezy-beautiful as their online booking interface.

Big windows, strategic lighting, Memphis-esque decor, and people behind the reception desk who look only *slightly* annoyed that you've interrupted their office shit-talking session.

Yes, even though you had the gall to choose their workplace to spend your money— especially on a day when there is so much staff vs. management drama to discuss— the Tend staff will muster the energy to greet you with a level of enthusiasm that won't get them fired.

Sidenote: I'm a little irrational on the warm-greeting front. Any time I crawl out of my home-office-hovel to interact with other humans in the third dimension, I expect strangers greet me like a long-lost friend they thought had died in an electric skateboard accident, but turns out it was someone else.

So maybe my expectations for what I'd experience with Tend were a little irrational too. I thought if they are “disruptive” enough to make the very unsexy process of going to the dentist feel Instagram-worthy, which their marketing literally promises, surely they have transformed the dentistry part of the experience to be delightful too, right?

Again, not Tend.

Once you take your lobby selfie, receive your free travel bag and minimalist toothbrush and walk past the motivational neon wall art, you face reality: you’re still here for a dental cleaning.

The X-rays still require you to chomp down on hard-plastic clippy things that dig into your gums and make much pain. The X-rays still feel never ending and unnecessary.

And no, the pointy metal tools they use to scrape away a pandemic's worth of plaque from your teeth have not been replaced with painless lasers like you thought they should have been in this modern era of startup innovation.

This is good old-fashioned dentistry in Warby Parker sunglasses.

No, seriously. They give you Warby Parker sunglasses to wear during your visit. I guess to keep from spit and rinse splashing in your eyes but also so you feel cool?

There are other quirky comfort measures like a flatscreen TV mounted to the ceiling and a pair of Beats headphones so you can watch Netflix while you get drilled (make the Tinder dating joke of your choice here.)

But the Beats and shades couldn’t block out the bad news that I had a cavity for the first time since I was 8 years old. The dentist sauntered in like, "It's pretty big and close to the nerve so it may have to be a root canal, we'll see."

I don't know if this is in their service manual, but the cool and casual vibe of Tend’s bathroom decor shouldn't extend to conversations about excavating your mouth bones with an electric drill.

Maybe the dentist went with NBD-energy around my tooth hole to keep me from panicking, but it did the opposite.

I considered jumping out of the chair and running to my amazing old dentist in her rinky-dink office where a selfie had ne’er been snapped. But I was also in the middle of a Home Edit episode and really wanted to see how the Atlanta pantry turned out.

Then it got worse.

I *extracted* as much info as I could from Dr. Shoulder-Shrug-Whatever before he started drilling, and understood the cavity was in my FRONT tooth, which has bonding that covers up a not-cute gap between another tooth.

“What about my bonding?”

“Yeah, I’m gonna remove it.”

No mention of putting it back. Not only could I be undergoing a nerve-murdering root canal if the filling didn't go well (at this point, I had zero confidence he would do his best work) but my country-cousin tooth gap would be back too, front and center.

"I'll know more after working on the cavity a little," he assured me in the least assuring way. "I'm gonna put that tooth to sleep now."

"What does that MEAN?" I was getting angry at how “dental done differently” meant Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. And I felt dumb because I fell for a beautiful brand identity with aggressive marketing once again, and the only thing behind the curtain was a shitty experience.

This is what happens when a startup doesn’t “market on both ends,” which is a startuppy way of talking about false advertising. If the product experience or performance—where the rubber meets the road in terms of brand adoption—doesn’t match its appearance, it’s more frustrating than sitting for too long in an ugly waiting room.

"I'm gonna give you a little shot." Of novocaine, he meant. He could have said this up front if he realized I’m an adult human being who’s capable of an adult conversation, not a pediatric patient expecting a balloon when it's over.

Whatever planet rules good luck in dentistry was mercifully stationed in Sagittarius that day, because not too-too long after the drilling started, I was told I would not need a root canal, and that the front of my bonding (the part that hides my Delaware Water Gap of a smile) would still be intact.

I over-thanked him and confessed how scared I was.

"I couldn't tell. You did great.” He then said, "Boop!" And lightly touched the tip of my nose with his finger. Just kidding, that last part didn't happen but I'm sure there's a Yelp review somewhere where it did.

I gave back the sunglasses and Beats and made my way out with the confidence of a child carrying a brand-new balloon. (Another thing Tend gets right: You book your next appointment and give them your copay while you’re still in the chair, so there's no lengthy checkout process at reception when you’re ready to leave.)

I breezed past the front desk to the exit and pushed the heavy glass door. It didn't budge.

Within the split-second it took me to reposition myself to pull, I hear the receptionist flatly say "PULL" from behind the desk.

It was "you hopeless idiot" in the tone of millennial teal.