A little rant about dental hygiene

I just had my teeth cleaned. It was the same as every other time except this time I didn't brush my teeth beforehand. Well I brushed my teeth beforehand (as in before breakfast), but not right before I was leaving. I decided to do this after I realized the pointlessness of the whole thing. In what other service industry do we try to do the service on ourselves before we go get the service? Do we cook a little something up before we head off to the restaurant? Do we trim the grass before paying someone to mow the lawn? Do we vacuum our carpet before we get professionals to clean it?

We are going to get the teeth cleaned because the dental hygienists are better at it than we are (or at least have better tools...painful, painful tools). You are not going to wipe away the many months of coffee, tea, tobacco, soy sauce stains with one brushing session right before you leave. Some might say that it is a courtesy to the people who will have to look at your mouth/smell your breath for 30 minutes, but that is their job. If they really mind the sight of dirty, rotting teeth and bad breath why did they decide to do this for a living? And don't even get me started on the whole flossing thing. I get it, we are supposed to do it. We all have floss containers at home from every time we've gotten our teeth cleaned before. Can't you tell if I have been flossing by looking at my gums and how they bleed at the sight of that sharp claw like instrument? There's no point in asking if I've been flossing regularly and then telling me that I should after I've made up my excuse as to why I don't. If there's anything I've learned from pharmacy, it's that guilt trips never work.