Dr. Hatter, who lives in Second City, Saskatchewan, may be the only man in the world to combine horology and psychology into a single highly profitable medical practice.
Horology, for those of you who have better things to do with your life, is the science of measuring time.
Psychology is the science of explaining why people who measure time make the rest of us nervous.
Dr. Hatter is forty-two, dusty-haired, pale-eyed, and comes from a long line of watchmakers.
“My family has been consumed with time for centuries,” he told me, while checking three wristwatches. “We opened our first Canadian shop at 9:01 a.m., January 4, 1896.”
Until he was seventeen, Hatter expected to spend his life in the family jewelry shop, as his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had done before him.
“But Dad wanted me to get a college degree,” he said, “so I could learn more about our family’s phobia.”
The Hatters suffer from tardophobia, a pathological fear of being late.
Dr. Hatter says there is also a related condition known as antitardophobia, which afflicts people who become anxious if they arrive too early and have to stand around making small talk with strangers near a punch bowl.
“People laugh at tardophobia,” he said, “but those same people can tell you the birthdate of every one of their children, and often the exact minute they were born. Everybody worships time. Some of us simply dress better for the ceremony.”
If two watches stop, he relies on the third
This may explain why Dr. Hatter wears three wristwatches.
After our interview, he also admitted to carrying a pocket watch, purchased at 4:22 p.m., March 7, 1991.
Using yellow Post-it notes, mini tape recorders, and a filing system that appears to have been designed by a Swiss monk with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, Dr. Hatter keeps a minute-by-minute record of nearly everything that happens to him.
Fortunately, this obsession has turned out to be profitable.
Dr. Hatter now earns more than two million dollars a year treating other people’s tardophobia.
“Basically,” he said, “I turned a phobia into a money machine.”
After graduating at 4:07 p.m., June 22, 1989, Hatter opened a psychology practice at 10:04 p.m., October 22, 1989.
“I almost went broke,” he said. “I had to repair timepieces on the side. Luckily, Dad had trained me well.”
Then he met the woman he would marry, Alice Liddell, at 4:07 a.m. on December 25, 1990, during a Christmas party in Edmonton.
“She was the only woman I had ever met who apologized for being three seconds early,” he said. “I knew at once she was the one.”
Alice also suffered from tardophobia.
From that moment — 4:07 a.m., December 25, 1990 — the Hatters never looked back.
“I went from a private practice to a clinic with seventeen employees,” he said. “We opened the office at 10 sharp on April 2, 1991, and now we are franchising in twelve Canadian cities and twenty-two German cities.”
Germany, apparently, has been waiting for this.
Appointments on the dot
Dr. Hatter discovered that once tardophobists knew exactly what time it was, they could maintain appointments with terrifying accuracy.
Their guilt, he explained, could then be transferred to the people they were meeting.
Using state-of-the-art electronics, Dr. Hatter and his team link a home or business to the world’s most accurate clocks.
“We synchronize watches, microwaves, coffee makers, smartphones, televisions, car dashboards, electric toothbrushes, and certain emotionally unstable toasters,” he said.
He calibrates his clients’ timepieces against the Ottawa atomic clock, which is accurate to within one second every million years.
“Since that is considerably longer than humans are likely to last as a race,” said Dr. Hatter, “most of my patients are satisfied.”
Not all.
One client, he said, has phoned repeatedly demanding to be notified the instant the government gets its clocks fixed.
“She became very agitated after a soufflé fell because she had timed it incorrectly. We started her therapy at 4:11 p.m., January 2. She is now on heavy Prozac and a kitchen timer with parental controls.”
The rest of Dr. Hatter’s clients seem delighted with his intervention.
“Are these people cured?” he asked.
He smiled.
“Who can say? All I know is they live with their phobia and almost seem to enjoy it.”
A steep bill
Clients pay $20,000 for Team Hatter to get them in sync.
Fortunately, most of them come from the top five percent of money earners, where time is not only money but usually billed in six-minute increments.
“The wealthier a person becomes,” said Dr. Hatter, “the more concerned he becomes with the value of time. His own time, naturally. Not the time of patients, employees, spouses, waiters, children, or anyone from a lower tax bracket.”
This, he explained, is why a successful doctor will keep patients waiting for an hour while becoming hysterical over a noon tee time in Banff.
Men, Dr. Hatter says, are far more likely than women to demand the most accurate timepieces.
“Probably because of sports,” he said. “A tenth of a second can determine the Stanley Cup. Also, depending on one’s point of view, male time perception can become remarkably elastic.”
He leaned forward.
“A man may believe he has made love all night. His partner may remember it as something closer to a weather update.”
As with everything else in his life, Dr. Hatter keeps a precise record of the time and duration of intimacy with his wife.
“I’m not going to tell you the duration,” he said, checking one of his watches. “But I can tell you the last time began at exactly 9:02.236768 a.m.”
Before I left, Dr. Hatter glanced at the clock, apologized for ending the interview seven seconds early, and offered to validate my parking to the nearest millisecond.
