People who do not actually read the forms they fill out.
Just had some a-hole go off on me about a section in his pet's anesthesia release form (it explained the possibility of the need to extract teeth during the dental cleaning), angrily demanding that we call him before we pull any of his dog's teeth. The form gives an option to request a phone call prior to extractions, which he would have seen if he'd bothered to actually read it. He'd also completely skipped over the section of the form that asks for a phone number to call during the procedure if we need to contact him.
Part of that problem is too many forms - people have become numb to them and stop reading them because of the overwhelming overuse.
I can't speak to veterinarians offices, but I know with taking my parents to doctors - sometimes up to six or seven pages of double-sided forms!
For some elderly people, it can take them up to 45 minutes to fill them all out. And what is really annoying is they may have already filled all these out just a couple months ago. Everything's supposed to be electronic, so why can't this info be forwarded between care-givers or pulled up in a database for a repeat patient?
What's also annoying is the Dr. will then ask the patient questions that were answered multiple times on the forms - demonstrating that they NEVER even look at the forms.
This gets really dangerous when it comes to prescription medicines - most Drs. will not look at the list the patient has provided on the form before prescribing another medicine that may have contraindications to something the patient is already taking.
At one specialist my mom was at a second time, they had her filling out the "book" of forms - I asked, since she'd just filled them all out a month before, couldn't they just retrieve those forms and simply ask if there are any changes. They said it was "impossible" to pull out her old forms. I asked what if I were a lawyer representing someone suing your boss for malpractice, would you be able to pull those forms out then? They replied, "Of course."
So I asked, "Then why can't you just pull them out of the file now?"
They answered "Because that's impossible."