So you had to wait a few minutes.....

Let’s say you work in an office….the boss tells you he needs a few changes made to a certain report, and he wants it done in the next 10 minutes. You are currently working on something else, which is also time sensitive, but you have to stop what you are doing, find the report he wants changed, make the changes, as you check the changes you just made, you find a typo, correct it, check everything again, finally get it printed, get it to the boss…..it took 12 minutes. Should you be fired?


You’re a delivery driver….you’re 10 minutes away from your destination, there’s an accident on the road, traffic has come to stand still, you’re stuck in the middle of it, all you can do is wait it out…..you arrive at your destination 10 minutes late. Should you be fired?

You walk into a restaurant at the height of the dinner rush…the hostess seats you, hands you menus, the busboy hurries over to fill your water glasses…..it takes a few minutes for your server to get to your table…..perhaps the server is in the middle of delivering entrees to another table, after all, we want to get the food out while it’s still hot. After serving the last entrée, someone at the table asks for an extra side of sauce.  So instead of just running back to the kitchen to drop off the tray, the server now has to ask a frenzied kitchen for an extra side of sauce, perhaps wait a moment for it, bring it out to the table, so they don’t have to wait until they are half way done with their meal before they have it. All of this took probably two to three minutes. But now, that table is all set, and the server rushes over to your table to get a drink order.

Two to three minutes…. No big deal…..but instead of using this time to look over the menu or converse with your fellow diners….. You use it to build up an indignant attitude, that increases at 15 second intervals….stop and think for a moment, how would you feel if it was your entrees that were being served, another table is seated after half the entrees have been set down, the server left the rest on the tray to run over and greet the new table…not too happy, I would imagine.

So instead of relaxing for a few minutes, after all, you are sitting in a nice comfortable chair, it’s not like we left you in the middle of a blinding snowstorm without benefit of coat or shoes…..you decide to cop an attitude. What you must remember is, EVERYONE who came to dine, is just as important as you are.

So instead of practicing even a miniscule amount of patience, you get up and march your (overly indignant, overly inflated ego) ass out the door. Congratulations, through your inability to keep yourself amused for the eternity of 120 seconds, you’ve just ruined your own dining experience. Now, as you break both arms patting yourself on the back while stomping out to your car, did you ever stop to think about the time you are wasting driving to another restaurant, to probably repeat the same procedure.