I Hate Waiting

There are many things on my pet peeve list.  Many of them are common sense: waste, poor manners, senseless killing, poor sportsmanship and so forth.  Other items are more personal: people who use their horns too much in traffic (like it makes anyone go faster), family members using up all the data on my phone plan when I don’t get a chance to use it, people using all the hot water when they know I’m going to take a shower, people who park over the yellow line and take two parking spaces because they either are terrible parkers or think their vehicle is more important than anyone else’s, waiting for rebate checks to be mailed to me, getting rainchecks at the grocery store and especially waiting for an extended period.  Now I’m not talking about a long line at the checkout counter.  I mean really having to wait an abnormally long time.  Let’s take three examples.  So my lawnmower is broken.  It happens.  I took it into the repair shop and I’m told it will be a week.  The grass needs to be cut so I call a service.  More on that in a minute.  A week passes and I hear nothing.  I call and the person at the repair shop says they will call me in the next day or two.  They called a week later with an estimate.  They hadn’t even started working on it yet!  I understand being busy but why tell me 1 week when that wouldn’t even be close?  I approve the estimate and they say it will be ready in 3 days.  That was a week ago.  They have now had my mower 3 weeks and I can’t get hold of anyone to find out if it’s done yet.  The lawn mowing company I hired mowed the lawn the first week.  They didn’t do a great job but it was mowed.  The second week came and I waited…and waited…and for the heck of it, I waited some more.  I am still waiting.  Lions could stalk antelope in my grass, it’s that tall!  It has been two weeks since the last cutting.  I called the company but only get a machine.  That’s frustrating.  Yesterday I had two routine doctor’s appointments 2 ½ hours apart.  I showed up for the first one 15 minutes early and waited.   There was no one else in the waiting room.  Then it started to fill up.  At least 12 people were crammed in this little room with me.  Then they slowly started to take the other people back before me.  I tried not to be frustrated because I didn’t have all the information but I couldn’t understand why people waiting less time went in first.  After an hour and a half I was called back.  They took my vitals and sent me to a second waiting room with everyone else.  Finally I saw patients going into and out of the doctor’s office.  I thought I had planned it so well.  I would see this doctor, get some lunch and have some time to hang out before my second doctor’s appointment.  Now it was 15 minutes before my other appointment and it took 20 minutes to get there if I hit all the green lights.  So I marched up to the receptionist and asked how many people were still in front of me.  She said 5.  I told her I had to run but I would be back after my other appointment.  I made most of the green and yellow lights and arrived for my second appointment 5 minutes late.  That was ok.  After that was over I drove back and waited again at the first place where they had just passed my name on their list.  They finally got me in after another half an hour.  The appointment lasted 5 minutes.  There were no apologies or explanations.  What a day.  Who would have thought waiting could be so tiring.