Friday, April 06, 2007

My realization

I told Lewis today that I have come to the realization that my expectations for people are WAAY too high.

He laughed.

I went on a rant yesterday to my mom about my intolerance for stupidity. I know I should be patient, but I it just irks me so much to have to have my life incovenienced because of the idiocity of others.

This is what got me started.

After having to wait in DAL for over 2 hrs, I fnally got into AMA on the jumpseat. I'd been flying the last 6 days. I'm tired. I just want to get home.

I get to my car and pull into one of two lanes to pay for my parking. I sit in line behinf two cars. And I sit. And I sit. To my left, the line is quickly moving along. Mine, at a standstill. I look to see what the hold up can be and inside the pay booth I see an old man about in his 70's peering at a computer monitor like he's looking through a peephole. Just my luck. I get in the line of an obviously computer illiterate person.

The cars on my left are moving swiftly along, while I wait for a serious 10 minutes.

FINALLY, the woman manning the other booth comes to my lane's booth and trades places with the man. When I get up to the window I ask her what the hold up was.

She says, "Oh, he gets confused sometimes."

WTF.

So hire someone who doesn't "get confused". I'm losing precious time out of my day becuase of someone else's inadequacies.

Then today, I'm at the Post Office. First of all, I was shocked it was even open on Good Friday. But that's about where my luck ran out because I soon as I got in line, I was WAITING again.

There were only two people manning the counter. There were about 6 people in front of me. All I needed were two stamped envelopes. I ended up waiting in line 20 minutes, while the clerks chit-chatted with the customers. I don't mean chit-chat like, "Would you like some stamps to go with that?", because believe me, they did ask that as well. But more along the lines of, "So how is so-and-so doing?" "Has so-and-so had her baby?" "Did so-and-so get married?"

I was ready to pull my hair out. I so would have pulled So-and-So's har out had she been there.

My last experience was the the dry cleaners. There is a seamstress there that is altering some clothes for me. I dropped the clothes off two weeks ago. She told me they'd be ready in a week. Well, a week went by and when I showed up to pick them up, she said they weren't quite done.

Okay, that's cool, I think to myself, I'm going to work for six days anyway, and I don't need them until the Friday before Easter.

So today I show up, and she asks me if I can pick them up Monday. No, I can't. I need them today. I ask her if she's sure they'll be done on Monday. She says she's not sure. So I ask her how much it's going to cost for the seven pieces. Again, I get a "not sure" from her.

Argh.

I then tell her I just want to clothes back, with the full intention fo not giving this woman anymore of my tailoring business. She then tells me she can't because she's ripped the seams out of them.

Double Argh.

So I tell her I REALLY need two certain pieces done TODAY because I am wearing them to church on Sunday. She tells me she can have those ready later in the afternoon.

Fine. I can deal with that. And 2 1/2 hours later, I have my two pieces. Which I have to admit, she did a great job on. It's either that or I just have great taste in clothes and since they are altered to me specifically, they look great. ;)

So in summation, it just seems to me that I expect way too much from people. But in reality, I don't think it's too much to expect people to do the job they get paid to do. Especially when it interferes with things I need to get done.

(deep breath)

(inhale...exhale)

Ahhh.....

(chanting) I can only control my reaction to someone else's action.

Serenity now. Serenity now. Serenity now.

2 comments:

Karol Cabbiness said...

We are too much alike. My superviors tell me I need to realize that all my employees will not meet my expectations and that is ok.? I don't understand why not. I don't think it's a high expectation for them to do their job correctly and efficiently. After all, their getting paid for it.If only I could clone myself.

Anonymous said...

i dont think that asking people not to be complete morons means you have high expectations, and if it does, oh well, you can live with that, there are a lot worse things than having high expectations. now im going to go read about how to use periods instead of excessive commas.