Does anyone else feel like people are unreasonably impatient?
Everyday I am more surprised how impatient people are, and how ridiculous the behavior that stems from it is.
The street in front of my house is a four-lane street. There is a stop sign 30 ft at the end of the block. Just about every morning I will back out and there will be a car that will get into the next lane and then overtake me just so they can slam on their brakes because there's a line of cars at the four-way stop 30 feet ahead. I just don't understand that behavior. Drivers in general seem so impatient and I don't know why they are always in a hurry. We have major accidents here daily.
I've been trying to get a package delivered since last Friday. The post office has been making it real hard to get due to issues on their end. This morning I got a voicemail to go pick it up at the station around the corner.
I'm in line and this woman asked if anyone is there just to pick up. So I say yes I am and I walk up and I give the guy my information. This woman behind me reaches around right next to my face and says can you get this for me? Like it isn't my turn.
They can't find my package because I was told wrong and they didn't actually have it it was out for delivery. This woman has been waiting about 60 seconds and you can hear her sighing and then she leaps to the register next to me as soon as a woman walks up asking for her package.
This woman was making a big deal about having to wait not even 2 minutes for her package.
I just don't understand why people are so impatient. I mean I was frustrated as could be about my package because they kept flip-flopping on me but I wasn't acting put out like it was the worst thing in the world.
Is it entitlement? What is it? People get mad when they have to wait in line behind one person at the grocery store who has already been rung up and is just paying at that point. I mean why are they actually getting upset over this stuff.
And they never learn. I'll be checked out and leaving by the time they are being rung up because they spent 5 minutes looking for a short line. I don't get it.
This is something I first really became cognizant of when I briefly worked at a Starbucks a few years ago, and have been keeping an eye out for ever since. I live around DC now, and I do a lot of people watching. In traffic, in museums, in queues of all kinds, and everywhere in between. I see it everywhere. I'm not a social scientist or anything, but I have a pet
theoryhypothesis about people like this: they're the types of people who see themselves as the main character in this story.It's something not quite unlike being self-centered, but ineffably a little different from it.
I started becoming more concious some time after I started driving. Someone (parent? driving instructor?) pointed out that the guy who just blew past us on the freeway saved no time because we where both sitting at the same stoplight.
Then some time later I was listening to people discuss how fast over the speed limit you could go before you where likely to be pulled over. I then did some simple math and realized that even though going 11mph I've feels like you'll arrive much sooner, for the commute distance they where talking about (about 20mi at most) the time saved was less than 5 min. The trade-off being increased risk of an accident, speeding ticket, and high blood pressure.
It's worked it's way into many aspects of my life. If you actually work out the amount of time things usually take, then it's usually not worth the extra stress if trying to rush and shave a few seconds or minutes. Take your time, absorb more experiences.
It works in reverse too. Those chores around the house you keep putting off? Try timing yourself the next time you do dishes. Don't rush, just make note of the time. It takes me about 10 min usually. Doesn't sound so bad when compared to the length of your whole day does it?
Yeah people do that here all the time. They overtake you and speed ahead and then you just pull up next to him at the stoplight and look over like what the heck.
I need to start looking at my chores like that.
Emphasis on this story.
The future we're writing is a collaborative effort, and if any one person sees themselves as the protagonist I think they miss the point entirely. That's where things get individual, and philosophical, but there you go.
It's a cultural thing.
Western countries promote individuality, Eastern promotes collectivism.
I think individuality can be toxic if you extend your story to being the center if everyone else's story. This can come out as anxiety (everyone is judging me) or pure narcissism (everyone needs to listen to me).
A good balance of both is ideal in my opinion. I think a lot of people could learn a bit about the world if they invested some time to learn about Buddhist and Hindu culture.
See, from my perspective it's the exact opposite. You must live an awfully boring life if you think of yourself as particularly important here. I don't find my own home the most interesting, valuable place to be. I go to the wider city. I go to bars and museums and shops and other people's houses. I don't find my own head the most interesting place. I prefer to empathize with others and imagine other people's headspaces. Or to go to school and learn new things. Or to just read a novel and find new and novel thoughts and emotions presented in an engaging way.
Anything about me isn't really about me. Things like political identity, or personality, or perception and understanding, or aesthetic sense develop in social contexts. Freedom doesn't exist without something to be free from, etc. And knowing that... Well, the wider your set of perspectives, and experiences, and understandings, and emotional range and so on, the more you realize your own position is arbitrary. And I find breadth the opposite of boring.
Please excuse the word soup that'll follow, your comment provoked this sort of reflection in me. I thought that I should write it down, and instead of writing it on some paper, I decided writing it here. My intention is not to refute you but contrast your views with mine.
I share your interests in the first paragraph, but still find that the most interesting place in this world is still inside my head. The only way that I can be, is to be me. So anything outside of me is, actually not outside of me, but part of me, because it's my experiencing it what gives them any meaning at all for me. And that is how every other organism is. So each of us is quite important to themselves. Even when I "imagine other people's headspaces", the reality is that I can never escape from within my head and therein everything happens. These lines of me brain-farting aside, well, I don't think any of the activities you say you like (and I like too) can have any taste if not mixed with my imagination. Thus, I should be a little bit more important---for myself---than the rest of the world, for I'm my only and only possible window to it.
I disagree with your second paragraph. It depends on one's choices, and it's not black and white. Yes, the social context plays its part, but if you were right, we would never have had the innumerable amount of variety in ideas and arts. Each and every one of us possesses some amount of creativity. We contribute unique things to world all the time, big and small. The particularities and quirks of each of us make the world change. We shape our own particular tastes, ideas, personalities, senses, understandings. We externalise these things and affect the world. Sometimes one of us changes the course of history. We are not totally arbitrary, it's only the moment we are conceived that might really be random. The rest is pseudo-random at the very best. If we're arbitrary and unimportant, why do we care about not being bored? When we could just let ourselves be and let nature and instinct and the community guide us? Why try to gain breadth if not for our personal betterment, emotionally and/or intellectually? But one does these things because they are a bit more important than the rest, particularly quite important for themselves.
I've got some pet theories on this too. A big one is diet: coffee, salty foods, and lack of hydration are a great recipe for irritability. True for me, and a lot of other people, even if they don't recognize it or don't care.
Hot weather. We just got through a summer setting heat records all around the world. So people have probably been angrier.
Overcrowding. Too many cars on the road. Too many pedestrians, bikes. Nowhere to escape from it. People are stressed. Drivers just want to get to their destination and off the road.
Hello from Turkey! The last proper queue that I recall participating in was from the elementary school :)
People here are quite impatient too. Guess I'm guilty of it also, but I'm not generally vocal about it.
It's probably how we (inclusive) are raised as kids: either parents are very intrusive and protective and produce sassy and egocentric individuals, or so unscrupulous that the kids grow up without a sense of communal life and a working knowledge of proper manners.
I live in the US, in the second largest city in my state. But it's still a very small City compared to others in the US.
When I find myself looking at the way people are behaving and I catch myself defaulting to the negative, I try to remember David Foster Wallace's This Is Water commencement speech.
https://youtu.be/8CrOL-ydFMI
If you have never gave this speech a listen, I would inplore you to do so. The gist of the speech is that we get to choose what has meaning and what that meaning is in our day to day lives. It's a good talk that reminds me that yes, that person that cut me off could be a selfish asshole. Or they could be worried about a sick child at school and may be trying to get there so they can return to work before their boss docks them for being away from their desk.
The thing is is that while one is assuredly possible, the other scenario isn't impossible and that we would never know. While the first one is more possible, the second possibility at least makes it easier to deal with the day to day stuff like people you encounter being impatient.
It's also worth noting that this impatience seems to be tied to larger cities. It's also noted in this thread that people experience far fewer impatient people in smaller towns.
I think it's simple; more people means more impatient people. It's not that everyone is impatient - most probably aren't. It's just that you're exposed to more impatient people, they stick in your mind. I bet the "impatient person per capita" is about the same.
That's a good point but I think there are other, more important factors at play in that regard. In cities the ratio of people to available resources (e.g. number of customer service reps, room on the train, etc.) is significantly higher than in small towns so efficiency is seen as more important, which tends to make people far less tolerant to those that waste time. There is also the fact that in cities you are unlikely to run in to the same random strangers often or even ever again, so pissing them off isn't as detrimental as in small towns where you are. Etc. All which likely tends to lead to more instances of selfish and/or impatient behavior, even per capita.
Maybe it's just that I'm born to be a contrarian, but there is one huge exception to the trend of impatience while driving: park driving. Near where I live there is a park that is great for walking and running and just seeing local history. Near the entrance of this park there is a place where a walking/running/biking trail crosses the road, and they are expected to yield to the cars coming into the park.
Yet almost without exception, all cars treat it like a stop sign if anyone is near that crosswalk, reversing the rule the signs actually say. Drivers are incredibly patient with the people who approaching the crosswalk, waiting sometimes 30 seconds for someone to cross without any sign of impatience (I speak as one of the runners on the other side of this exchange and as one of the drivers). There is a firm and widely shared culture of waiting patiently for people there.
I think it's easy to look at the things in life that frustrate us and believe they happen more frequently than they really do. I try to highlight positive things to undo some of my own nature on this topic, and it's a struggle all the time. I would say that certainly some people are in a rush to go from point A to point B, but it is not all people all the time. A lot depends on context, time of day, and the culture of the place. In a place like Maryland, the driving culture is much less concerned about a safe space around cars, and make all sorts of driving decisions based on that. In parts of the midwest, people seem to give each other a lot more space on the highest than on the coast, but they might be much more willing to speed (and much more able to).
I have a couple of examples of this kind of attitude as well. I was the first in line at a cafeteria in Yosemite valley, and someone walked up and stood in front of me. I didn't mind a lot because what is the difference between being first in line or second? Not much. But he eventually looked at me and asked, "Are you standing in line?" and I said yes, and he walked back. Just weird.
Another one, I was in the airport in one of those snack shacks, buying two packs of cough drops. I was standing behind a man who was trying to buy his things, and some woman came up to me and asked me if I was in line, and when I said yes, she got haughty. Like I get it if you're in a hurry because you're going to miss your flight, tell me and I'll happily let you in front of me. But even to ask in the first place if I'm standing in line . . . as I'm literally just standing there, in line, with a blank look on my face, is strange to me. What else would I be doing? There's no alternative that I could be doing that would make any sense.
Maybe so. I just couldn't believe that woman reached around my face waving her card asking them to get her package when I was in line ahead of her and they were literally in the middle of talking to and helping me. I just couldn't ever do something like that. I just could never see myself doing something like that.
Yes, I think those people are both rude and unreasonably impatient. That’s something I rarely see in my day to day, though. Where do you live? Cause I live in a Brazilian beach town with about 5 million people. There are lots of crackheads and you can be mugged in broad day light, but at least we’re chillllll :)