I'll Be With You In A Moment

I'll Be With You In A Moment

I have never liked waiting in line. I'll bet you don't either. On the phone or in person, waiting to be helped is horrible. I am special. I am entitled. I should not have to wait. Sometimes workers are overworked and trying their best. I totally understand having to wait, but soo many other times the workers are just oblivious. Enough chit-chat. Don't ask your co-worker about his lunch or if they are going out tonight. Do your job. You shouldn't do this to us. You should have more people to help us. You suck! And it is worse when they say, "I'll be with you in a moment." as politely as you please. You know a "moment" is undefined and may be a long time.

When I went to college right after high school, my college didn't have computers for everyone. PC's didn't exist. To enroll in classes we students had to go around to tables set up in the student union and get a IBM punch card that represented one seat in each class. Let's see, where is the Accounting table? I don't see it, but, oo, there is the Math table. Standing in line at the Math table and waiting and waiting, only to finally get your turn and your card. Then on to the next table and more waiting. But the worst wait of all was to get your cards input into the computer. Hundreds of students waiting in four lines for the four computer terminals in a University of 6,000! We just stood there. It was like the lines were just moving one inch at a time. There were literally hundreds of students in front of me. Half an hour passed and I had moved six feet. One of the students let out a plaintiff, "mmmoooooo," like a cow in line to the slaughter. Then another student softly cried, "mmmoooooo," and after a few minutes everybody was doing it. It was hilarious... for the first twenty minutes!

Today I went to get my drivers license renewed at the DSF (Illinois' version of the DMV). I walked in and found my way to the first line. There was no one in the line but there were those ropes that make something like a very simple maze that you have to figure out. I think it was a test and I passed with flying colors. The lady gave me a number and told me to sit and wait for it to be called. There were over a hundred chairs but only about fifteen people in them. "Cool." I thought. "This shouldn't take too long." I checked my phone and it was exactly one o'clock.

When I realized that there were twelve stations to serve customers, I was sure it would be fast, but I pulled back as I realized that there were only six workers. Let's see, fifteen people ahead of me and six workers, I should only have to wait for the equivalent of two or three people in front of me. Then two workers left, then another, then after they finished their respective customers, two of the remaining workers struck up a conversation. I had been sitting there seventeen minutes and six workers had only taken care of three customers. From my seat twenty feet away I stared at them wishing they could hear my thoughts, "DON'T YOU SEE US OUT HERE! WE'RE WAITING!"

I have learned to take this in stride so I just sat there calmly. I wasn't upset, really, because over the years I have mellowed. I accept that time will be wasted and plan for it. But I still have a feeling of being disrespected when workers know they are not working as fast as they could and are making people wait for no good reason. When you are at your job station and people are waiting, it is not too much to ask that you do your job with a sense of urgency without panic. I was there for forty-seven minutes and the actual time something was being done was about seven. The other forty minutes was spent waiting for people who had no excuse for taking soo long. If the workers who were there had just stayed at their posts and calmly done their jobs the whole thing would have taken about twenty-five minutes. Oh well.

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