I have never been a patient person. I always said if patience is a virtue, I’ll take vice. So of course, people wasting my time ranks at the top of a fairly short list of pet peeves. I mean, my conditions already claim a good chunk of my energy. I hate giving up any unnecessarily because people can’t do their jobs right. Or drive properly. Or, well, lots of other things.
It seems, though, that pre-pandemic, I was doing better than I thought. I only know this because I have lost so much patience since stay-at-home orders for people like us became the norm. In fact, I have lost all of it. Two incidents in 24 hours a couple of weeks ago illustrate my current state of mind.
First, someone I had hired to fix my computer didn’t listen to me, so I ended up spending a week and a half without computer access. They assumed that I, the client, didn’t know what I was talking about when I told them my battery was new and to check all the connections around it. Instead, they ordered a battery, which took over a week to be delivered, then discovered that – shocker—it wasn’t the battery. To make matters worse, I was not notified when they finished on Friday. When I inquired on Saturday about when I could get my computer back, he said he didn’t work on weekends and he would deliver it on Monday. Even then he was late, which cost me another three days. When I told him how unacceptable this was, he made excuses until I said I was done talking about it.
Second, less than 24 hours later, I got an email from my building with the subject: Your Homeowners Insurance Has Expired. It went on to put me on “first notice”. Now, I knew that wasn’t true. Everything was on auto-renewal. The only way my insurance would have expired was if I had called and told them to cancel. I emailed back and asked that they not send nastygrams before they make the request for information, and the woman responded passive-aggressively through the selective use of caps lock. I have never responded well to passive-aggressive. So, I asked her to work on her customer service approach, sent the required information to a different person, and told the management company that I was done dealing with her.
It’s more than likely that pre-pandemic, I wouldn’t have gotten as angry as I did with these people who are supposed to be helpful, but this time I had to watch a bunch of baby animal programs to get back to equilibrium. When I asked a few of my friends whether they had noticed themselves having the same issue, one responded, “Yes. 1000%.” Another speculated that her tolerance level had been dropping since birth, but that now she was going back and forth between hating everyone and trying to be kind because everyone is suffering right now. That sounded terribly familiar.
There has been a lot of discussion about the pandemic causing an increase in anxiety and depression. A lot of this has come from feeling out of control since we can’t know when our lives will start resembling what they were, which is what we prefer. But since when have I ever felt in control of my life? (Thank you, chronic and autoimmune conditions!) I am a little anxious, of course. It’s a risky time. But I have multiple safety nets medically and financially, so I’m not overly anxious. As for depression, I am definitely stress eating, but that is no different from non-pandemic times.
No, the dwindling of my already limited reserve of patience is my big pandemic behavior change. Honestly, I don’t know if I am even inclined to do anything about it as long as I remain civil. Too much work.
I guess, for now, I am saying farewell to patience.