Patience is too broad of a word to be used for all the possible scenarios in which it currently applies. We need one word for being reasonably patient when the situation calls for it, and another for when you just have to sit there and wait for some idiot to stop wasting your time. I can be patient for events that are worth the wait, or for delays that have good or unavoidable reasons. I can wait weeks, months, and even years for things depending on the cause or benefit. But there are other times when even a one second delay drives me nuts. Grocery store checkout lines bring that out in me more than anything else. Once I’m in that line, I just want to get out of the store as soon as possible. But the people in front of me invariably are running at a clock speed so low that I feel the need to check their pulse.
I do realize that instead of expecting the world to conform to my standards and speed up, I should try to match their pace by slowing down. But I loathe wasted time, especially when it is wasted for no good reason, in an un-enjoyable location or manner.
If you are in the self-checkout line with less than fifteen items, it should not take you 6 minutes to check out. If it takes you that long, go to one of the manned registers and let someone competent do the work for you. If you are in that line and waiting 15 minutes for your 300 cans of cat food to be scanned, you can go ahead and write out most of the fields of your check (and yes, I know you are going to be using a checkbook to pay) before the total is tallied up. Your name, the grocery store’s name, your signature, and the memo are not going to change between now and when all of your Fancy Feast cans and their corresponding coupons have been accounted for and filed in the correct bag.
Grocery stores are just one example of how I can blow my stack over small amounts of wasted time. I am working on trying to let these things go, but it’s difficult because I notice annoying behavior all the time. Think Larry David in ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’. I also notice when some selfish jerk pulls a 3 point U-Turn in the middle of a street with oncoming traffic. I wish I could just ignore that stuff, but instead I find myself yelling at the guy or at least making mention of the incident to whatever poor soul is with me at the time. Perennial lateness is another one that gets me. It drives me crazy that people have so little respect for others that they will make plans with someone and then waste their time by showing up late. Everyone is occasionally late. Unforseen problems can cause that. But some people are late all the time, and they never have a good reason. That is nothing short of a slap in the face to the people they were supposed to be meeting.
I have a lot of work to do to stop caring about how much everyone else sucks. 
Ignorance is supposedly bliss, so it’s probably worth it to keep trying.
