I think I'm on pretty safe ground to say that most Americans absolutely hate waiting for stuff. By waiting I mean waiting longer than should be reasonably expected. I don't mind waiting for one or two people in line at the grocery store but more than that and I feel like something is wrong. Also, if one of those people takes an extra long time then I start to feel like the store should "do something about this problem". Or suppose my email takes more than a few seconds to come up? Then that's a problem with my internet service provider and they need to fix it. Why do we hate waiting so much?

Waiting is seen as wasting time. That is, time is going by and we're not accomplishing or doing anything useful or fun. Instead of waiting in line I could be looking through the store for more stuff to buy. Instead of waiting at the traffic light I could be 3 minutes closer to getting home from work. But why does that matter? Maybe it's just plain old impatience. It used to be that patience was considered a virtue. Now it is at best nothing but in some cases it's considered a liability.

I'll stop here and keep this entry short in case anyone short on patience is reading this. I wouldn't want it to take too long.

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