Patience is Not My Strong Suit

I recently crossed the two month mark since moving out here. I was starting to get frustrated about job stuff recently, and I thought about something that happened a few years back. What follows is a true story.

A few years ago, I was tasked with organizing, rearranging and later destroying leftover holdings of the cinematic masterpiece, "The Amityville Horror." This included everthing from ten foot by twelve foot walls, to boxes of fake groceries and knick-knacks, as well as lots and lots of furniture. It started when a group of us worked an 18 hour day moving said wall sections from the back of the warehouse to the front loading zone and strapping them in to five idling tractor-trailers. We got there are 6 am and left at midnight, and for our troubles, we were paid a flat rate of 120 dollars. But I digress.

When the point person on this job moved on the greener pastures, the wizards in LA (and trust me, I live here now, they really are wizards) called the next biggest asshole, who in this case, was me. I was put in charge of searching through the remaining detritus to find the very specific items of set dressing that were need for reshoots. The wizards communicated this information to me by faxing lists that would say things like:

-Plaid rug
-Picture frame
-game.

I would then look in the warehouse and find whole boxes labeled as such:

-"Plaid rugs"
-"picture frames"
-"games".

The first assignment was to find these things on the list and send them back via FedEx to LA. By the time I'd found everything, FedEx was closed for the night, and I'd have to come back the next day and ship everything out. Now, I wasn't getting paid my usual buck-and-a-fifth for a second day, so I wanted to make it quick. I realized on my way in that I needed more packing tape, so I stopped at the UPS Store directly across the street from the warehouse, grabbed two rolls of tape and got in line.

The guy in front of me did not share my sense of urgency. When I got in line, he was already being served; the kid at the counter was clicking away, researching rates for sending his package, whie he was holding a conversation on his cell phone. This predated the prevalence of BlueTooth headsets, and I like to think that this guy attained instant karma when his service provider started carrying them. As it was, he was talking into his earpieace and holding the kind of cell phone conversation you can only have with someone else who is doing the exact same thing: shopping, or otherwise dealing with people and continually pissing them off by not ending your fucking phone call. These are the kind of people that piss me off. As a former drone in both the retail and food service industries, I can tell you that there are few things more futile than answering someone's question just as they are being asked another.

This was extending my wait time prodigiously. The same scene would play out over and over. The clerk would ask the guy a question, he'd respond curtly and go back to his conversation, and then stop and ask the clerk for clafication. After ten minutes, I started to get crazy, and made great shows of my displeasure. Sighs, eye-rolls, huffing and puffing. If I had started licking myself, I might actually have been confused for a caged animal. I'm not sure why, but sometimes lines are too much for me to take. My only compatriot was this woman standing next to me in line. She had the composure of a Catholic School teacher, with kind of a bulky frame and an upright posture. She was unfazed by the wait, and kept her hands folded in front of her in a very familiar way, signifying that she was right, regardless. As I sighed and mewed, I would occasionally look over at her and open my eyes wide as if to say, "Can you believe this guy?", and she would ignore me. This guy, meanwhile, changed his order right as it was almost complete, and had to start over from scratch.

When he was finally finished, and had left the store, I raised up my hands and exhaled audibly. "Jeeeez-us!" To my surprise, the kid behind the counter seemed surprised by my outburst. I tried to explain myself: "I just hate it when people....talk on the...." He took my tape and started to ring it up. I made one last plea for sympathy from the Catholic School lady, looking over at her and raising my eyebrows. She didn't really look at me, but said in a small voice, "Patience is not our strong suit, is it?"

Her comment left me even more livid than before. Looking back on it now, though, I realize that whole process could not have taken more than, say, eleven minutes. Goddamn Catholic School teachers. They always are right.