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caddymanPatience is a strange and truculent beast. It is possible to be endlessly patient with some things, no matter how apparently irritating, whilst other items simply bypass patience circuits and move directly to ‘annoyance’ without passing go or collecting £200. Strangely, these are quite often moveable irritants, too. One day you may be stocked up with the patience of a saint for one type of occurrence, but wake up the next day to find unexpectedly that you either forgot to re-order or that deliveries of new supplies have been delayed.
There is more to patience than that, too. I think I have expounded before,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
boroshan’s theories of temporary and permanent patience, but that’s not what I want to get into here.
I think that I am in the middle of a bout of selective patience deficit. This is a term that I have coined to describe the condition whereby one is in generally good spirits but certain things that normally just wash over the psyche unexpectedly decide to dig their finger nails in and scratch away at ones patience until it wears out. Above, I noted that supplies of patience are subject to moveable irritants. At work the usual stuff is just sliding off me like water from a duck’s back. No, what has annoyed me today is twofold (I’m not sure of the grammar of this sentence, but stick with me): shops that move their stock around for no apparent reason and the zombie-like behaviour of lunchtime (in particular) shoppers. To be fair the second may well be a direct consequence of the first, though that does not make it any less irritating.
Presumably in an attempt to boost flagging sales, the local M&S food store has taken the opportunity to rearrange its stock from its previous, perfectly functional, arrangement and shift items seemingly randomly about the place. This means that years of auto pilot navigation around the place are now obsolete and I have to hunt around for stuff that previously I could just lay my hands on without troubling my attention span.
The theory is, I guess, that people will wander past and buy items they would normally either ignore or simply not notice.
Well, it doesn’t work. It irritates, but it does not work. I still only buy a sandwich, bag of crisps and a newspaper. I don’t want the fancy over-priced au gratins and strangely marinated items they proffer. I sometimes want a choccy when I am not trying to be good, but since they are generally well hidden anyway…
The trouble is, not only do I have to hunt around for stuff I could previously walk to with my eyes shut, I now have to navigate around dead-eyed zombie office workers who have not made the mental leap from ‘it’s not in the same place’ to ’I must look for it’ and are therefore wandering aimlessly and crowding around the choke points in the shop layout.
This is what reminded me that civil servants, in a perfect world, would be allowed to carry machetes with them to clear the rabble in times of need.
It would be a public service and a pleasure.
There is more to patience than that, too. I think I have expounded before,
boroshan’s theories of temporary and permanent patience, but that’s not what I want to get into here.I think that I am in the middle of a bout of selective patience deficit. This is a term that I have coined to describe the condition whereby one is in generally good spirits but certain things that normally just wash over the psyche unexpectedly decide to dig their finger nails in and scratch away at ones patience until it wears out. Above, I noted that supplies of patience are subject to moveable irritants. At work the usual stuff is just sliding off me like water from a duck’s back. No, what has annoyed me today is twofold (I’m not sure of the grammar of this sentence, but stick with me): shops that move their stock around for no apparent reason and the zombie-like behaviour of lunchtime (in particular) shoppers. To be fair the second may well be a direct consequence of the first, though that does not make it any less irritating.
Presumably in an attempt to boost flagging sales, the local M&S food store has taken the opportunity to rearrange its stock from its previous, perfectly functional, arrangement and shift items seemingly randomly about the place. This means that years of auto pilot navigation around the place are now obsolete and I have to hunt around for stuff that previously I could just lay my hands on without troubling my attention span.
The theory is, I guess, that people will wander past and buy items they would normally either ignore or simply not notice.
Well, it doesn’t work. It irritates, but it does not work. I still only buy a sandwich, bag of crisps and a newspaper. I don’t want the fancy over-priced au gratins and strangely marinated items they proffer. I sometimes want a choccy when I am not trying to be good, but since they are generally well hidden anyway…
The trouble is, not only do I have to hunt around for stuff I could previously walk to with my eyes shut, I now have to navigate around dead-eyed zombie office workers who have not made the mental leap from ‘it’s not in the same place’ to ’I must look for it’ and are therefore wandering aimlessly and crowding around the choke points in the shop layout.
This is what reminded me that civil servants, in a perfect world, would be allowed to carry machetes with them to clear the rabble in times of need.
It would be a public service and a pleasure.