I’m on a flight (this was before the latest COVID surge). The plane lands. Everyone is trying to get off. If I’m up front and have a bag in the overhead compartment, I can not get it out fast enough. Why? Because I am aware that this procedure is holding up 150 people, and that drives me CRAZY. Who am I to inconvenience 150 people?
And yet, I wonder — am I the only one who thinks like that? Because I see folks take their sweet time, adjust their hair, finish their text, and slowly extricate their bag as if they had all the time in the world.
Well, you might say it’s only another thirty seconds. But thirty seconds here and twenty seconds there and passengers in the back of the plane get off ten minutes later. Should they be trying to make a connection those ten minutes could be key.
Same is true when I’m ordering something at Starbucks and there’s a long line behind me. I figure my order beforehand, have my credit card ready, and complete the transaction as fast as I can. I don’t get to the counter and then look up at the menu. I don’t ask seventeen questions. I don’t pay in pennies and meticulously count them out. I don’t change my order four times.
Now I recognize that this could just be my own OK Boomer hang up. I should just chill. This is merely the new normal. But I’m the guy you want to be on the plane with or in front of you in line. Hopefully I'm not the only one.
from By Ken Levine
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