Please Hold….

May 30th, 2006 by Anil | Posted in General |

This past weekend I read an article on CNN.com titled “U.S. is an impatient nation, poll finds.” Before reading it, I was already saying to myself, “tell me something I don’t know.”

So onward I went, reading the long article. After I finished I started thinking of a couple things.

Thought I:

The article pointed out that one place people don’t like waiting in lines is at the DMV. Well that’s a no brainer. For one thing, how many DMV offices do you know of that are open on Saturdays? Not many. Second, they are usually open during the hours which a majority of the working population is at work. So guess what that means? We have to either cram a quick trip to the DMV in the morning on our way to work. Or cram it in at lunch. Or leave early from work just to wait in line at the end of the day with all the other working class citizens that left early to do the same. Or even worse, take an entire day off just to run that one errand. And making appointments with DMV isn’t 100% reliable either. The same goes for the Post Office. Some locations are very efficient and not visited much, others, well, let’s say they’ll make you feel like ants marching.

And so I thought of other places that people need to go, like the Post Office, Banks, Insurance Companies, Freight Companies. I know that not all of them are open on the weekends. They usually have some setup where only certain office locations are open on Saturday’s for a certain number of hours to accomodate people that can’t go during the week. I should know, I’ve experienced this with my auto insurance company and with freight companies.

Banks have gotten better. Some are now open till 6pm making it easier to go after work. Most banks have been open on Saturdays as well which was a good start, but not all of them, like Credit Unions.

It just makes you wonder why some organizations or businesses don’t offset their hours to accomodate so many of us that work during the time that they are open. Or am I the only one that thinks this?

Thought II:

In this entire study, they negelected to mention one place nearly everyone hates waiting in lines. On the road. Fine, we all hate being put on hold on the phone, or waiting in line at the grocery store. But anyone that has driven on any road, street, freeway, highway or insterstate in the U.S. can plainly see that people can be very impatient when driving. People drive on the shoulder when there is a lot of traffic, they cut to the merging lane to pass traffic even though you were already on the freeway, or they drive alone in the carpool. You see it practically everyday. I’m just wondering why this entire area was left out of the poll. Perhaps it was too much info and would expand the poll? Perhaps it would shift the focus of the poll? I guess we’ll never know.

EOF Ramblings.