Heres one for a lovely spring Tuesday evening, gotta laugh! - Smile awhile with Nick McDonald Waiting again A couple of weeks ago in this column I wrote about being bedevilled by queues. It seems every time I get in a queue the thing grinds to a halt. I gave examples of being stuck behind people who can’t use money cards, of people who buy things that can’t be scanned at checkouts, of people who think Monopoly money is legal tender. After the paper came out my wife, who had read the column, gave me one of her quizzical looks and pronounced that I should take some of the blame for the problems that beset me in queues. She said one of my innumerable faults is impatience. She said if I have to wait two minutes it’s three minutes too long. She felt that many of the scenarios I had raised in the column were made worse by my sheer impatience. The implication was that the instant I entered a queue my mind started counting seconds as if they were minutes. “You get too uptight and wound up about nothing”, she lectured. This started me thinking. I called to mind the most recent queuing incident and tried to think if I had blown it out of proportion. It was in a cafe where I had waited half an hour for a sweetcorn fritter that had been made by a chef standing at least 30 feet away from a bowl of flour and water when he threw a handful of corn pieces at it with his eyes closed. When I relived the experience I imagined myself going into the cafe kitchen carrying a World War II flamethrower with the control switch set at “Extremely High”. The waitress, who in my imagination I shot several times with a pistol, wore a Nazi uniform and looked like Heinrich Himmler as she ran screaming from the kitchen. Maybe my wife had a point I thought. Maybe I do take things too seriously when I get into queues. Lighten up I told myself. On Saturday night my wife and I went to the Kapiti Coast to visit my daughter and her boyfriend. We decided on Chinese takeaways for tea and the boys drove to the restaurant. We placed our order and the woman behind the counter looked at the clock and said it would be ready “in about 15 minutes”. I looked at the clock and it showed 6.40pm. We went for a walk and came back at 6.55pm. I didn’t really expect the order to be ready. But nor was it ready at 7, 7.05 or 7.10. Normally I would be irritable at this stage, even highly irritable, but my wife’s words were echoing and I forced myself to relax. People came, people went and there was still no sign of our meal. The boss came out and said “won’t be long now”. I smiled like an idiot. Around 7.20 - 40 minutes after placing our order - I sensed we had attracted a cult following among the other customers. A woman who placed her order at 7.05 walked past us with a combination fried rice and sweet and sour pork. “Good luck boys” she said before stepping into a waiting Mercedes-Benz and driving off into the night. A man who was handed his $12 special - teryaki chicken, mushrooms and noodles - said he was willing to sell it to us if we were hungry. A girl with dreadlocks shook her head and called the cooks something rude on our behalf before leaving with her snack pack order. (It rather spoilt the effect when she had to come back several minutes later and ask for a plastic fork.) Nearly everyone was looking at us as if we were the only two orphans who had not been claimed at a Barnardos open day. I was determined not to get upset. Instead I managed to control myself by imagining what it must feel like after taking a large dose of valium. I was still thinking about this at 7.25 when the waitress came out with news from the kitchen. “Your order was lost. Do you still want it. It will take 15 minutes.” The valium kicked in and I said “Yes...thank you...we have...already invested 45 minutes...in our dinner...let’s make it...an even hour.” I smiled again. We got it 15 minutes later, and a 25 percent discount, and headed home. When I told my wife what happened she exploded. “Bloody hell. They should have given it to you for nothing”, she fumed. “We’ve been waiting here for ages wondering what happened to you.” “You really shouldn’t get so uptight dear”, I sniggered and immediately wished I hadn’t. The next day she made me wait over an hour while she looked at shoes.
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 06:11:24 +0000
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