.jpg "I'm Less Complicated")
Everyone waits in lines. It's just the way of the world. We wait in lines to checkout at the grocery store. We line up for entrance to venues. Eager travelers line up at airport security, customs, and boarding doors. If we are alive, lines are a part of daily life.
The same is true for pharmacies---get in line!
I stood about four feet behind a woman receiving consultation at the counter. She was just about finished when another customer joined the queue behind me.
Within a couple of minutes, the customer in front of me left with her information and the pharmacist's attention turned to me.
Me: "Hi. Good morning. I am picking up, but I also have a question."
Pharmacist: "Sure!"
She was unfazed by the first request and as I began to ask a second question about how many refills I had left, the customer who had been behind me in the queue, took a half step forward and asked,
"Hey, do you mind if I go ahead and get something? I'm less complicated."
I know my face revealed my sentiments. I also know that I was absolutely appalled by his request, but in the moment, I shot a glance his direction and remained quiet.
My interaction with the pharmacist continued, but I had so many questions for this eager, entitled, self-centered, absolutely feral person staring back at me.
How many assumptions did he have to make in order to even contemplate asking that question?
Did he assume I required an answer in the form of an essay and that would take too long for him to possibly wait his turn?
Did he assume that I was complicated for any particular reason? Was it the part about picking up a prescription? Was it the question about how many refills I had left? Did he assume I had an interrogation planned for the pharmacist and that would delay his service?
Under what circumstances would someone say anything like this?
Here is my guess: He has made this request before and it worked. So he will repeat the behavior until society sends him the message that it falls outside acceptable societal norms.
While I didn't say anything, I am at least satisfied that I didn't acquiesce this time.
I wasn't asking for a special accommodations. I waited patiently for my turn and I took my turn. There were no "complex questions" or time-intensive actions requested.
It was just my turn.
What a jerk. Here is a commentary on waiting that I read recently: Zeitkrankheit ) is a marvelously descriptive German term literally meaning “time sickness.” It is the sense of unease, anxiety, and uncertainty whether you are actually keeping up to speed with the world. Time may be measured objectively with clocks, but it is experienced subjectively embedded in our experience and expectations. That sort of time, time actually lived and experienced, has been and is accelerating constantly at the speed of technological and social change. Sometimes people cannot keep up and that feeling produces first anxiety, then frenetic activity, then sober realization, and finally despair" or in your situation, rude behavior and assumption that someone's time is more important than yours.
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