Random Prompt #297: What Takes Too Long?

    My wife’s work stories always revolve around someone being an asshole to her and they’re always too long. Trying to provide context she feels it necessary to give a full accounting of co-workers resume and work history. Instead of something simple and straightforward like this: “I had this conference room booked for a meeting at 1pm, but this asshole, Jim from accounting, was in there eating his lunch and wouldn’t leave.”

    To which I could give a simple fat free response: “Screw that guy, why can’t he eat his lunch at his desk or in the cafeteria like everyone else?”

    But, no, it’s always this: “You remember Jim from accounting? He worked at HSBC for Bart Ehrman. Remember Bart, he died of exposure on a nudist beach in 1993? Then Jim came to work for us, but was a real pain in the ass because he resisted Excel and wanted to keep using WYSIWYG, do you remember him? Well, Jim slept with my friend Joyce (sleeping around Joyce comes up in every story) and got caught and would’ve gotten fired, but the guy from Human Resources, Jay Pribus, who got fired from being a Buffalo Teacher Federation Rep because he always sided with the administration, he was sleeping with Joyce too and Joyce said she would blow him if he fired Jim. Well, this asshole Jim from accounting was eating lunch in a conference room I booked....”

    As the late, great Benny Sorra once said to me; “You ask my wife what time it is and she tells you how to make a watch.”.

    I was on four airplanes this week and the thing that takes too long is unloading carry-on luggage and exiting the plane. Some people are impatient, others are lackadaisical and none of it is efficient.

    Part of what makes this process inefficient is the impatient guy (and it’s always a guy), the moment those seatbelt lights go dark, that guy toward the back of the plane bounces out of his seat, grabs his carry on and tries to buck the system, jumping ahead of the people in front of him, like someone who tries to cut line in a coffee shop. Others follow his lead, but through society’s immutable laws of order and justice someone will, quickly and rightly, step in front of impatient guy and bring everything to a grinding inefficient halt.

    In contrast to the impatient guy trying to bolt from the plane is the never-ready lackadaisical middle-aged woman named Marie in row 9A. Marie is the person in the coffee line who doesn’t know what she wants and never has her money or card ready when it’s time to pay. As people wait she lumbers out of her seat, puts on her coat, then needs assistance removing her too heavy bag, never thinking for a moment about the people behind her as she slowly bumps her way down the aisle out of the plane. God bless Marie, but she brings everything to a grinding halt too and makes exiting a plane take too long.

    The fact that we have to leash our dog to take her out is annoying and it takes too long. Not only did our, loves to run mutt, Kaya Francis Bean, hit the jackpot with a loving/doting family when we rescued her from an Alabama kill shelter, she also got a giant fenced yard on a double lot which she could whip around totally unfettered to her heart’s content. In a huge figure eight she would run behind the pool and then go up the driveway toward the back fence and then swing around the shed and up to the front fence, where she would turn again and follow the walkway leading to the back of the house and then take a hard left and start back toward the pool again. She would also chase balls and sticks and then sit next to me chewing sticks while I sat on the porch off the garage having a few beers listening to tunes. A veritable paradise for a running dog like KFB. Then, she got weird and wouldn’t come in the house.

    At first we could just hold the storm door open and she would come in. Then we had to start propping it open and she’d come in on her own. That was followed by propping and calling. Eventually, we had to prop the door open, call her, shake a bag of treats and then give her a treat. But just before Christmas all our tricks totally stopped working and once she was let out, she wouldn’t come back in at all. Reasonably well trained: she sits and lays down with verbal and nonverbal cues, comes when you whistle or call, but when she’s out in the yard now, all bets are off  and she’s way too shifty and fast to catch. Hopefully, come spring her weirdness will subside and she can be the happy running dog she was meant to be. But, for now we are left with leashing her, which is annoying and takes too long.