God Give Me Patience. Quick!

I am not a patient person - as Sam and Kathleen can attest.

I don’t like being patient. I don’t want to learn patience. I hate having to be patient. I once remarked to a friend that I often prayed for patience. When she pointed out to me that the more I prayed for patience, the more God would test me, I quit asking for patience immediately.

But patience is forced on me whether I like it or not. A new gas cook stove and hood were supposed to be delivered to our house and installed today. Kathleen and I were looking forward to cooking our dinner with gas. But guess what? You guessed it; the appliance dealer called this morning after I had waited a couple of hours for the installers, to say that the appliances wouldn’t be delivered until Saturday.

I told the appliance dealer how unhappy I was that they had promised delivery today, but they said no, I must have been mistaken, delivery had been promised for Saturday. They couldn’t explain how they had told the installers that delivery was to be today, but no matter, the installers had to be rescheduled for next Monday and Kathleen and I are stuck with cooking on the electric range until then - which we have been doing for 12 years. So, what does a couple more days hurt, right?

Well, I hate being promised something and not getting what I was promised, when it was promised, and as it was promised. I have no patience with people who tell me they’re going to do something and then don’t follow through.

I know unforeseen circumstances do occur, but that seems to be too common a scenario with American businesses these days. They seldom seem to have what you want in stock, so you have to order (“That item’s on back order,” they like to say). You are promised an unrealistic delivery date, then you wait.

I think the big problem is that American businesses want to give us such a broad choice of things to buy that they can’t stock enough of those items (especially replacement parts), so we wind up waiting, forced to be patient. I think this one of the prime reasons retail stores are failing like they are and why internet sales are soaring. I ordered a couple of books from Amazon.com recently and they arrived promptly as promised. I tried to find both books at a big-chain bookstore, but the store didn’t have them in stock because the store’s shelf space was limited.

We have too much of everything in this country. Kathleen and I looked at a bewildering array of gas stoves before deciding on the one we bought. Now we’re going to buy carpet, and paint the family room. OMG! The choices of carpets and paints available are staggering. Of course, many of those - it always seems to be the very one you want - are on “back order.”

I need and want to be patient with my wife, my dog, my children and my friends, but I hate having to be patient with merchants who take my hard-earned money, promise me something with a big smile, and lie right to my face

Three bags of Sam’s poop on being patient with American businesses that can’t deliver as promised.