What Makes People Impatient
And how can we prevent it
At work the other day, a client called my supervisor. She told her that I wasn’t answering my phone, and questioned if I was really in the office. My supervisor walked over to my cubicle to check on me. I had my phone in my hand, ready to dial the number for the client who’d left me a voicemail five minutes before.
The kicker? When I called the client, she said the proposal her company wanted me to take wasn’t even done yet. What made them so impatient?
A recent study pins the blame on technology. It makes sense: we live in a fast-paced world. In a generation, we’ve gone from “allow 6–8 weeks for shipping and handing” to same-day delivery. We are expected to always be “on,” answering calls, texts, and emails right away.
Our computers are fast. So if something doesn’t load or work right away, it probably won’t work at all.
And we’re in a hurry. As a society, we’re dining out less and getting takeout and fast casual more. We don’t want someone to wait on us. We want to grab our food and go.
