Losing time
By Teresa K. Flatley

Where does the time go? we ask ourselves and even virtual strangers. Well, I think I have discovered the answer.

In the course of a few days, I waited 30 minutes for my son's doctor's appointment, 20 minutes for his haircut and then again for mine, 30 minutes first thing in the morning for my doctor's appointment and 15 minutes at the drive-through pharmacy waiting for a prescription. When you throw in time sitting at construction zones and in traffic, that comes to more than two hours of lost time, time I didn't plan on spending that way, time I can't get back.

On the sage advice of professional time managers, I tried to spend my time waiting with a good book, but it's the kind of reading that gets interrupted every time someone opens the door or walks by, every time you glance at your watch, watching your life tick by. Not very productive.

Unfortunately, I don't see how things are going to get any better as we continue down the continuum of time in this, the 21st century.

Not so long ago I was able to plan my forays into the outside world when traffic was light and everyone else was at work, the beauty of working at home. But that's no longer an option. I'm not sure why other people want to do their errands at the same time I do, but I'm pretty sure it's a conspiracy.

When's the last time you could actually "run" into a store and pick something up? Running in and back out quickly is no longer an option anywhere. Phrases like "I'll just be a minute" are no longer in our vernacular. There's always, always someone in front of you when you try this:

• At the bank this person is looking for advice on how to design a financial empire.

• At the grocery store, this person has managed to pick up not one but several items with missing-in-action bar codes requiring the Dreaded Phone Call to various departments in the store which, of course, have not had a clerk sighting in hours.

• At the mall, the person in front of you is returning a well-worn piece of clothing without a receipt and demanding cash back.
  

The best I can surmise is that there are too many of us and too few services, roads, doctors, waitresses, clerks and so on. We live in a helter-skelter world of too many people in too small a space which conspires to make us all nuts.

Even with all our technological "advances," the Internet and intricate phone systems where you never get to talk to a human being, it still takes forever to get anything done. A recent appointment with a repair service to have someone look at my leaking dishwasher took one week to set up. Two days before the repairman was supposed to come a perky operator called me and said, "Gee, no one can come that day to fix your dishwasher. We rescheduled you for next Monday. If that's not OK (and it wasn't), call us." In other words, all the information I had given them about when I could be home to let him in became as moot as yesterday's weather report.

The truly frustrating part of this was that it was a chore I thought I was making headway with. I had already confidently scratched it off my to-do list and had moved on to other important items (call the dentist, buy some stamps). I had to put "call dishwasher repairman" back on my list and start over.

If the repairman comes and doesn't make a repair, his company still charges for travel time. What I want to know is: How do I collect for the wasted time his company caused me?