Unless, of course, what you want is customer service.
The company's fervor for instant connectivity surprisingly vanishes when you call the billing department. It is only open from 7 to 9, central time. Ironically, a network that sends 4 gazillion gigabytes per second cannot connect me to a human in under 4 minutes.
This makes me bristle with impatience. And this bristling is troubling. Is instant customer service really that important? It used to be that patience was a virtue. Or a well-meaning Puritan. At any rate, patience was something to strive for. It represented self-control and sense of place in the broader community.
Why should I be so upset at a little hold time? Why not just relax and sing along to Al Stewart's "Year of the Cat?" I am stuck in the patience paradox: The more instant connectivity I have, the less patient I am to receive it.
I want my patience. And I want it NOW.
