To pay electricity, phone, and water bills, I go to the grocery store. After ringing up a pretty large order of foos because I hadn’t shopped in awhile and could no longer pass off eggs as dinner, I pulled out my bills.

As I watched all my food items ring up, I saw a lady with very few things come up in line behind me. I knew she’d get a little upset at me. My friend says she always goes to the pharmacy two stores down and pays her bills. She feels it’s a service to not make people have to wait in line. The times I try to pay bills at the pharmacy the computer service is usually down, and I end up back at the grocery store anyway.

I could see the woman’s face contort as the clerk punched in my numbers. The system was working, but it was slow. The woman fidgeted with her bread and package of cookies, rolled her eyes at the woman behind her, and then she sighed. You know that sigh. We all do it. The sigh that says: oh my gosh, how can we tolerate such inconsiderate, silly, hideous people that dare to do such things. The gall! The effrontery! (Ok, so I looked that one up but it’s a great word….anyway…..)

I’ve done it. As computer systems get faster and our society gets more and more accustomed to speed, we have very little patience for anything. I snip at the Browser when it’s taking too long to load a page; I get steamy when the guys decides at the last minute to check his oil at the gas station; I possibly may even say a few bad words under my breath when that lady picked the ONLY shirt on the shelf without a price tag.

What if we turned out thinking upside down? Maybe I am doing a service for the woman behind me. She gets a chance to practice patience - a virtue sorely missed today. Even though I feel a little guilty for making people wait, I will continue to bring my bills to the grocery store. It’s a service offered to us, “the public” and I shouldn’t feel guilty for using it. I look at it as a win/win situation. The lady behind me learns a little patience, and I get rid of some guilt.

So instead of turning my liver upside down when the lady’s credit card in front of me doesn’t work and she has to remove about 1/2 her groceries ( which are already in bags) because she only brought so much cash, I wait. And I remember that one day this could happen to me.