Whether it’s waiting for the results of a public disclosure request or thinking an emergency room is for emergencies, best take a seat. It’s gonna be awhile.
Although, in the latter case, I’ve an idea to cut to the front of the line that doesn’t involve blood. Read on.
Someone estimated that the average person will spend six months of their life waiting for the traffic light to change. That figure is skewed significantly upwards however if the light happens to be at 196th and Aurora in Lynnwood.
An editorial once opined that if you have the misfortune of stewing in traffic at the aforementioned intersection you might consider (a) reading a book; (b) taking up a hobby; or (c) growing mushrooms.
And forget about wondering where best to spend the seven dollars you have for lunch because your noon break will be over before it’s your turn to move on with your life let alone get back to work.
Reminder to self for lunch: pack a sack.
Live in Florida? There the red lights are longer but only because the yellow lights are shorter.
The headline read “Florida quietly shortens yellow lights and increases revenue by millions.” Turns out a mere “half-second reduction in the interval can double the number of red light camera citations – and the revenue they create.”
Though it has drivers seeing red, there’s a red-light special that cash-strapped cities might want to consider.
If you think doing time (a six-month sentence) at a stop light is bad (not the same as spinning your wheels), try 60 months (five years) waiting in line (no cuts, although see ‘Doing Disney’ below) which estimate is also mightily influenced if that line is at Disneyland’s Splash Mountain, Disneyland’s Space Mountain, or basically any line in any theme park anywhere in America.
When you consider you’ll be spending four years getting your high school diploma, during which stint (most certainly not a sprint) a daunting 526 books will be required reading, getting smart waiting to ride Dumbo in the ride “It’s A Small World After All” by flipping the pages of the first listed high school text is “To Kill a Mocking Bird” with one stone.
Doing Disney and don’t wanna wait? For a $1,000/day fee, you can – or could before culprits were caught – hire a motorized scooter for the disabled so your little darling can jump, or more accurately roll, to the front of the line.
Receiving many ‘we’re-not-gonna-stand-for-
What had previously been a ratio of one minute walking to seven minutes waiting now became six minutes walking to about the same time standing around. Complaints dropped to near zero.
The reason, says “M.I.T. operations researcher Richard Larson, widely considered to be the world’s foremost expert on lines: occupied time (walking to baggage claim) feels shorter than unoccupied time (standing at the carousel).”
Evidently what you don’t know can’t hurt you.
But then there are times when you are hurt and you do know it, like I thought I was years ago upon falling off a ladder and landing on my back on a rung of the ladder on the concrete and was hauled off to the hospital by a kind fellow worker only to see upon arrival many people waiting in the emergency room with their emergencies.
In my case, not having to wait wasn’t because there weren’t seats available, although there appeared to be very few; it wasn’t because my emergency was obviously – to me anyway, upon looking around the room – more of an emergency than their emergencies; and it wasn’t because I insisted I didn’t want to wait, although, truth be told, I didn’t.
I was almost immediately (even while my wife filled out the paperwork) ushered into treatment because the medical staff, coming and going, had no choice.
Adding a wing-span of nearly three-feet to a 6-foot-five-inch frame makes the total pretty hard to ignore.
Especially when all of that is stretched out – making the pain less and, as it turned out happily, the visibility more – horizontal, on the floor, right smack dab, from wall-to-wall, in the middle of the hallway.
Its a good thing that the City of Lakewood extended the yellow light times for the photo-enforced intersections from the start!
Good Job Chief Saunders you are missed!