Riding the Slipstream

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once – Albert Einstein Why is it when you are in a hurry to do something, someone else is there to slow you down or prevent you from doing what you want to do. It is as if the universe conspires against you in order to restore some sort of cosmic balance. Well if it is, I for one would like to give the universe the finger and say, “Take your cosmic balance and stick it up your aris!” Take last Friday, for instance. It is my lunch hour and I need money in a hurry. I owe someone at the office a few quid and I want to settle it before the weekend starts. So I get in my car and rush off to the shopping mall to draw the required amount of money. It takes me about 30 minutes to get to the mall and find parking space, which leaves another 30 minutes to do my thing, and get back to the office. If I take any longer, I will be late for the meeting I have scheduled for 2pm, which would lead to yet another exchange of words with the boss. It is the last thing I want… not on a Friday afternoon! I get to the only auto-teller machine and there is a young woman at the machine. Young professional, good-looking, smartly dressed. My lucky day! I can make it back to the office in time. I mean… how long can one person take to withdraw a few rand? Much longer than you think, the gods decide. You are on our turf now and we want to have some fun! They instruct Ms Young Professional to firstly draw two mini-statements on two different cards/accounts. She takes, what seems to me like a life-time, to enter her pin-code and follow the instructions on the screen… or perhaps she is just methodical… painstakingly methodical. Meanwhile, I am shifting my weight from left to right and boring holes into the back of her skull. “Hurry up... please, hurry up”, I silently mouth to myself. It’s like having a big pee and all the stalls are engaged. I could easily challenge her, but I am really tired of being confrontational. Upon receiving her mini-statements, she scrutinizes them with such intensity it seems she’s auditing the books of a small company. She does all of this, while standing in front of the machine. The machine has become part of her personal space. I cough loudly to make my presence felt, but she gives me a fleeting glance and then proceeds to insert the first card back into the machine! She really is the poster girl for not “keeping all your eggs in one basket”, don’t you think? I am craning my neck to look over her shoulder (and looking suspiciously like a thief) as if I could mentally enter her pin-code and complete the transaction for her. Ten minutes have passed and I can see my day heading south at lightening speed. I am as impotent as Hugh Heffner sans his Viagra and Father Time, in a cruel twist of fate, has decided to speed up the passing of time. Finally, the machine spits out her money. All of 50 freaking bucks!! It took her all this time, to decide whether she wants to withdraw 50 Rand from one of her many accounts. Are you kidding me, grandma? 50 bucks should be a no-brainer… just draw the money and sort the budget out at home or away from the teller machine! How difficult could that be, I ask you? As she takes the money and her statement and turns away, I rush forward and slot my card into the machine. She looks at me as if I am Satan’s spawn and mumbles something about “waiting your turn”. I could not be bothered. I have 15 minutes left to do my thing and I am pissed off. If I had my way, I would arrest people like her for stealing time. Even if I had not been in a hurry, this woman had just stolen 15 minutes of my day from me. Transactions like these should be conducted inside the bank… not at the auto-teller machine. By the time I get back to the office, it is 10 minutes after 2. The meeting had already started and the boss throws a snide “glad you could finally join us, [K]” in my direction. I can feel my scrotum tighten as the anger wells up inside of me. I mumble my apologies and sit down. Where are the gods and their cosmic mumbo-jumbo now? Some days just aren’t worth getting out of bed for.