Andy Rooney_ 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit - Andy Rooney [109]
We went to Reims, or “Rheims,” as it’s spelled in English, because I wanted to see where the Germans surrendered on May 7, 1945. They’ve made the building into a museum, but it’s not very good. The French are not much interested in making a big thing of a German surrender to
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U.S., British and Russian troops. They seem to be vaguely embarrassed about their role in World War II.
On the way back to Paris, we came over the same bridge I had crossed forty-eight years ago when Allied forces entered the city. It’s one thing I know more about than the Parisians know about their city. It gives me a kind of smug satisfaction when they’re impatient, because I don’t speak French very well.
I just smile quietly and think to myself, “I know something about this city you’ll never know.”
No, Thank You
Waiting
Today I stood in line for seventeen minutes to cash a check for seventyfive dollars. I’d given this company, a bank, all my money to hold onto for me until I needed it, and today, when I needed some of it, it took me that long to get it back.
This is a good example of the kind of things that makes so many of us smile when we read that banks are having a hard time. We’re glad. It fills us with pleasure to read about their troubles. They’ve made us wait so often over the years that nothing bad that happens to a bank makes us do anything but laugh. “You had it coming, bank.” That’s what we think.
Waiting is one of the least amusing things there is to do. Short waits are worse than long waits. If you know you’re going to have to wait for four hours or six months, you can plan your time and use it and still have the pleasure of anticipating what you’re waiting for. If it’s a short wait of undetermined length, it’s a terrible waste of time.
I’ve read all the proverbs about waiting and patience:
“All things come to him who waits.”
“They also serve who only stand and wait.”
“Patience is a virtue.”
I don’t happen to believe any of those old saws. Impatience is a virtue,
that’s what I think. Shifting from one foot to the other and tapping your fingers on something and getting damn mad while you stand there is the only way to behave while you’re waiting. There’s no sense being patient with people who make you wait, because they’ll only make you wait longer the next time. The thing to do is blow up . . . hit the roof when they finally show up.
Some people seem to think they were born to get there when they’re ready, while you wait. Banks are not the only big offenders in the waiting game, so are doctors. Some doctors assume their time is so much more important than anyone else’s that all the rest of us ought to wait for them,
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“patiently,” of course. What other profession or line of business routinely includes in its office setup something called “the waiting room”?
In New York City many of the parking garages have signs over their cashier windows saying, “No charge for waiting time.” What a preposterous sign! What it means is that they can take their time getting your car, but you don’t have to pay them anything while you wait for it. I always tell them that I have a charge for waiting, and I think doctors ought to start knocking ten dollars off their bill for every half hour we spend in their waiting rooms. The doctor who tells all his patients to come at nine o’clock ought to be sent back to the hospital to spend another year as a resident.
All of us admire in other people the characteristics we think we have ourselves. I don’t have any patience, so it’s natural, I guess, that I don’t admire it in other people. Sometimes I reluctantly concede it works for them, but I still don’t think of it as a virtue. I secretly think that people who wait well are too lazy to go do something. Just an opinion, mind you. I don’t want a lot of patient waiters mad at me.
The funny thing about