- Waiting for the ‘Skip Intro’ button to load on websites that use heavy Flash, fancy graphics, sound and advertising that mean nothing to me when all you want is to get information on their products.
- Waiting for a tradesman huge arse crack to get out of your line of sight this morning as he was fixing a door.
- Tradesmen who don’t come prepared with common spare parts and have to return and waste more time.
- The car park of a major shopping centre that is designed in such a way that in order to exit you must do a huge loop around each level, while your 2 hour free parking is about to run out.
- The endless drivel you hear from call centres before you speak to a real person. Followed by your multiple “can you repeat that” because you can’t understand their offshore accents (and I’m very good with foreign accents).
- The subliminal messages you get while you’re placed on hold, not the “we value your call” garden manure variety but the 70s pr0n-style music they subject their customers to.
- The time it takes from the moment your possessed PC freezes, for you to pull the plug, put it back in, reboot, login and declare your hatred for it in poetic terms. x3
- The myth of teamwork when you wait for a team “member” to do their part and out of sheer frustration of the wait you end up doing it yourself, and doing it better.
- Online geek companies that don’t tell you their freight charges upfront unless you create an account with them and go through the rigmarole of a fake purchase.
- Waiting for (yet another) tradesman to call when you’ve been locked out of your garage and it’s nearly midday and you haven’t showered yet.
- Waiting for that obligatory minute for the water to heat up before you finally step into the shower, your mobile phone handy in case you miss that call.
- When a person freely offers advice or help, and you ask for it then wait for them to get back to you and you end up in a rinse repeat cycle of number 8.
- In days of high tecchh-nnnooo-lllogy, being told that a small item delivery takes 4 – 6 weeks.
- The daily ritual of deleting spam out of multiple email addresses and tossing away more spam from your home mailbox into the recycling bin.
- Widget selling websites that refuse to deliver to post office boxes assuming you are house-bound or office-bound and thus end up making you so.
- Tossing up whether to click on an ecard link sent to you on your birthday and risk getting a Trojan as a surprise gift then doing the copy and paste thing into Firefox.
- Paying an exorbitant call charge for something so stoopid that you wish you were a big fat smoke-smelling handyman yourself with an arse crack instead of the work you do.
- Realising that the day is over and you’ve done enough time wasting that none of your priorities were met and your productivity is nil. And you still haven’t eaten.
- Waiting for the ink to dry on this post as you decide whether to publish it or delete it.
- Wasting no more time deciding between a dry Martini, left over Veuve or your favourite Pinot Noir and planning to have all three.
Written with an appreciative nod to the Study in General Timewasting Theory.
