‘COVID-time’ made us more patient, but can it last?

The microcosm of the café can tell a lot about the mood and vibe of a city. On Christmas Eve, a customer in front of me asked the owner if he was open “tomorrow”. Yes, he was, but if anyone asked how long the coffee would take, they could go fly a kite. He used different language. Everyone in the café found the bluntness of the owner’s answer amusing. He said he opened every second year to thank the locals, but the queue would be long.

Out of curiosity, I went the next day because I had a theory. It’s that we’d all become more patient and grateful over the last couple of years. Observing a café under time pressure would be perfect. Two years ago, when he’d last opened on Christmas Day, customers were still demanding, and impatient.

An explanation for our improved mindfulness is because during terrible situations, inconveniences don’t matter anymore. COVID, for the vast majority of the population, was a traumatic period on some level. As a collective, we’ve now mostly been brought out of that tough period. The idea that Christmas presents didn’t arrive on time was no longer something to get upset about.

I remember travelling to my father’s funeral and my wife and I managed to back the car into a stationary pole. We wrecked the passenger door, but it raised little more than an eyebrow from either of us.

There had been a string of incidents recently where I thought people would respond angrily, selfishly or in the very least, mildly irritated, but they didn’t. I observed people being mindful in supermarkets, letting people into a lane in congested traffic, items out of stock, work colleagues being considerate of sickness, Wi-Fi outages, or other commitments if another colleague missed a meeting.

In the past, many of these small interactions would have more often than not resulted in eye rolls, shaking of the head, exasperated hand waving, or please-explain emails. But I believe, possibly naively, that these reactions are significantly lower on some immeasurable metric.

Additionally, over a two-year period, COVID forced all of us to move metaphorically to one of those idyllic locations where supply issues or lax urgency are so rife that residents operate on their own local timescale.

Everyone’s been to that place where, if things don’t show up, their excuse is, “We’re on Fiji time!” Or if your sandwich hasn’t arrived, “Mate, we’re on Darwin time here” or “We’ll fix your car, just not right now, we run on Florida Keys time”. When services or deliveries become this poor, it’s affectionately excused. And, once you hear that sentence, it’s time for you to not worry at all because there’s no point. It will happen, or it won’t.