Time Theft
We pulled our armoured truck up to the entrance of one of our regular customers, and entered the store to pick up the deposit for the bank. When we got to the safe, the manager informed us that once again, one of her cashiers hadn't balanced the day before, which meant that once again, she had to open one of the deposit envelopes in the safe to count the money before she could give it to us. I rolled my eyes, as this was a common occurrence at this store, and thought to myself "There goes another five minutes of my life, thanks to someone else's mistake." When we got back to the truck, I started to think about how often this sort of thing happens, and wondered how much time in our lives is literally stolen by another person's carelessness.
"Time Theft" is a common occurrence, but the time that it takes us to accomplish our own tasks is so often dependant on the actions of others that we sometimes don't notice it.
I was on my way to work the other day, when I was caught behind a slow moving car. The driver seemed to be distracted by something, or daydreaming…or maybe just picking his nose. He slowed down even more as he approached the green light, only to suddenly speed up just as it turned yellow. His lack of attention to his driving made me miss the green light, which I would have easily caught otherwise. While missing the light may have only cost me about thirty seconds, it was my thirty seconds, and he had no right to take them from me. To lose time out of my life because some dude I never met before had an itchy nose was unacceptable. I wanted to catch up to him to let him know how I felt, but I had a feeling that yelling from one car to another on a busy street wouldn't successfully get my point across:
"Hey you! Thief! I want my time back!"
"What?"
"My time! My time! I want it back" I would repeat, pointing to my watch.
"Oh…it's seven thirty" would be his reply, as he continued to dig for treasure. See what I mean?
As I mentioned earlier, I may not have even noticed losing those thirty seconds, but out of curiosity I decided that day to add up all the incidents in which I felt my time had been stolen by someone. I figured that I lost about twenty minutes total, from a mechanical problem on my truck not having been taken care of, to customers not being ready when they were supposed to be, to losing time in a traffic jam caused by people slowing down to rubberneck at what appeared to be an accident, but up close turned out to be just some poor guy getting a ticket. Twenty minutes may not seem like that much time to lose, but having those extra minutes can be critical at the end of the day…depending, of course, on what you have to do. If all you have planned when you get home is to watch "The Simpsons", and you end up missing the first twenty minutes, then it's no great loss. If however, you wanted to play with your children a little before their bedtime, an extra twenty minutes would be greatly appreciated.
Not every delay we come across can be considered time theft though. Unless you live on a deserted island, there will almost always be other people at the same place at the same time as you. That's not time theft, that's just "Life in a Big City". The people in line in front of you are not stealing your time; they're just ahead of you. The time thief is the one who waits until he's at the front of the line to look up at the menu at the Burger King, and only then decide what he wants. What was he doing the five minutes he was in line? Why did he wait until he was at the front to decide what to order? Did he not realize he was in a restaurant, and would have to tell someone what he wanted to eat?
Then there's that woman in line in front of you at the Wal-Mart, who waits until she sees the total of her bill before opening up her purse, and then her wallet, to take out her credit card. Why did she have to wait until the last possible second to get her card out? Didn't she realize earlier that she'd have to pay? Didn't she notice the eight people in line behind her? It's not like she had to wait for the total in order to count the exact change…she was using her credit card! When I'm at the cash, I've got my money, credit/debit card, goat, chicken, or whatever other form of payment I plan to use, in my hand, ready to give to the cashier the moment the total appears. It's not that I'm in a rush…it's just common courtesy for the other people behind me.
I guess that's the main cause of time theft: A lack of common courtesy. If people took a moment to consider the person behind them, or counting on them, or waiting for them, then there would be less time lost for everyone. I know what you're thinking…fat chance of that happening. There is one consolation though: Because the effects of time theft are cyclical (what goes around, comes around), we can take comfort it the fact that the time that others steal from us will someday be taken back from them…it's only a matter of time.
