Tuesday, May 26, 2020

No Need to Rush Here in Toronto

Out of stamps! Shoppers Drug Mart is still open; it has a Canada Post outlet.

Good. Just one lady ahead of me. And one person at each of the two 'wickets'. Line up. I'll be through in no time at all.

I had failed to notice that each of those two people had bags of parcels to mail. No rush. No panic.

The line did not move after the woman lined up in front of me was called. About six or seven people had stacked behind me by that point. They entertained themselves with their smartphones. (How did we entertain ourselves during transit or waiting in line before those electronic devices came along?)

I had been stationed at the "next" position for about ten minutes when the middle-aged Asian gentleman in the process of being served turned to me and asked: "Do you want to go through?"

"No problem, sir. I'm in no rush at all."

About another ten minutes passed with me getting no closer to my postage stamp. Just one person from the lineup had ejected by that point. The rest stayed and waited patiently.

The Asian man turned to me again and asked if I was sure I did not want to sneak in. I was fine with waiting. He then addressed the whole lineup and said, "if this was Hong Kong everybody would be yelling at me".

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The above piece first appeared as "The Attitude of the Toronto People" on February 2, 2018.




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