connecting over a complaint

My doctor, who otherwise rocks (really, I owe my friend who referred me LARGE), seems to have a serious issue with scheduling her appointments. Unless you get there first thing in the morning (and she will take patients at 7:30am, so I have to give her serious points for that in my world where I get up at 6am on weeekends!), you're doomed to wait for over an hour. Ninety minutes isn't unheard of.

I had to go in recently as I've encountered some new, fantastic allergies. (They just popped up this year and wow, have they ever come with a vengeance. But I'll save that for another time.) Well, the only time her receptionist would give me was 5pm. You know how at the passport office they show some times of the day on a chart as green because they're the least busy times and then they show others as red because they're crazy busy? Five o'clock would be flashing, neon, dripping red time. I walked into her waiting room at 5:10 (really, why be on time?!) expecting the worst.

There were six people waiting ahead of me. Some had clearly been there for the requisite hour and beyond, since my nostrils were assaulted by the scent of stress. I sat down and started playing with my PDA, as I tend to do to block out such annoyances. (This has become much more fulfilling now that I've discovered dailylit.com, which will send pieces of a book to my PDA every day, at a time I choose. I love those people.) Some people were reading the seven year old magazines on the sidetables; others were staring at the ceiling with a scrunched up, tired look on their face.

I was stunned out of part 21 of Chekhov's The Seagull by the realization that there was actual discussion happening around me. A somewhat dishevelled-looking woman sitting to my left had caught the eye of another woman in a three-piece suit sitting to my right and broke the ice, bitching about the delay. "I just can't do this," she said, "not anymore." The lawyerly-looking woman replied, "Is it always like this? I have things to do." A full-on 15 minute conversation ensued, with a hippie-looking guy joining in, until Madam Dishevelled was called for her appointment.

This seems noteworthy to me, since I've grown up in and lived in a big city all of my life. People from totally different walks of life who would never speak otherwise connecting in a heart-to-heart over a common complaint-?! How cool. We've all seen it, especially in ridiculous queues at the bank, sporting events, for driver's license renewals, or waiting for an appointment.

And so for all of you out there (especially the guy I found last night who recommends we all take the H-elplessness and the E-ntitlement out of W-H-I-N-E to W-I-N) who advocate a complaint-free world: do you really want to take away one of the few ways perfect strangers manage to connect in this cold and often crappy world?

RainyBow


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SunnyShine note: I think the greatest example of this was during the blackout. Also, your experience could be worse. If you lived in the US, you would have to wait AND be hit with an exorbitant bill for your trouble. That would really give you something to complain about.

a query

Andy at Zimbabwe Absurdity has just posted about how we as humans complain in our daily life. He says:

"It’s a curious phenomenon; we grumble to the same people about the same things, day in and day out. I suppose that if we had a huge variety of things to grumble about we would not be able to grumble."

Now, most ordinary complainers love to whine about the weather... and the weather. I hear it constantly and it grows tiresome. Andy's gripings are way more interesting. And I'd like to think that my first month of complaint blogging with SunnyShine has broader appeal that just the same old, same old. (Our blog would grow tiresome quite quickly--and I guess time will tell on that one.) Still, I'm interested to hear other perspectives.

Do we (the broader we, not the incredibly annoying royal we) in essence complain about the same things constantly? And if we had more to grumble about, would we be stricken with what Barry Schwartz calls The Paradox of Choice, unable to choose where to start?


RainyBow

vindication. I love the sound of that word.

I don't have a lot of time to post today as my time is being monopolized by my sister who is visiting from out of town. I'll save comments on that for after she leaves tomorrow--wait for it. In the meantime, I have to gloat a little bit with a new quote from my book, Complaining, Teasing, and Other Annoying Behaviors.

The author writes:

"... [The] Type C or Type D personality style [are] both characterized by the inhibition of emotional expression. The Type C personality is the cancer-prone personality. People with a Type C personality are perceived as very nice because they seldom complain and try to avoid conflict.... The result, however, is a decline in the functioning of the immune system, which increases the likelihood of physical health problems. People with a Type D personality are at increased risk for coronary artery disease.... The hormones that are released in response to the stress of inhibiting emotional expression have negative effects on the coronary artery system. People who seldom complain are also at increased risk for depression.... Failure to complain is no indication that such people are quite satisfied. Indeed, they may be very dissatisfied. Ruminating about their dissatisfaction until it assumes gigantic proportions can easily lead to depression."
(2003: Library of Congress, p29-30)

So there, all of you people who think the world just needs to stop complaining. Especially our friends in Missouri. And now that we're talking about them, where are our crappy bracelets? Really.

RainyBow

is it a coincidence that two women write for this blog?

Years ago, I had a brief fling with tai chi. I didn't really enjoying DOING the tai chi so much as what I learned about East vs. West while doing it. Those in the class raised in the Asian culture (what I call the East) were content to just learn tai chi by following the moves and letting their body learn on its own. Those of us who were raised in the West all needed more. We wanted some reading, diagrams, or written thought to take away. Our teacher kept insisting that we try to learn with our body and not with our brain. Yeah, right.

So now, instead of just complaining away (as we're encouraging you to do), I'm embarking on a (small) journey of reading about complaining. I've started by reading Complaining, Teasing, and Other Annoying Behaviors. And here is my first tidbit:

The author and his students conducted a study and discovered that "Men expressed significantly fewer pet peeves than women.... In all categories women expressed almost twice as many pet peeves as men and in some, such as disrespect and unconscious annoyances, four times as many. We might suspect that women are more willing to voice their dissatisfaction or that men have a tendency to behave in ways that annoy women, but we don't believe either of those explanations. We believe rather that women are more sensitive than men to other people's behaviors. Because women are more oriented to relationships than men are, they are more likely to pick up on both positive and negative features of those relationships."
( 2003: Library of Congress, p. 35-38)

According to the author, "unconscious annoyances" include not replacing the toilet paper roll, leaving tags sticking out of one's shirt, smacking lips while chewing gum, biting nails, jiggling legs, and grabbing himself.

Wait, GRABBING HIMSELF??!! Women are four times as likely as men to complain about men grabbing their private parts?!

Perhaps my tai chi teacher was on to something....


RainyBow

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SunnyShine note: I have many, many pet peeves. I have no problem admitting this.