Patience

Warning: This is a venting post. I try not to do that too often, but I’m doing it now.

Sometimes people really test my patience. Not that I’m very patient in the first place; I freely admit that. But sometimes people do things that I’m sure would tempt even a patient person to impatience.

Some examples:

• Person A can’t remember anything from one minute to the next. It makes it very hard to get any work done, because I have to keep backtracking and re-explaining things.
• Person B has a habit of losing emails. Email this person at 10:00 AM, and then refer to that email later in the afternoon, and you’re guaranteed to get the same response: “Um… I can’t find it. Can you re-send it?”
• Person C has a habit of deflecting responsibility. This is harder to take because it usually gets deflected to the people who are the most productive—and I’m one of them.
  • Person C.1 is similar, but for different reasons; this person isn’t capable of doing anything in a standalone fashion, and requires my help for everything. So any time this person gets assigned some responsibility, I think to myself “Great. There’s one more thing on my plate…”
• Person D has a Jekyll and Hyde complex; you never know, ahead of time, whether you’ll be speaking to the angry, unreasonable monster, or the friendly, reasonable person.

Unfortunately, some of the people mentioned above are the same person. Also unfortunately, other people above are actually just general categories, rather than actual people; there might be lots of people I work with that fit into some of the characterizations above.

I do thank God for the core group of people I work with, who don’t fit into any of the categories above. It’s really encouraging to be part of a team of people who know what they’re doing, how to do it, and how to do it professionally.

Now if I could just learn to stop venting to them over Messenger, during conference calls, I’d be one step closer to having a Christ-like patience…