Why are people busy, and then complain about it? (life, self)
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I enjoy being busy when I'm doing things I enjoy. But overall, I am busy in the not-good way. And I have little choice in the matter.
I have a full time job as does my spouse, and we have two young children. My job is not near home, so at least 1.5 hours of my day during the week is spent sitting in traffic. Staying healthy is important to me, so a couple days per week, I rush to the gym during lunch. Then there is yard work and house work to do, shopping for food/household items, school functions, laundry, miscelaneous errands... it all adds up and I have very little time for myself. I'm attempting to find work closer to home as this could give me an extra hour in my work day.
If you're a single person with no kids, you have a lot more control over what keeps you busy, or doesn't.
Speaking from the standpoint of a VERY busy person, I can say this, if I complain, I am expressing regret. I take on too many things and wear myself into the ground, trying to accomplish them. Part of it IS the way I was raised. Being busy is important. Not being busy is being lazy.
Unfortunately, because of the WANTS and DESIRES I have, my lifestyles requires that I be, WELL, really busy!
I wanted to own my own home. I wanted enough buildings to house all of my stuff and so that we could have workshops and lots of storage. I wanted enough land for my children and pets to run, climb, roam and play, but enough land to also grow healthy foods for my family. I wanted those things. They were important to me then and they are important to me now. Those things require WORK. Work=busy. However, work also yields rewards. In my old days, I will be rewarded by the "knowing" that I was modeling behavior, which enriched my family, rather than leaving them with memories of, well, a mother who had "no real purpose" in life.
There's no problem with people being busy because they truly enjoy that. The problem I see is how to reconcile the desires of "busyness" with quality of life.
I get people want a higher quality of life. This means you have to hustle for a while. At the end of the day, if you're wearing yourself to the ground was anything accomplished? If a person can't recall the events or activities they did during their busy schedule, was it worth it? Did they enjoy it? It's like people have to make their play a form of work, too.
Reminds of the mothers/parents who have children then do nothing but complain about how hard and time consuming it is.
In many cases, it has nothing to do with "being complainers". It has a whole lot more to do with "I had NO idea" just how time consuming and how much work it could be. Until you've been completely responsible for another person's physical and emotional, well being, survival and happiness, you have no idea just how much work it is.
When I hear young parents complaining, I understand, because I've been there. I simply say, "I KNOW, right? Who would have though it was going to be so HARD!"
In many cases, it has nothing to do with "being complainers". It has a whole lot more to do with "I had NO idea" just how time consuming and how much work it could be. Until you've been completely responsible for another person's physical and emotional, well being, survival and happiness, you have no idea just how much work it is.
When I hear young parents complaining, I understand, because I've been there. I simply say, "I KNOW, right? Who would have though it was going to be so HARD!"
What's funny is I recently read an article where it advised parents not to overstretch their kids' schedules. I think with children it can be a problem. If you're enrolling little Susie in ballet, art class, music lessons, with school during the week...at the end of the week she needs a nap. So do the parents! LOL
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My favorite quotes, that deal with both ends of the spectrum on this subject:
"Nobody on their deathbed ever said "I should have spent more time at the office." Rabbi Harold Kushner
"It's not that I'm lazy; it's just that I don't care" Peter from the movie "Office Space."
"A lack of planning on your part does not necessarily make for an emergency on mine." This is what should be said to all people (like the woman who 'had an agenda' in the OP) who claim they don't have the time to wait for something.
What's funny is I recently read an article where it advised parents not to overstretch their kids' schedules. I think with children it can be a problem. If you're enrolling little Susie in ballet, art class, music lessons, with school during the week...at the end of the week she needs a nap. So do the parents! LOL
Children should be taught to "be" less than to "do". I never saw the need to "involve" my kids in every last thing available in some misguided effort to "enrich" them. In retrospect I probably went too far the other way, because I am an introvert and found just thinking about it exhausting, much less participating; and I grew up as virtually an only child with parents who didn't see the point in all this frenetic activity, either -- and I didn't mind it and don't think it ill-served me. If I had it to do over again I would probably judiciously insert my children into a couple of social extracurriculars so long as their grades were good in the first place. But I would never do it to the extent many parents do. Aside from what I regard as a wrong emphasis, it also takes away from what could be quality family time / activities and tends to alienate children from their home life. Extracurriculars are named that for a reason -- they are less important than mandated classes and they are also less important than a healthy and vital family life.
My wife was somewhere in between with my stepchildren; she had a very deprived childhood emotionally, with distant / unavailable (and in the case of her birth mother, dead) parents. She overcompensated and she's the first to admit it. Another thing she's willing to admit is that because of a lack of role modeling she really didn't know how to go about parenting intuitively, so signing them up for every class / camp / activity and volunteering to support those activities was a way to feel like she had her bases covered and was fitting in with societal expectations of parenting. It occurs to me that if you grow up with all this "doing" without ever learning to "be" you would consider THAT good parenting and would not know what else to do with your own kids. Vicious circle there. Both of my stepchildren are overly performance-oriented and anxious, partly by nature, partly as a result of that parenting style feeding into their predispositions. It manifests differently based on their different personalities. They pay a tangible price for it.
"A lack of planning on your part does not necessarily make for an emergency on mine." This is what should be said to all people (like the woman who 'had an agenda' in the OP) who claim they don't have the time to wait for something.
I have had to deal a lot in my career (software development) with people foisting manufactured and needles crises on me. In fact we have a term for companies where that is rampant: "death march environment".
The key is lack of planning. In the scenario of a clerk not responding quickly enough to suit a customer, the situation is different:
1) The customer is always right
2) Refer to (1) above
3) The clerk doesn't have any visibility into the customer's actual situation, and therefore can't assume that they are busy because of a lack of planning. As I pointed out in another post, the customer may have perfectly reasonable expectations that haven't been met; in my experience most people leave adequate time for a reasonable level of service and make allowances for seasonally busy times to an extent.
4) Refer to (1) above
5) A properly socialized and trained (and paid) clerk should have the professional ethic of being as instantaneous / responsive / positive with all customers as possible
6) Refer to (1) above 7) Many of these situations could be defused by simply acknowledging waiting customers. The typical gambit of studiously avoiding eye contact and pretending the waiting customers don't exist, body language that lacks any sense of urgency or efficiency, and in fact is leisurely and languid, is most of what ticks people off.
8) For the love of all that is holy, refer to (1) above
9) Lastly, all the above said, some of these service issues are at bottom staffing, scheduling and/or training failures on the part of management.
10) I can't remember -- did I mention (1) above??
In many cases, it has nothing to do with "being complainers". It has a whole lot more to do with "I had NO idea" just how time consuming and how much work it could be. Until you've been completely responsible for another person's physical and emotional, well being, survival and happiness, you have no idea just how much work it is.
When I hear young parents complaining, I understand, because I've been there. I simply say, "I KNOW, right? Who would have though it was going to be so HARD!"
"Had no idea" that being responsible for another helpless human being is hard work? Who would have thought?
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Who would have thought? 
