Jul 19th, 2024

Author: donich_admin

Waiting tolerance

I was just reading about the Cloudstrike induced IT outage this morning. One of the BBC headlines was “Edinburgh airport passengers go with the flow” – apparently people were patiently and indefinitely waiting for flights.

This made me think about my own tolerance levels for waiting around, which I will say are not high. Basically if it were a routine flight which could be rescheduled, my “wait indefinitely” tolerance level is not much more than an hour before I would cancel and go home. If it were a very important flight I would go back to my car or take a hotel room to wait in. Under no circumstances would I physically stand in a queue for longer than this, although a comfortable seat would extend my patience to about 2 hours. No more.

I then got thinking about how long I would wait in A&E, as I have heard reports of people waiting for 40 hours. The four hours which is the supposed “maximum” wait time is at the very far limit of my tolerance level, and that would be making the assumption that I was seriously ill in a way that I couldn’t find any other way to treat. The “I’ve cut my finger and think I need stiches” type of issue would be replaced by a packet of steristrips the moment I even saw the queue. There are literally no circumstances I can think of when I would be conscious and capable of even assisted walking where I would sit in a corridor for 40 hours.

R will say to that that I did wait in a corridor for nearly five hours when I had to attend A&E last year, but I will refer my learned friend to my earlier point and say that I was not conscious for most of that time.

So I don’t do queues and certainly wouldn’t be going with any flow at an airport. The picture is of a nice calm sunset.