Last week, I was sitting in a local coffee shop, doing some work before a meeting watching people order their breakfasts.

I saw this one person sit down with his order, look at it, know it was wrong and just start to erupt.  He ate it, but he was not happy about it.  Then I started to look at the line-ups as people were becoming more and more frustrated with how long it was taking to place their orders.

Some were getting angry, some were checking their watch – their impatience was growing.  Think about when you go to a restaurant and order dinner -and it starts to take a long time – you’ve waited over an hour for your food and still nothing, better yet, it finally comes and it’s wrong.

Cue the eruption.

I don’t drink coffee, I drink tea and I have been there on those occasions, when I have ordered a tea, driven all the way to work, finally sat down and taken the first sip of my tea only to find out that it’s a coffee?  How dare they?  How dare they get my order wrong?  At those times I’ve felt the need to fling my drink across the room at the wall.

Now look at when I bought my first car, much larger expense than a cup of tea, it had problems within the first 24 hours, called it in for a fix it’d be in the shop for a few days.

Was it a downer?  Yes.

Did I lose my cool?  No.

You’d think it’d be the other way around, I paid more for the car and it’s broken but yet it’s the cup of tea that drove me nuts.

Is it the convenience of ordering food that makes us impatient?

Is it the immediate gratification of food that makes us crave nothing less than perfection?

Or is it a simple matter of the combined factors of only having x time, to consume something of y quality and z cost that boxes us into feeling this way where in a larger purchase we have more of these factors in spades?

Don’t know, but change food to software and what does that do to your perception of what you are getting for what you are paying?

Want more? Check out my book Code Your Way Up – available as an eBook or Paperback on Amazon (CAN and US).  I’m also the co-host of the Remotely Prepared podcast.

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