Did he value your time?

Today I sat in a coffee place for an hour unaware that banana pancakes take more than an hour to make. The reason you might ask? They bake pancakes. For thirty minutes. Each. Now I'm okay with waiting 30 minutes for really spectacular you'll-forget-your-name-and-go-crazy fluffy pancakes. But over an hour felt a bit too much.

While the waiters, crews, baristas are unapologetic and continue to gossip about local celebrities and what they wore to a screening of a low budget local film they co produced (made up that film bit) I start counting minutes. I start getting angry. I start counting what millionaires are making while I waste time waiting for three pieces of pancakes with frozen peanut butter and over ripe banana swimming in a dollop of salted soft butter. I start picturing the ifs. The phone calls I'll miss, the emails left unanswered, the meetings I'll be running late to attend. How much would that cost me? If I was a high powered rich business woman making over USD1500 a minute.

The young man who looked like he was fresh out of high school handed me my order, with a smile and a small I'm sorry. No remorse what so ever. I left briefly. As the driver drove away, I calmed the storm inside me. The problem, I thought to myself, is the mentality. The people in that establishment did not value time. The way I valued mine. I wasted less than two hours for those pancakes. Lucky I wasn't paid by the hour.

In those mundane day to day activities for the rest of our lives lie the awakening moment, the big flashy LED sign that blinks, the hard slap, or that three gold strands on a well greased ball, often times we miss if we don't pay attention. It was on that brief drive that the difference begins and ends in the mind.

It is the lack of ambition. It is the lack of urgency. It is the lack of self appreciation. Appreciation of self worth, of time, of other people's time and interest.

What makes a poor man poor is his way of thinking. The same way a rich man is rich because of his thinking. A dollar is just a dollar. To a rich man it could be the building block of a million. To a poor man it could be the difference between life and death. It could be a fraction of the cost of your lunch. It could mean a lot of things to different people. That all depends on you.

Xo,
Paula