128. Patience

Patience is not one of my strongest qualities. The word impatience makes people think that they are unable to wait to open Christmas presents. I like to think that I get stuff done quickly. Sometimes that’s not a good thing.

Even though the service has been set up, I have not set up internet in my apartment yet. It’s mostly been my own fault. At first, I purchased a router without a modem. And then I purchased a cable modem instead of a DSL one. And then I found out that Target doesn’t sell DSL ones. I asked the guy at Target where I could get one of those. He told me to go to Best Buy or MicroCenter. There was a MicroCenter just down the street.

I was getting stressed. I wanted internet and I had planned on going to a 7:30 showing of a movie at a theater nearby. I was going to go in, get it, go to the movie, and then finally set everything up.

I walked into the store and noticed that everything was sort of strewn about. It wasn’t messy, but by retail standards, it looked kind of crappy. It’s like the difference between my mom’s definition of a clean room and my definition. I found the aisles where the modems and routers were and started browsing. I had trouble finding what I was looking for. One of the salespeople came up and asked if I needed help, I said yes. He struggled to find some as well, until I finally found one that had all the requirements i needed. I looked at the price: $179. My spidey senses were tingling.

I asked the guy if this was the normal price for these sorts of things. He eventually settled on, “Maybe it’s a little bit more expensive, but you lose a little efficiency with other ones.” I was skeptical, but I decided to go with it—I’d finally be getting internet! He then slapped a sticker on my box that had a barcode with his name on it. I assumed it was something regarding a commission.

I hate finding out people get paid on commission. It makes me feel like I’m getting screwed. It’s supposed to incentivize customer service, but I think it really incentivizes getting people to buy crap they don’t need.

I headed towards the checkout line. Something my cousin told me popped in my head. He’s more tech savvy than I am, so I had asked what sort of router I should buy. He told me not to spend more than $20 bucks on one. I thought that my $179 bucks just seemed ridiculous.

I rarely do this, but as soon as the next register was open, I told the guy. “I was going to buy this, but now I’m not.” The guy threw his arms up and said, “What?!?!?” I walked out of the store. It felt like the right thing to do. I searched on Amazon for the same thing. There were some higher-end models, but most of them were between $20-50 bucks. I felt vindicated.

I went over to the movie theater and saw that it was $5 Tuesday. I was in the mood for some popcorn, and I asked if they had any deals going on. The guy said that you get a free popcorn with any beverage purchase. I was happy they had a “kiddie size”, which is a real person’s small. I also got a reasonable sized popcorn with it. So my whole movie going experience was $8.75. Not bad, when I realized that would have been the same price as the other theater in town.

Sometimes, your patience does literally pay off.