Today I realized that there is one thing that very easily can alter my mood for the worse. I don't deal well when people waste my time, or otherwise show no respect for it.
The problem today was that a number of people who were supposed to work with me, for the betterment of their skills and the project, blew me off repeatedly. Normally I can roll with this sort of thing, but I had the same recurring issue with my last team at Microsoft as well. If you say that you're going to be somewhere and do something at a particular time, stick to it. Don't commit and bail. I hate that.
I find that time respect is even more rare these days in customer service situations, especially on the phone. If you have to wait endlessly to talk to a human at Chase, the company doesn't care about your time. If you have to stand in a long line to drop-off a cable box, Comcast doesn't respect your time. If Authorize.net can't bother to call you when they fail to help you via e-mail, they don't respect your time.
I also get cheesed-off when a company causes me to spend time doing something I'd rather not do. The king of time wasters is cable companies and XM, who you have to threaten to cancel on in order to get their best deal. I have to waste time because they won't give me their best deal up front.
I've become a lot more aware about how precious time can be, particularly since becoming a parent. It's not that I don't like to "waste" time on my own terms, but there's a difference between sprawling out in the sun doing nothing and having someone else waste your time.
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