I was waiting in line at the airport and the guy in front of me was taking so long to figure out something on his phone with security that several people in other lines passed us by. Whatever challenges he was having with his boarding pass, it never resolved before I jumped into another line after he’d been trying to figure it out for five minutes.
Meanwhile, when it was my turn, I had my id ready and the whole process took about 15 seconds. Same for the person ahead of me.
I used to assume this one person doesn’t know what they’re doing and because of that, they’re holding up everything. I don’t think that way anymore. Now I just think it’s the law of large numbers.
After all, most people are moving fast. Which means that most people move fast all the time. I always move fast, except, wait — have there been times when something went wrong, and I caused a delay? Yes, but they were very rare.
So now I assume that this guy is probably very fast on average, but once in a blue moon, something goes wrong, and he holds up the line. Just like the rest of us, And airlines, who are processing thousands of people a day, are always going to have a person who is having a day when things are going wrong.
When I look at it as the law of large numbers, I get less annoyed. And I see that most of the time, the statistics show that things are operating well, and I appreciate that.
Leave a comment