Efficiency and effectivity. We want everything to be fast and perfect. But do you think we have taken such efficiency for granted?
So much so that little to minor inconveniences are able to trigger us all. Slightly longer wait at the restaurant cause it’s busy. The train having a minor delay due to track fault. Food delivery that got delayed cause of bad weather. The queue at the Singapore immigration took slightly longer cause your iris can’t be taken ( which I find odd in my recent travels cause this dude was throwing shade at the officer only to walk slowly to the belt and stood there for 10 minutes waiting for his bag to arrive). Line up for a first come first serve free gift only to realise its fully redeemed for the day. We detest the slightest inconveniences and to a certain extent, some will even write a complain to the organisation or a rant on social media to expose the inconvenience they faced.
Here are what netizens think:
- You make this sound like it’s a new thing, pretty sure that for the last 3 decades, Singaporeans have been like this.
- National pastime of Singapore is complaining. I’m quite amused when I see Singaporeans ranting and complaining whenever they face the slightest inconvenience overseas, instead of spending the time and effort used for complaining to actually solve the problem.
- Adding an angle I don’t see really mentioned – I think Singaporeans are not really developed for mental resilience, empathy and anger management. Maybe because generally they don’t express this very outwardly (like we don’t see assaults on the street) because of laws and general Asian restraint, it means they have all these negative thoughts in their mind but no one has sought to teach them how to cope. And it’s generational. So many boomers and Gen X also have the same problems. And they can’t guide their children to develop these skills. All of that just manifests into the famous “tskkk” when they face anything that encumbers them just a little.
- There will always be somewhere that has things worse. If we’re not allowed to have greviences about anything, no one should be complaining at all. Americans shouldn’t complain about their healthcare system because they should be grateful they have healthcare at all. People in countries with pensions shouldn’t complain about having too little because at least they have pensions at all. Calling the government useless, yelling at customer service for things beyond their control, all of these are over the top reactions, sure. But I’m allowed to dislike these things happening to me. I am grateful for the problems we face because as you say, they are minor and I am lucky to be in a position to complain about these as opposed to the issues mentioned above. But that doesn’t mean they magically become not-problems.