Narcissists Cannot Wait

Waiting is, to most people, a less than pleasant and often avoided task. When done in a room designated entirely to the exercise, the act of waiting with its implicit lack of momentum can take on an intolerable feel. Most adults mitigate their annoyance or boredom by just unlocking their cell phone screens. Waiting room magazines have found themselves often relegated to a lone, lesser-used corner as those blue screens capture and contain our attention.

With my own phone in my hand I scanned this particular slow-moving waiting room that I’d happened to find myself in. The movement of paper on paper could be heard coming from behind the front desk. The receptionist manning the station accepted completed patient forms with low-volume and brief exchanges before adding them to the appropriate chart.

“Thank you. Please, have a seat. It’ll just be a few minutes. “

2:13PM. Three minutes ago, I’d been thanked, dismissed, and directed to an empty chair with those same three succinct sentences.

“Thank you. Please, have a seat. It’ll just be a few minutes. “

I hoped to wait for just another two minutes, but knew to expect more time to pass before I could make my way through the door separating the waiting room from the clinic itself.

With the exception of an infrequent shifting of weight, no sounds came from the seated, waiting, electronically-captivated patients. I shifted my gaze downward, tapping the screen in the appropriate places to bring up the newest game that I was actively involved in beating. I could make some use of this forced pause in productive activity and calm my nerves by moving colors shapes around my phone’s screen.

“Thank you. Please, have a seat. It’ll just be a few minutes. “

“She said the same exact thing to me and it’s been 35 minutes!”

My ears perked up as I looked back up and around to see who’d spoken and broken the near-silence.

“I can’t just keep sitting here. My time is too important and these people obviously don’t care about it. I’m to reschedule.”

That second outburst helped me and few other patients successfully visually identify the disgruntled patient. Near the back corner of the room sat an older woman and her adult, female companion. I could see that a number of us were wordlessly watching them but they seemed to be oblivious or at least indifferent.

“Mom, we’ve only been here for 14 minutes.”

Mom? I had thought that the two women resembled one another. Their revealing attire and tacky, plastic accessories were most certainly from the same closet. If the younger woman looked to be in her later 30s that meant that “mom” was…

“Well it feels like a lot longer. These uncomfortable chairs are making my back hurt and you know how bad my back already is. If I was in charge of this place I’d get better furniture… or just not make people wait forever.”

She sighed dramatically as if to help convey just how “forever” fourteen minutes felt to her and eyed the top of the receptionist’s head.

“I’m sure they’ll call your name soon, mom.”

If I was the daughter in this situation, I’d be mortified by my mother’s outburst, but this woman seemed not to be. There were in fact distinctive notes of resignation in her voice. I couldn’t help but wonder how many times and in how many different ways this drama had played out before.

“How do you know? You don’t work here. It doesn’t look like anyone here is even working. It’s too bad that I’m not a doctor or I’d show them how to treat patients. This is ridiculous.”

If we, the patients, were hearing these passive aggressive comments it was impossible for the receptionist in the room to have missed them. To her credit, she didn’t react. The top of her head only moved at she arranged her paperwork.

“Mom…”

“No. Who knows how many people are still in front of me and how long they’re going to take while I have to wait. That lady at the front probably didn’t even give the doctors my information yet.”

All of our eyes collectively ping ponged from this bitter woman’s wrinkled, leathery face to the top of the receptionist’s head and back. Her heckling was escalating and still receiving no reaction.

“I’ve been hurting for longer than these other people anyway. If these doctors were any good they’d give people like me priority. I’m going to tell them to do just that when I reschedule. I want to walk in and be seen.”

Despite her threats to find a different timeslot, she hadn’t gotten up and out of her chair to actually do so. A quiet descended back on the room and the uneasy feeling of it prompted many patients to return to eying their cell phone screens. It must have been an expanding sense of dissatisfaction that prompted this woman to break the silence once more. In an abrupt fit, she tossed her purse on the floor in front of her seat and grumbled. We, the patients, looked back at her once more before swiftly pivoting our gazes to the side doors that were just swinging shut. A husky, younger man in medical scrubs had strolled through them and looked to the receptionist. The receptionist made her way to her feet and pointed to the women in the back corner who had been making the disturbance.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see the mother adjusting her position in her chair and straightening her back. Did she think that doing so would make her look for formidable to this employee who appeared to easily be able to haul her over his shoulder and out the door? The daughter bent down and quickly tried to collect the few items that had come out of her mother’s purse upon impact with the floor.

“Ma’am…”

“I’d like to be seen now.”

We all, receptionist included, knew how this situation would resolve itself. I don’t think it was possible for this woman to not have seen the writing on the wall, but she continued right along.

“Ma’am, I don’t think that that will be possible.”

“Why not? I’ve been waiting for the last hour. It needs to be my turn now.”

I really couldn’t help but question this woman’s grasp of time. She was no where near old enough to have been senile and no where near enough time had lapsed for her to have been now waiting for that long.

“Ma’am, is this woman here with you?,” he asked pointing at the woman’s daughter.

“Yes, but she’ll be waiting for me here while I go see the doctor.”

“Ma’am, you won’t be seeing the doctor today.”

“What do you mean?! I am NOT rescheduling. I’m here now. I don’t have the time to drive here again and wait forever again. You’ve wasted enough of my time already!”

I may have unintentionally let out a snort of laughter at this point in the altercation. Thankfully it was not heard by the main actors in the drama. Buzzing cell phones where now also going unnoticed as all eyes were glued to the scene. She’d threatened to reschedule only to reverse course when she thought that option was being forced upon her. I was amused and awaiting her demise.

“Ma’am, I’m going to need to escort you and your friend out of the building.”

“She’s my daughter! And you won’t be taking us anywhere except to see the doctors in the back. I won’t be bullied by you. You should be afraid of me. I have a very good lawyer.”

Having collected her mother’s purse and its contents, the daughter sat in the seat next to her cross-armed mother and refused to make eye contact with either her mother or the clinic’s bouncer employee.

“Jenna!,” her mother snapped.

“Tell this man that it is my turn to see the doctor.”

The daughter reluctantly made partial eye contact with the formidable male employee and mumbled that they had been waiting for a while.

“Ma’am, if you don’t come with me, I’m going to have the authorities called.”

I followed this woman’s gaze as she looked to the still standing receptionist. There was a phone tucked between her ear and her shoulder and she appeared to be quickly but quietly speaking into it.

“Fine! We’re leaving. I’ve had enough of my time wasted by this f*cking office and its lazy, bullying workers. I don’t deserve to be treated like this!”

She continued to grumble as she pulled her purse out of her daughter’s hands and stomped to the doors. Before making her exit, she finally acknowledged us, the waiting patients, with a closing warning.

“All of you are wasting your time! This is a waste!”

With the mother, daughter, and buff male worker exit, a confused calm filled the room.

“I… I… Me… My… I… What a narcissistic c*nt,” I mumbled under my breath.

“Seriously…,” was the response that I received from the patient seated to my left.

As I unlocked my phone and restarted my game I couldn’t help but reflect on what’d just transpired. It saddened me. I can’t imagine being in my 50s and acting like a spoiled, impatient, self-absorbed child. Temper tantrums are unacceptable when thrown by 5-year-olds, but when it comes to their ability to regulate and express their emotions, narcissists aren’t as capable as 5-year-olds. Having been raised by a narcissistic father who always spoke in terms of “I” and “me” and threw fits when he didn’t get exactly what he wanted when and how he wanted, I knew exactly what it was that I had just witness to in this waiting room. I hope that the daughter knows what her mother is and is one day about to extricate herself from her mother’s unhealthy influence.