I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end

 There’s this commercial on TV, I’m not sure if you’ve seen it. It’s for this business called JG Wentworth, one of those ‘need cash now’ businesses. Basically, it is for people with shitty credit to get more money by selling their birthrights for money to pay off bills. That’s what I gather.  Anyways, the premise of the commercial is that there is a bunch of people shouting out of windows, in operas, or on streets “It’s MY money, and I want it NOW!” (One of the commercials can be found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX0fIi3H-es) It always pissed me off, because you had your money, you spent it irresponsibly tinting your car windows instead of paying off your electric bill. Why should you get more money, (that’s not yours) to fix your cruddy mistakes? Since when is money lent to you at a 7000% interest rate yours, and why are you entitled to it?

Usually, I think instant gratification is ridiculous and indulgent, like supersizing for a quarter more at move theatres. I like waiting for things, like my immigrant ancestors from Ellis Island did when they came here. Nobody handed them anything. However, there are some things I don’t think you need to wait for. I’m talking about unsubscribing from e-mail newsletters and other spammy subscriptions. If my ancestors knew America was full of inane Internet publications with ads for Viagra, they would have stayed in the Ukraine.

I somehow got on eBay’s Daily Deals list serv. I even said out loud, “Fuck this shit, why am I going to bid on shit I don’t want? How did I even get on this crap?” Instead of rapidly hitting delete with my agitated right index finger, I aggressively scrolled down until I found the ‘unsubscribe’ button. You can give a man a fish by deleting an e-mail, but if you don’t want to get laden down with shitty fish listservs, you unsubscribe. Finally, I was beginning to hit a level of Zen. I would be free to reach a new stage of enlightenment: an inbox free of earthly junk.

e-mail surveillance from sikhs on ''the office'' is the way to go.

As if. eBay promptly told me that my request to unsubscribe would take 10 days to go into effect. Seriously? Is their entire messaging system run by morons using an abacus and notecards? As in, they’d have to look through stacks and stacks of cards to find me, and then destroy my card over a small fire? No, this is the 21^st century. Why the hell does it take TEN WHOLE DAYS to just electronically delete me from a system. It takes me less than 10 seconds to delete my full name in a document. Now I have to deal with your worthless e-mails that I didn’t even want in the first place for ten more days? It’s my inbox, and I want it now! Worse comes to worse, I’m going to declare OCCUPY GMAIL and demand that 99% of the e-mails are worthless and should not exist, unless they’re willing to work.

Additionally, I had this same problem with Comcast. Besides their terrible, soul sucking service, they were just really incompetent with their finances. When my previous roommate Clyde tried to change our cable plan from his name to mine, they said it would take up to three billing cycles to go into effect. THREE MONTHS? I could have mastered a scrapbooking class or sustained a marriage with Kim Kardashian in the same amount of time it would have taken Comcast to update their database with a name change.

There’s no excuse for technology to be as good as it is, and suck as much as it does. We can watch movies in the palms of our hands, have electronic health records and have robots build weapons, but we still deal with nonsense.  Nobody likes shit work, but if technology is the great facilitator, why am I still getting e-mails from Papa John’s? I only ordered their cardboard imitator of pizza once, and I’ve unsubscribed the same number of times that grotesque cuisine gave my heartburn.