The Cost of Keeping Others Waiting
By Mathews
Whether a man steals from me a dollar or the half hour in which I can earn that sum, is to me a matter of indifference. The former crime may be the more demoralizing to the offender; but my loss is as great in one case as in the other. It has been justly said that there is as much injustice and cruelty in destroying a man's comfort during the five minutes you keep him waiting as in giving him an actual blow. But suppose ten or twenty men are kept waiting for one man. By an utterly inexcusable negligence he causes an utter perdition of capital and labor to that amount, more, perhaps, to say nothing of the vexation he has caused, unfitting twenty men for their duties for all the rest of the day.—Mathews.