Have you ever waited in for the washing machine repairman or a tradesman to come?
Then you’ll have experienced the great ‘five minutes’.
This is when you are expecting them to arrive at the appointed hour of say 10am and they have not arrived.
You are by now annoyed because you have taken time off work or more importantly are missing a crucial top level coffee morning (and you know that if you’re not there then it’s you they are talking about), so you call the man who is late and he tells you: “I will be there in five minutes.”
He will not be there in five minutes, you’ll be lucky if he is there in 20 minutes, but he has told you that he is coming.
Why do they do that? Why do they tell us five minutes when they know it will be more.
Anyone who has driven in Bahrain for more than five minutes can accurately predict how long it is going to take them to drive from point A to point B taking into account the time of day and traffic density. For instance, I can tell you that in non-rush hour time it will take me 20 minutes to drive from Amwaj to Adliya but, in the morning rush hour, it will take me 40 minutes to drive from Amwaj to Seef.
So why can the driver coming to your house from his depot in Sitra not be able to tell you accurately how long he will be?
The answer is quite fundamental; it is the way we look at the world and approach things.
If you are from a Western industrialised nation then you are more likely to be ‘time oriented’ whereas if you are from another background then you are more likely to be ‘task, or event, oriented’.
What does this mean? Well, if you are time oriented it means that you expect things to happen at a certain time or for them to take a certain time to complete. In a work environment you are more likely to down tools at a specific time, for example, 5pm rather than complete the task you were on.
If you are task, or event, oriented then you are more likely to complete the task you are on before finishing to go home. You also believe that it is more important that the meeting, task/event actually takes place rather than it has to start at a particular time. If it’s going to happen it will happen, Inshallah.
So back to your friendly washing machine repairman and why did he tell you five minutes, because he knows that if he says the truth of 20 minutes you are going to berate him for being late and not starting out earlier so that he could have arrived at the appointed time. However, by telling you five minutes he has also informed you that he has not forgotten and that he is on his way, so that the event will take place, and it is the event taking place that he is paid for.
So back off and leave the poor guy alone.
Jackie@JBeedie.com