Who are they? These are your friends and acquaintances, in fact, nice people, who, however, are ready to sit for empty chatter for 6-8 hours in a row, stealing your time. That is, these people come to you and do not leave.
“Hundreds of miles of deserted, monotonous, burnt-out steppe cannot overtake such despondency as one person, when he sits, talks, and it is not known when he will leave.”
Anton Chekhov
In addition to many negative qualities, I have several positive ones. For example, I know when to leave the guests. The skill is quite simple, but I’m very proud of it. When it seems to me that it is time to leave, I begin to pack up and announce aloud: “Well, that’s it, I have to go.” Often the owners are strenuously preventing them from leaving, and this means that it’s really worth leaving in ten minutes.
And if the owners do not hold back, then the time to say goodbye was chosen correctly. I hate to be imposed and I’d rather leave sooner rather than later. I am proud of this quality of mine also because, apparently, it is rare. Judging by what or who, you ask. Yes, at least for some of my friends.
I’m lying with the flu, fever, cast-iron head. A friend comes to visit, brings a bottle of rum. Sits down at the table. Asks:
Will you be rum?
“No, what are you, I won’t, of course.
“Ahhh,” he drawls sympathetically. “Then I am alone.
And he sits, sips rum, talks about something incessantly. Due to the temperature, my consciousness periodically turns off, but the interlocutor of my friend is not really needed, which means that my participation in the conversation is not required. More than anything in the world, I want to sleep — and that she was gone. But she sits for a good four hours and only then says: «Well, I’ll probably go.»
We had a drastically different understanding of the value of time and drastically different plans for the day
And this is just one of the examples. Other friends could come to visit during the day, we chatted, then there was a break between trains, then it was time for dinner, then something else. They ended up leaving late at night. Other buddies came for coffee, but instead of saying goodbye after a couple of hours, they waited out rush hour and traffic jams to get home faster, and ended up taking up five hours of my time.
We had drastically different understanding of the value of time and drastically different plans for the day. As a result, my plans went to hell. What was to be done with them, with non-leaving friends?
Here, a friend of mine, about whom I already know that she is a thief of time, should come to me. Eh, I guess I won’t give up that easily. We sat for an hour, then I told her: “Listen, I need to go for a walk with the dogs.” Of course, I don’t need to, but I reason like this: let’s go out into the street, and by inertia she will go to her home.
But it was not there. Okay, she says, let’s go. We walked the dogs for a bit, and then she came back to me. And that’s when it dawned on me that I can no longer afford to steal my time. Even though I don’t do anything so grandiose during these hours, it’s better for me to decide for myself what to spend them on. It’s rude to say to a friend, even an annoying one: “You have to go!”, I can’t. I had to find a tactful but effective remedy.
— Shall I visit you?
“Good idea,” I say, “only let’s meet in a cafe this time.”
We’re having a great time, I’m going about my business in an hour.
How can you not read the other person’s reaction to you?
But not every friend you will call in a cafe. I had to figure out how to make sure that guests not only come to me, but also leave. I came up with and share the solution with you.
My friend calls me, the one who came to visit with a bottle of rum.
— Will I come to you tomorrow evening at seven o’clock? Are you free tonight?
— Yes, free, but only until nine. Then I have things to do. Fits?
— It does.
Now my friend can’t steal my time and has to say goodbye to me at nine. True, sometimes the thieves of time do not leave at the moment we agreed on. I have to pretend that I really have to go: get ready, get dressed, leave the apartment with the guest and go to the metro.
When I manage, as the spies say, to get rid of the tail, I return home satisfied that I have saved time for myself. To be honest, I can’t imagine how you can not understand what is happening with your interlocutor, whether he listens to you or not. Maybe the person is already yawning, looking at the clock, or even in a coma. How can you not read the other person’s reaction to you? And what do you do with the thieves of time?
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