Boomers have been telling younger generations we’re soft for as long as I can remember. We need everything faster, easier, delivered, optimized, upgraded. As a millennial, I’ve been directly annoyed by plenty of that commentary.
Most of it sounds like a lecture from someone who didn’t have to apply for jobs online or pay rent in a city where a one-bedroom costs more than their first house.
But there’s one thing I’ve had to admit they were kind of right about: not every inconvenience needs fixing.
I spent years treating a slow line, a delayed table, a late package, or an annoying errand like a malfunction. Eventually I realized the issue wasn’t always the inconvenience. Sometimes it was how badly I needed it to disappear.
A boomer’s daily life simply contained more waiting
My dad tells this story about driving to three different hardware stores on a Saturday looking for a specific hinge. The first one didn’t have it. The second one was closed. The third one had it, but in the wrong finish, so he bought it anyway and made it work.
The whole trip took most of the afternoon. When I asked him why he didn’t look it up online first, he stared at me like I’d asked why he didn’t teleport.
That was the world. If someone wasn’t home when you called, you called back later. If you missed a show, you missed it. If you wanted directions, you pulled over and read a map or asked a stranger at a gas station.
My parents couldn’t even leave a message until the ’80s, when the answering machine finally reached most homes, decades after it was invented. Being reachable on demand is newer than it seems.
My mom talks about waiting by the phone for a call from her sister who lived in another state. Not texting, not checking, not refreshing. Sitting in the kitchen reading the paper until the phone rang or didn’t. She didn’t consider that a hardship.
None of this made boomers tougher by nature. It meant inconvenience had more chances to feel ordinary. When the default is waiting, waiting registers as a normal day.
I grew up in a world where almost everything had a shortcut. When the shortcut wasn’t there, it didn’t feel like an ordinary delay. It felt like something was broken, and someone should fix it, preferably in the next thirty seconds.
I got very good at removing friction
I paid extra for same-day shipping because waiting two days felt unreasonable. I switched grocery lines if the one beside me looked like it was moving faster. If a restaurant said 30 minutes, I was already checking three other places on my phone.
I once left a doctor’s office because they were running twenty minutes behind. Rescheduled for the following week. Waited twenty-five minutes at the new appointment. The irony didn’t register until I was back in the car.
The Starbucks on the corner had six people in line one morning. I walked two blocks to the other one. Saved maybe ninety seconds. Spent four minutes walking in the cold to do it.
If an app froze for more than a few seconds, I was irritated. If a friend was ten minutes late, I had already built a small narrative about what it meant. If a website took too long to load, I closed it and tried another one.
If the elevator was slow, I took the stairs and told myself it was for exercise. It wasn’t. I took the stairs because waiting for the elevator made me feel like I was losing.
Patience is a skill, and I had been practicing the opposite every chance I got. I was getting very good at it.
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The thing that changed it was kind of small
I ordered dinner one night, and the delivery estimate kept getting pushed back. Forty minutes became an hour.
The hour became an hour and fifteen. I was opening the app every few minutes, watching the little car icon on the map, checking the restaurant’s reviews, debating whether to contact support.
I was getting increasingly worked up over food that was still very obviously coming.
I called my mom. Not for advice, just to vent while I waited. I told her the delivery was late, the app kept changing the estimate, and I was thinking about canceling and ordering from somewhere else.
She said, So make yourself something.
That was her entire response to what I’d been spinning about for twenty minutes. She wasn’t trying to make a point. She just didn’t see the emergency, because there wasn’t one.
I wasn’t starving. There were snacks in the kitchen. I had nowhere to be. The entire problem was that dinner was late. That was it. The whole crisis.
I hung up, went to the kitchen, ate some crackers, and sat on the couch without checking the app. The food showed up twenty minutes later. It was fine. It was always going to be fine.
I thought about how many times I’d done the same thing that week alone. The coffee line I abandoned. The route I rerouted three times because the app showed a two-minute difference. The text I sent asking are you almost here? four minutes after the person said they were on their way.
The grocery store I walked out of because self-checkout had a line and the regular lanes had two people each. Two people. That was the threshold.
Every one of those moments had the same shape. A small wait appeared. I treated it like a problem. I spent more energy avoiding it than the wait would have cost me. And the avoiding never made me calmer. It made me faster at noticing the next delay.
The rule I started using afterward
After that call, I started asking one question before reacting: is this a problem, or is it an inconvenience?
Some things need fixing. Some things are unfair. Some things waste enough time or money that changing them makes sense. And some things are annoying for a little while, and then they stop.
I had been treating both categories exactly the same way, which meant I was spending the same energy on a broken system and a slow food delivery.
Last Thursday the checkout line at CVS was seven people deep. Old me would have put the toothpaste back and driven to the Walgreens. Instead, I stayed. I stood there with my toothpaste and my phone in my pocket.
The woman in front of me counted out exact change. I did not sigh. I did not check the time. I got to my car four minutes later than I would have otherwise.
Four minutes. That was the catastrophe I’d been rearranging my entire week to avoid. Four minutes of standing still in a CVS with nothing to do but wait, and the world kept turning exactly the way it always does.
There’s research that says patient people are happier, and I believe it, because the months after I stopped chasing every minor delay were noticeably calmer. My life didn’t get easier. I stopped treating the ordinary parts of it like emergencies.
Convenience isn’t the enemy
I’m not saying boomers were right every time they told a younger person to suck it up. “Deal with it” can become an excuse for bad workplaces, broken systems, unfair treatment, or unnecessary hardship.
And convenience is great. I love GPS, online banking, delivery apps, and never having to stand beside a landline waiting for it to ring. I’m not going back to the map at the gas station. My dad can keep that one.
The lesson isn’t that life should be harder. It’s that not every remaining annoyance needs me to do something about it.
I still like convenience. I still pick the shorter line when I can see one. I still check the delivery tracker. Last week I caught myself switching lanes in traffic and realized the lane I left was now moving faster. Old habits don’t disappear overnight.
But boomers were right about this one, and it took a late burrito, a handful of crackers, and my mom saying five words on the phone for me to see it.
Editor’s Note: “As Told to Bolde” stories are inspired by reader submissions, interviews, and accounts shared with our editorial team. Details are often changed, combined, or dramatized, and our editors use AI tools in the writing process. See our Editorial Policy.
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