Patience Well/ B.S. Volcano

The thing that makes deployment so difficult, aside from the possible explosive exploding of course, is the complete and utter inability to escape.  Obvious, I know, but I suspect that people don't quite fathom how painful that is.

For normal people, you have a frustration limit.  Through the course of the workday or workweek, various things rankle, but you get to go home for the night and weekend and your frustration level has  chance to come back down to bearable levels.

Here in Afghanistan though, it's 12 hours a day and seven days a week, but even then, when you're done with your 12 hour shift, you're still stuck seeing the guy who, without fail, quotes the same joke from a Will Farrell movie every. time. he. sees. you. ("I don't know how to put this, but I'm kind of a big deal.  People know me. I'm very important.  I have many leatherbound books...")

If you can't see how that gets old, fast, imagine the coworker who talks too much at meetings (aka "The Good Idea Fairy"; aka "Mr. Silence Terrifies Me") standing in your hallway when you go to use the bathroom in the middle of the night.  Even if he doesn't say a word, you don't want him there.  In your house, you can shoot him; out here, you can only fantasize about it.

People who work out here have pretty high patience levels.  They have to.  But, and this is a point my mother fails to understand, patience is finite.  Also, people's patience wells aren't built nice and evenly.

For example:

It's not really a patience well; it's a B.S. Volcano

So, as long as the rate of B.S. doesn't exceed the rate you can handle it you don't have problems.  But, if the B.S. comes too fast, you start filling up and it fills faster and faster.  Now, this is crucial to understand,  B.S. is not like water.  The more water in a well, the faster the water flows out because of pressure from the mass of water on top.  B.S., however, is B.S. and, being dense, actually drains slower with more pressing down on it and it can even clog up.  So, the more B.S., the slower it goes away.  Think of ketchup if you don't want to think of poop.

Back in the States, going "postal" is rare, fortunately.  Here though, people will fill their patience wells and explode their B.S. volcanoes.  However, since it happens to all of us, we've learned to a) accept when others go off on us and b) explode in relatively reasonable ways (screaming...not punching...most of the time).

So.

 1st Day Back from Vacation

Three weeks in

 

2 Months In

 

Week Before Vacation

Later That Same Day

 

That's the normal time-line.  We all pray we don't get more B.S. sooner than we can handle because hitting the B.S. Volcano Zone is when people quit or get fired.  Coworkers will give you a week.  They can't handle a month.  Neither can you.

I'm 2 weeks out.  My eye is twitching and I've gotten very quiet.

I can assure you, Sartre was right.  

"Hell is other people."