Jun 18, 2008

I think there is a correlation between traffic jams and assertiveness, of course give or take the mindset of the people involved.

I was coming into work this morning on my usual carpool route. 10-15 minutes of waiting at the curbsite in front of a Longs Drug pharmacy, and 2 cars later, I jump into the front seat of a silver compact car. The driver, a woman, says, "Bad traffic on the bridge, there was an accident".

Most of the time you'd presume what's told to you to be true, I mean why would someoen consciously deceive you about something like that at 6 in the morning. Yet, I had a side thought, like "yeah, RIGHT.", but only in mind.

What was different about today was the large number of people waiting for carpool, never had I seen that many people wait when I get there so early in the morning. I didn't take much notice to it, other than that I wouldn't get in at the time I had hoped. The same was true of the traffic on the freeway. I had never seen so many cars at 6AM, let alone close to 7AM, yet there were plenty of cars. I thought it was strange, but brushed it off. We're cruising along, and as we approach the crazy maze, cars were sitting at a standstill.

And this is where the thought of assertiveness came into play this morning.

We're sitting on the left most lane on the freeway, the one lane that moved about 3 car lengths every two times that the lane next to us moved 5 car lengths. I'm sitting there, and I'm literally watching the cars zoom by me. Yet, it never occurred to the driver next to me that the lanes next to us were moving much faster. Maybe it was that she liked sitting in traffic, but the argument is that most people wait until the very last of minutes to go to work, to get that extra 5 minutes of sleep. I'd assume no different for a lot of people. Not only is this woman sitting in the same standstill traffic as I, but she would have to drop the two of us passengers off, before finally heading into work. Possibly much later than when I woudl get into office, especially since I work literally across the street from the passenger drop off.

The woman never moved. She sat in the traffic, listening to slow music that almost lulled me to sleep.

Maybe that's not a point by point paper on why traffic jams are correlated to assertiveness, because maybe the woman wanted to sit in the traffic, and didn't have to get into work until 10AM, and was really enjoying the traffic. Yet if that was not her mindset, then it could potentially suggest that she was not assertive enough to take charge and change lanes. It might also suggest that she was not bright enough to realize that the lane we were sitting in wasn't moving nearly as fast as any of the other lanes.

Whatever it was, it definitely had my antennas up.