I’ve decided that there is no research study too mundane to find financing.
The tipping point was a recent report at Dailymail.com that men spend more than three weeks of their lives waiting for their significant other to finish shopping.
Researchers broke it down this way: 23 minutes per shopping trip spent killing time while the girlfriend or wife browses and tries on clothes, multiplied by two joint shopping trips per month comes out to more than nine hours per year waiting for the girlfriend or wife to make up her mind. Over the average adult lifespan, that works out to 24 days killing time outside of dressing rooms.
(The study was commissioned by an air conditioning company, of all things, and listed several things that make shopping a nuisance. At the top of the list is crowds, followed by long lines at the checkout, followed by uncomfortably hot conditions in shops. The study surveyed 2,000 adults.)
About half of those men surveyed follow their wives around the store, while 37 percent find a spot out of the way and wait it out. They pass the time on their phones, browsing the Internet or swapping messages with friends.
So while I was waiting for the last out in a recent Cubs games so that I could reclaim the remote, I found on Instagram @Miserable_Men. I scrolled through photo after photo of men spotted in malls during their 24 days of waiting: men dozing off on a pink Queen Anne sofa; men wedged into tiny chairs next to a boutique’s fire extinguisher; and men on their phones alongside racks of shoes on sale. I didn’t linger on any of these images for too long, for fear I would recognize one of those sad, sad men.
Twenty-four days is a long time to spend waiting for anything, but such is life. Twenty-four days has to be less time than I’ll spend waiting to pick my kids up from school, or waiting for the exterminators, cable guys, and garage door repairmen who quote four-hour windows when I need them to come into my home. But they work hard and treat me fairly, and so I find ways to pass the 3 hours and 49 minutes before they walk through my door.
Twenty-four days is one heck of a long vacation — too long by many employers’ standards — and would have many travelers longing to return home. By my calculations, 24 days is also approximately the amount of time I’ll spend in this life matching and folding the men’s black socks that tumble out of my clothes dryer. But I digress.
Twenty-four days is a long time, and these men deserve gratitude for the patience I’ll assume they exhibit. But I’d like to hear a little gratitude when I produce that pile of clean socks, too.
Have a column idea for Joanna? Please contact her at joanna@northshoreweekend.com.