People - a means to and end, or a fellow person

I've noticed something interesting now that I'm working for myself, and that is that I want to be much more efficient, and that's causing me to tend to be less patient with inefficiency, and sometimes with others. I'm a pretty laid back person most of the time, even when I'm on a mission, I'm usually ok with setbacks and changes of direction. However

At present, I don't have life insurance. I assumed that was rolled into COBRA, but I found out the day before my last day at work it wasn't. So I made some calls a few weeks ago to find out how to get life insurance. I've been playing phone tag with a lady who wanted to talk about my benefits. I went ahead and scheduled a meeting up in Madison to discuss my benefits. I was assuming this was something to do with my whole heath insurance, etc. But then I started thinking about it, and realized it was probably just about getting a life insurance policy extended now that I'm no longer with my former employer.

Normally at this point I would have just shrugged and said "sure, let's meet" and then I would have driven up to Madison, taken probably 2-2.5 hours between driving up there, meeting, having lunch, and driving back. However, as I thought about this, I realized that all I was going to accomplish was they were going to give me a price for continued life insurance.

I asked if we could do this over the phone, and she said that since it was confidential, we couldn't do that. I then told the lady that if they already have all my info, and all I needed was the amount life insurance was going to cost, then we could do that over the phone without discussing anything confidential.

Turns outs that they'd actually be writing a new policy from scratch, and they don't have any of my info, nor would I be getting any sort of price break I don't think. It's at this point that I started to get irritated - here I was rushing around to leave for a meeting up in Madison, when I could just go online and get a quote from 10 other places in a matter of minutes.

So I called back and explained the situation, that it didn't really make sense for me to drive all the way up there just for a quote I could get online, and cancelled our meeting. I realize the lady was just doing her job, so there's no sense in getting irritated with her, and I think I was pretty polite although a bit short.

I think part of the deal looking back was that I feel a bit stressed today with a lot of things I feel I need to get done today, on top of the potential disruption of my schedule. The only other time I can recall feeling similar is at Christmas time when I'm trying to return something, or get in the store and get out, and the cashier is having a problem.

Times like this I have to remind myself that the person I'm dealing with is a person with their own problems, and not to get wrapped up in my own world. I think this is also an example of trying to do things on your one strength instead of trusting in God. Having my own plan puts the pressure on me, and the focus on me. Making plans but focusing on God throughout the day allows me to see people as human and not a means to get what I want. I think I'll have to try and keep that in mind.