Patience Is a Position. A Quiet Lesson in Negotiation.

I’m standing outside my favorite restaurant in Pasadena. The wait is an hour and a half. Around me, time feels louder than usual.

Couples scroll on their phones and glance repeatedly toward the host stand, as if eye contact might speed things up. Families negotiate among themselves—who’s hungry, who’s tired, who’s losing patience. Groups of friends laugh, then pause, then quietly complain, lowering their voices as if the restaurant might overhear their frustration.

No one is leaving.

But almost everyone seems uneasy.

It’s a fascinating thing to watch, because a negotiation is unfolding everywhere—just not out loud.

No one is bargaining with the restaurant. No one is asking for a discount, an explanation, or a guarantee. The terms are clear and unchanged: this is the wait. And yet, internally, many people are negotiating hard—with their expectations, with each other, and with the story they’re telling themselves about whether this is worth it.

I’m struck by how often discomfort in negotiation comes not from the terms themselves, but from resistance to accepting them.

The restaurant isn’t apologizing. It isn’t explaining. It isn’t trying to manage emotions. And paradoxically, that clarity seems to heighten the tension for those waiting. When there’s no dialogue, we tend to fill the silence with assumptions: They don’t care. This shouldn’t take this long. There must be a better option.

But there is a better option. It’s called leaving.

And that’s where negotiation becomes interesting.

Every person here has a choice. There are other restaurants. Other tables. Other meals. Yet most people stay, even as they complain. That quiet contradiction—I don’t like this, but I’m not walking away—sits at the heart of many conflicts we experience in professional and personal life.

We often confuse dissatisfaction with unfairness.

In reality, the terms may be perfectly fair. We just don’t like the trade we’re making.

The restaurant holds leverage not because it’s powerful, but because it’s clear. Demand exceeds supply. The value proposition is consistent. There is no need to negotiate because there is no uncertainty. You either accept the wait or you don’t.

As I watch the people around me, I notice something else. The tension seems to grow in proportion to expectation. Those who believed the wait would feel shorter appear more irritated. Those who arrived prepared—knowing exactly what they were agreeing to—seem calmer, more grounded, more present.

Expectation management, it turns out, is one of the most underestimated elements of negotiation.

In leadership, business, and creative partnerships, conflict often arises not because the terms are unreasonable, but because expectations were misaligned. Someone assumed flexibility would be offered. Someone expected that urgency would be shared. Someone believed the other side would absorb discomfort they themselves were unwilling to tolerate.

When those assumptions collide with reality, frustration surfaces.

I also notice how dissatisfaction gets expressed. Most of the complaining here is quiet and indirect. No one is confronting the source of the frustration. Instead, it’s redirected—to partners, children, friends. The negotiation doesn’t happen where it could be resolved; it happens where it can be vented.

That pattern feels familiar.

In many organizations, the real issue is rarely addressed directly. We negotiate around it. We complain about it. We internalize it. And over time, that unspoken resistance turns into disengagement, resentment, or burnout.

Standing here, I feel oddly at ease.

Not because the wait is short—but because the terms are honest. I know what I’m giving. I know what I expect to receive. And I’ve decided, consciously, that the exchange makes sense for me.

Patience, in this context, isn’t passive. It’s an active position.

Negotiation doesn’t always require conversation. Sometimes, it requires clarity. Sometimes, it requires acceptance. And sometimes, it requires the humility to recognize that just because we don’t like the terms doesn’t mean they’re wrong.

When the doors finally open and the experience delivers on its promise, the wait won’t feel like time lost. It will feel like part of the agreement I willingly entered into.

And that may be the quietest, most honest lesson negotiation has to offer.