Word: complained
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...explanation. After two or three times, Mr. Godot himself will place the call, as he should have done at the start.) But the "please hold" ploy is a mere flicker in the annals of great and horrible waiting. Citizens of the Soviet Union would think it bourgeois decadence to complain about such a trifle. The Soviets have turned waiting into a way of life. The numb wait is their negotiating style: a heavy, frozen, wordless impassivity designed to madden and exhaust the people across the table. To exist in the Soviet Union is to wait. Almost perversely, when Soviet shoppers...
...someone cuts into a line that has been waiting a long time. It is unjust; suffering is not being fairly distributed. Oddly, behavioral scientists have found that the strongest protests tend to come from the immediate victims, the people directly behind the line jumpers. People farther down the line complain less or not at all, even though they have been equally penalized by losing a place...
While many Americans are sold on high speed and racy lines, some others still want a car big enough to take the whole family on vacation. Because Detroit has been limiting production of fullsize cars, dealers, especially in the South, complain they cannot get enough of them. Says Dick Strauss, a Richmond Ford dealer who is nearly sold out of the $14,500 Crown Victoria, the successor to the Ford LTD: "Preferences haven't changed. The standard-size car is still the most desired, although not everyone can afford it." Tampa Dodge Dealer Hubert Brooks is also squeezed. Says...
Businessmen complain that they are losing money because they cannot raise prices fast enough. The exchange rate, for example, is modified daily at 1 p.m. "We don't alter our prices accordingly, so on every sale we automatically lose between ½ % to 1½% a day," says Avram Kalisky, owner of a Jerusalem computer store. Many Israelis make ends meet by overdrawing their checking accounts between paydays, but the privilege can cost up to 19% interest a month. Others juggle their money from one account to another to avoid the costly bank charges. The inflationary cycle is self-perpetuating, since there...
...State also insisted that his trip was not an independent negotiating bid, but an expression of support for the Contadora group (Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia and Panama), which has been trying to reach a diplomatic solution to the region's conflicts. The Shultz trip not only undercut critics who complain of Reagan's militaristic approach to the area's problems, but was a welcome change of tactics. For the first time, the Administration opened a formal channel for talking with the Sandinistas instead of shunning them...