A Looong Davening

This past Shabbos has its reputation as being one of the longer Shabbos davenings. You have Hallel, Hoshanos, and Koheles all packed into the program that it can take a while.

Of course, when davening takes a while, you'll always have people, hopefully good-naturedly, cracking a comment or two on the length. When the ba'al shacharis was taking his time and singing at every possible point (and not realizing that the kehilla wasn't joining in- a sure sign that they've had enough...another potential post), the guy sitting next to me turned to me and asked if someone can tell the ba'al shacharis that he had an appointment on Monday that he really needed to keep.

What really irked me was when someone told me that Joe Schmo was also complaining about the length of the davening. This is the same Joe Schmo that with his baseball hat & coat still on and his daughter trailing behind, without fail saunters into shul to his seat at 9:45 when davening started at 8:30 and then proceeds to talk through out whatever davening time he has left.

He's complaining?!? He just GOT there!