Five hours and two arguments with store personnel later, my father picked up my one-hour photographs. That puts the photo place 400% over its promised time limit and gives it the edge over my "same-day" dry cleaner, which missed its mark by two days. If this system of time applied in other areas, CBS could use "60 Minutes" to fill its entire Sunday night lineup, Minute Rice wouldn't be that impressive, and a whole lot of men would have to spend much less time thinking about baseball.

With the hour-photo/same-day cleaners clock setting the pace, Titanic would last longer than World War II and the folks at Lens Crafters would have a lot more free time.

Most people consider the seconds/minutes/hours standard a fairly unwavering system of measurement. I've never seen a watch that uses photo-developing standard time, and I'm pretty certain that dry cleaners have resisted making the switch to the metric clock. Delivering the promised services in the advertised amount of time seems inherent in the "one-hour photo" and "same-day dry cleaning" businesses. But apparently, many companies are content simply offering these services and have made no plans for fulfilling them.

If promising something doesn't require actually delivering it, stores could offer customers some pretty fancy incentives. "We fix your car, you get a date with a supermodel" auto repair places and "Ph.D. from Harvard" grocery stores would pop up on every corner. Like wrinkle-free pants, quality family programming and low-cost auto insurance, one-hour photos and same-day dry cleaning exist only as marketing concepts. The idea brings people in the door, but most customers accept any excuse for failure to deliver. Photo developing and dry cleaning places offer amazing turnaround time based on the assumption that most people wait until the last minute. They then take that belief even further and assume that anyone lazy enough to wait that long will also be too lazy to go to another store.

My dry cleaner has an awning, window signs and other assorted postings of its same-day guarantee. The entire side wall of the place reads, "In by 11, out by 5." But ask for one-day service, and you're told, "We can't do that, we're very busy today." Most dry cleaning/photo clerks fervently believe that busyness absolves them from maintaining promised levels of service. Forget the neon signs in the window or the fact that you're in a shop named "One-Hour Photo Stop," or "Done Today Dry Cleaning," because they're really swamped.

If the sign says 'one hour, 'same day' or makes any other claim, the promise should be kept or compensation should be offered. If extenuating circumstances make advertised time frames impossible, stores should stop offering them.

I've given up on having my pictures in an hour, and my pants will have to take a multi-day trip to cleanliness. But I'm holding out hope on the 10-minute oil change, and if things go well, Men's Health tells me my abs are 15 minutes from perfection.