In case you hadn't noticed, people in Pittsburgh have had to learn to be a little more patient than those in Boston. It's only been three years since their baseball team was last in a World Series. The Pirates make us wait, but we keep going back for more.

A recent survey of mystery shoppers found a similar dynamic at play inside stores, restaurants and banks. Customers in the two cities had to wait for service on average exactly the same amount of time: 3 minutes, 52 seconds. Yet, Pittsburghers were more likely to go back again, 89 percent of time.

That's according to the Mystery Shopping Providers Association, a trade association for companies that hire people to act like typical customers at clients' businesses and then report back on their experiences. For the second year, the group asked mystery shoppers to complete a survey online about a recent experience. More than 10,000 responses were filed and averages calculated, although the results are not considered scientific.

St. Louis service zipped along so fast customers there could have completed at least three transactions in the time it took those in Houston to do one. The Missouri shoppers' wait times averaged out at 2 minutes, 9 seconds, easily grabbing the No. 1 ranking. Houston came in last among 25 cities with its average wait of 8 minutes, 3 seconds. Pittsburgh was ranked eighth.

In Cleveland, the average wait was 4 minutes, 11 seconds. Philadelphians waited a bit longer at 4 minutes, 27 seconds. Between the two, customers in the city along Lake Erie were more likely to return to a store when the only issue was how long the staff kept them waiting.

There may be something to that stereotype of East Coast customers being in a hurry and more demanding, said Chuck Paul, a board member of the association and president of A Closer Look mystery shopping firm in Atlanta. He spent his early years in Pleasant Hills and later returned to Pittsburgh to work in the hospitality business.

Employment levels play a significant role in determining how long people have to wait, he said. When it's hard to find staff, the level of service can drop. "I really do think some of this is the labor economics of certain cities."

Certain industries did better than others. Nationally, quick-service restaurants came with the fastest time at 3 minutes, 1 second, while customers at wireless communications stores spent almost 8 minutes waiting for service.

Buying a cell phone in Pittsburgh also took longer than anything else here. The average wait lasted more than 13 minutes. Coming in a distant second were grocery stores, where the average person stood in line 5 minutes, 44 seconds.