How is Bitcoin supposed to serve as currency when it is all but impossible to spend at the moment (12/2017)? It seems Bitcoin is not standing up to the test of use as currency (that is to say heavy use). I tried to pay someone 0.009BTC (about $150) for some goods which I need in a fairly timely manner. As if I was ordering some supplies from a crafts store. It has been 5 days and the transaction has not been verified. From what I read it may never be verified, i.e. there is no guarantee by design for the transaction to ever be mined, not to mentioned mined in a timely manner. say what you want about the banks, but when I spend fiat currency the transaction goes through immediately and the party I send the funds to can use the funds immediately. And I get my purchased goods in a timely manner. Not so with BTC. As the transaction volume is growing the system is breaking down to the point of being useless as currency. I am not even talking about being able to spend $5 for a hot dog (I am likely die of starvation before the $5 transaction becomes verified). I am all for crypto currency and bypassing the banks, but this model is simply dysfunctional.

Am I wrong? Am I missing something? Is it just growing pains? I think it's like that by design, which is not good.
You were probably trying to pay on the blockchain itself. That's like trying to pay for lunch by moving dollars through the Federal Reserve. You should use some system designed to move small quantities of bitcoins cheaply such as Coinbase.

We don't yet have good decentralized payment systems for bitcoin, so currently bitcoin is primarily being used as a store of value. Think of bitcoin as more like gold than dollars. The Lightning Network is one proposal to provide a way to move small amounts of bitcoin at high speed with low cost.