I do that whenever I have to wait on a progress bar. I zoom in with whatever accessibility options there are, then when a pixel is 3-5mm I put my mouse cursor at the end of the bar and wait.
To save time in the future, bear in mind any time you think you are the only person that does or notices something: you aren't. This is due to the fact that people are all running on the same physical architecture, with very similar cultural and social ecosystems, plus the law of large numbers. Note that this does not apply to edge cases such as people engaged in activities or domains with a very small number of participants...
