Is punctuality a choice?

[AHoosierMama]

To mitigate my slight hijacking of this thread
My friends who are late for lunch dates http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=406624
found in the Pit, let's explore punctuality vs. habitually late viewpoints here.

My post to the doper whose friends always show up late for lunch, thereby making her late getting back to work went something like:

"Punctuality is a choice. Barring the unexpected traffic jam or such like, you can either decide to be on time or to be late. The message I feel the chronically late are sending is "I disrespect you. My time is more important than yours. I had better things to do." Now I'm not talking about the occasional "Oops - the baby puked on me and I had to change clothes" 10-minutes-late-once-in-a-while stuff. Just the never-make-it-anywhere-on-time tardy types.

Some of the "tardy" posted back stuff about having ADD, frontal lobe issues, etc. Where do you stand?

[jsgoddess]

If you can ever be anywhere, you can be there on time.

[Sapo]

Fool me once and all that. If you already know those people are always late, don't schedule them when time matters. If they are coming to your house to watch the Super Bowl and arrive at halftime when you already ate all the wings, it's their loss. If you insist on meeting them for lunch in a half-hour break, it is your fault you got yourself in that pickle.

I am normally very punctual and it sometimes upsets me when other people aren't. But I don't expect all people to live by my standard. I am free to choose the people I associate myself with, both personally and in business.

[gigi]

Back when I was more compulsive and panicky, I didn't have a choice but to be on time or, more frequently, too early. Now that I am happily medicated, I don't worry about a few minutes delay. That may or may not be a good thing, depending how you look at it, but I am certainly less anxious than I used to be. I would never push it to the point where it would hurt anyone, though, and I would count on someone letting me know.

[Heckxx]

I think that punctuality can be a choice, and sometimes, it is simply out of our control.

It says something about someone's personality if they are continually late or continually punctual, but I dont think you could conclude that it was their active choosing to be late or on-time.

[Wee Bairn]

Punctuality is absolutely a choice. I used to be late for work every day because it didn't matter, and I set the alarm clock for 7:20. Once I was cautioned for tardiness, I set the alarm clock for 7:00 and have not been tardy since.

[Obsidian]

I think that punctuality can be a choice, and sometimes, it is simply out of our control.

It says something about someone's personality if they are continually late or continually punctual, but I dont think you could conclude that it was their active choosing to be late or on-time.

Thank you.

I had several posts in the other thread where I tried to explain why I have timing issues. I'm not sure my personal why really matters, so much as the getting this point across. Punctual people can't fathom the way non punctual people think. They can't fathom being that distractable. They can't fathom having absolutely no accurate sense of time. Therefore, they conclude it must be an active choice. It must be an easy, flip decision that we are making as a direct insult, when that couldn't be further from the case.

Yes. Anyone can be somewhere ontime given the right circumstances. For someone like me, it takes work, preparation, and a lot of extra time. Just because I have now learned (the hard way) how to make airplane flights, does not mean that I can reproduce those results under every circumstance.

In the original thread I also mentioned I was klutzy. My mother was convinced this was out of carelessness. She felt that if I was just carefull enough, I wouldn't ever fall, or drop/spill things. I can't live my life as if everything I touched (from my toothbrush to my dinner glass) were a priceless antique. I can't do that because I'm human. Because everything would take 4 times as long, and I'd never be able to pay attention to anything else (like the dinner conversation). Other people take their ability to talk and wash dishes at the same time for granted.

The lateness is much the same way. Being on time takes far more work for me than it does for most people. I need to prioritize where those efforts go, or my entire life will be consumed by minute-by-minute scheduling. I do the best I can. If people want to take it personal, so be it, but to be honest. . . I could say the same about the punctual people, too. If you're my friend, do you *really* want me to assign airport or family funereal importance to every meeting? Really? You'd want to know that I've been sitting around waiting for an hour for everything we do, no matter how small? Is it really so insulting to know our lunch date is not as important as major life events? Do you really, honestly expect to be that important to your friends? Do you care so little about them that you can't meet them halfway?

It is maddening to have something wrong with you that you work hard to control, to work around, to live a normal and productive life, to feel like your best effort gets you only the bare minimum. . . and then have people be so incredibly flip and dismissive about it.

Wee Bairn, just because it was that easy for you does not mean it's that easy for everyone else. I'm actually laughing right now. Get up earlier? Well, why didn't I think of that? Oh, wait. . . it's because I already do. It's just not that simple.

I don't mean to snark you, but this is *exactly* what I'm talking about about people being flip. Everyone has a one line solution to a complex problem. In truth, it involves a lot of scheduling, reminders, and advance preparation. Its more work than my naturally-punctual roommates ever have to put into anything.

[AHoosierMama]

Thank you.

I had several posts in the other thread where I tried to explain why I have timing issues. I'm not sure my personal why really matters, so much as the getting this point across. Punctual people can't fathom the way non punctual people think. They can't fathom being that distractable. They can't fathom having absolutely no accurate sense of time. Therefore, they conclude it must be an active choice. It must be an easy, flip decision that we are making as a direct insult, when that couldn't be further from the case.

Yes. Anyone can be somewhere ontime given the right circumstances. For someone like me, it takes work, preparation, and a lot of extra time. Just because I have now learned (the hard way) how to make airplane flights, does not mean that I can reproduce those results under every circumstance.

In the original thread I also mentioned I was klutzy. My mother was convinced this was out of carelessness. She felt that if I was just carefull enough, I wouldn't ever fall, or drop/spill things. I can't live my life as if everything I touched (from my toothbrush to my dinner glass) were a priceless antique. I can't do that because I'm human. Because everything would take 4 times as long, and I'd never be able to pay attention to anything else (like the dinner conversation). Other people take their ability to talk and wash dishes at the same time for granted.

The lateness is much the same way. Being on time takes far more work for me than it does for most people. I need to prioritize where those efforts go, or my entire life will be consumed by minute-by-minute scheduling. I do the best I can. If people want to take it personal, so be it, but to be honest. . . I could say the same about the punctual people, too. If you're my friend, do you *really* want me to assign airport or family funereal importance to every meeting? Really? You'd want to know that I've been sitting around waiting for an hour for everything we do, no matter how small? Is it really so insulting to know our lunch date is not as important as major life events? Do you really, honestly expect to be that important to your friends? Do you care so little about them that you can't meet them halfway?

It is maddening to have something wrong with you that you work hard to control, to work around, to live a normal and productive life, to feel like your best effort gets you only the bare minimum. . . and then have people be so incredibly flip and dismissive about it.

Wee Bairn, just because it was that easy for you does not mean it's that easy for everyone else. I'm actually laughing right now. Get up earlier? Well, why didn't I think of that? Oh, wait. . . it's because I already do. It's just not that simple.

I don't mean to snark you, but this is *exactly* what I'm talking about about people being flip. Everyone has a one line solution to a complex problem. In truth, it involves a lot of scheduling, reminders, and advance preparation. Its more work than my naturally-punctual roommates ever have to put into anything.

Why do you think it is so effortless for the on-time ones? Perhaps they have elaborate planning going on behind the scenes, too.

[Blaster Master]

I will not assert that punctuality is not a choice; however, I do think it can be unfair to necessarily think it is a lack of respect. I am often late to work, class, seeing the gf, etc. but my choice is not an active choice that I don't care if I'm on time but a passive one because of my lack of awareness.

Here's a common example, its 6:00, I just got home from work, I call the gf and tell her I gotta work out, and I'll be there by 9:00; 2 1/2 hours to work out (yes, I'm a gym rat), 30 minutes to get there... perfect, right? WRONG! Both of those times are correct, but I forgot to account for the drive to the gym, the drive back, taking a shower, etc. Next thing I know I'm 30 minutes late, and its for no good reason than because I didn't account for other things I have to do.

A similar example, I have routine appointments with my Chiropractor and I usually see him on my day off during the day, so there's no traffic, and it takes about 20 minutes. Sometimes I make an appointment on a work day, and I'm ALWAYS late when I do that, because I fail to account for the increased traffic, which turns a 20 minute drive into a 60+ minute drive.

Obviously, the choice is to try to take into account that I won't take everything into account, and when I do, and the things that slipped my mind come into play, I'm on time, but it's not a simple task.

On the other hand, I used to have a friend that was habitually hours late. I remember one time specifically where we had to leave my house by 6:00 to get to a concert on time, so I told him be at my house by 2:00 (attempting to account for his habitual tardiness). I remember calling him at 1:00, his mom said "He just woke up, he said he'll hop in the shower and be there in an hour." I called an hour later and got the exact same message, repeat several more times, until I call at 5:00 to find out he had left "five minutes ago", and he doesn't arrive at my house until about 6:30 (even though it took about 25 minutes to drive, I still can't figure out how it took him 90 minutes). In my opinion, THAT was a conscious lack of respect, because it wasn't that he failed to account for things, but rather, knew how long it would all take and, instead, chose to go back to sleep.

Now, I'm unsure where exactly in that continuum your friends exist. If you feel it's more toward simple absent-mindedness, you can decide whether you can live with that or not. If you feel it's more toward disrespect, you can decide whether or not you still want that friendship.

[Contrapuntal]

I had several posts in the other thread where I tried to explain why I have timing issues. I'm not sure my personal why really matters, so much as the getting this point across. Punctual people can't fathom the way non punctual people think.How do punctual people think? How do non punctual people think? What is it about the former that precludes understanding the latter?


They can't fathom being that distractable. They can't fathom having absolutely no accurate sense of time. What kind of work do you do that allows you to zone out, and pay no heed to the passing of time?


Therefore, they conclude it must be an active choice. It must be an easy, flip decision that we are making as a direct insult, when that couldn't be further from the case.The reason it is an insult is that clear message is "My time is more valuable than yours."


Yes. Anyone can be somewhere ontime given the right circumstances. For someone like me, it takes work, preparation, and a lot of extra time. Me too. Most punctual people have to work at it. It's either worth it to you, or it isn't.


Just because I have now learned (the hard way) how to make airplane flights, does not mean that I can reproduce those results under every circumstance. How about most circumstances?


The lateness is much the same way. Being on time takes far more work for me than it does for most people. I need to prioritize where those efforts go, or my entire life will be consumed by minute-by-minute scheduling. I do the best I can. If people want to take it personal, so be it, but to be honest. . . I could say the same about the punctual people, too. If you're my friend, do you *really* want me to assign airport or family funereal importance to every meeting? Really? You'd want to know that I've been sitting around waiting for an hour for everything we do, no matter how small? Is it really so insulting to know our lunch date is not as important as major life events? Do you really, honestly expect to be that important to your friends? Do you care so little about them that you can't meet them halfway?Does your word mean so little to you that break it so casually? Are you seriously suggesting that expecting you to be on time is callous on the part of your friends because you sometimes have to get there early to make sure you are not late?


It is maddening to have something wrong with you that you work hard to control, to work around, to live a normal and productive life, to feel like your best effort gets you only the bare minimum. . . and then have people be so incredibly flip and dismissive about it.Who is being incredibly flip and dismissive? In the other thread you stated that are at work by nine every day. Every day you have a deadline and you meet it. If something is important enough to you, you can be punctual. Ergo, the things you are not punctual for are not important enough to you.



I don't mean to snark you, but this is *exactly* what I'm talking about about people being flip. Everyone has a one line solution to a complex problem. In truth, it involves a lot of scheduling, reminders, and advance preparation. Its more work than my naturally-punctual roommates ever have to put into anything.No one is naturally punctual. Everyone has to prioritize, and schedule, and make plans. Why do feel that you are the only one who bears this burden?

[Odesio]

Yes. Anyone can be somewhere ontime given the right circumstances. For someone like me, it takes work, preparation, and a lot of extra time.


Why does it require so much effort on your part? Barring unforseen circumstances I don't find it all that difficult to be where I am suppose to be when I am suppose to be there. I don't say this to be rude but are you suffering from a mental disorder of some kind?

Marc

[According to Pliny]

Someone said, and it impressed me as true, that people who are chronically late often simply try to fit too many things into their schedule and cannot guess correctly often enough.
So that rather than shirking work, they may instead be adding too many things to their to-do lists.
That's often my failing. I'll try to organize my presentationwhen I should be on the road, and then the smallest tieup makes me late. I would have been early otherwise, and could have rearranged things after I arrived, but tried to do too much.

[amarinth]

Why do you think it is so effortless for the on-time ones? Perhaps they have elaborate planning going on behind the scenes, too.Because they say things like "I set the alarm clock 20 minutes earlier and I was on time."

[enipla]

I can’t remember the last time I was late to anything. I still don’t really understand it. I get up for work every day. I get up at the same time. I know that it takes me 45 minutes to shower, dress and leave the house. It never varies more than about 5 minutes. Why would it? Every workday I leave the house within about 5 minutes of 6am.

Same for the weekend. If I need to be somewhere I know how long it will take me to get ready to leave. I know how long it will take to where I need to be. I plan accordingly, if saying that I need to leave at such and such a time could be considered a ‘plan’.

I’m really not trying to be snarky. Obsidian, does it take you significantly different amounts of time to get ready on different days, or for different occasions?

Why do you think it is so effortless for the on-time ones? Perhaps they have elaborate planning going on behind the scenes, too.
I don’t really see how this has to take so much extra work and preparation. Sure, If your going to leave at 7am you should be prepared to leave a 7am. This may mean that you need to get in the shower at 6am. I completely fail to see how this requires any significant amount of planning.

[robby]

I'm in the exact same situation as Obsidian. I tend to be late for everything. Not by a tremendous amount, but consistently late.

If I'm running behind schedule (and I'm always running behind schedule), I can rarely catch up, because the anxiety of running late tends to dramatically increase my obsessive-compulsive tendencies. (Did I remember to grab my cell phone? Did I close the garage? Did I lock the front door. Did I remember to bring all of the files for the meeting? Better stop/go back and check.) Whatever it is that I am doing, from getting ready in the morning to finishing up a couple of things in the office in the evening, it always tends to take a little longer than I figure it will, making me run late.

For me to guarantee that I will be somewhere on time takes almost superhuman effort for me.

For things that I simply cannot be late for (like taking a state licensing exam, for instance), I now aim to be there an hour in advance.

If I did this for everything in my life, like a lunch meeting, I wouldn't get anything done.

[lowbrass]

I think it is a choice, but that raises the question of exactly what a choice is. Let's take all these people who say they are incapable of being on time. Let's imagine that they won the lottery, and can pick up their million-dollar check if they arrive by 2:00. I have no doubt they would be there by 2:00.

I once heard that the human mind is only capable of making what appears to be the best choice at any one time. I don't have any proof of this, but it seems to be true in my observation. So the only way to make a particular choice is to have that choice be more important than the alternate choice.

Example: I keep telling myself I need to get to bed earlier, but I rarely do it, because in the evening, the motivation to go to bed isn't more compelling than the motivation to stay up and do stuff. If it were, I would do it.

I think people who are always late could be on time, but only if the consequences of being late are severe enough to force them to find a way to modify their behavior, such as the example of missing a plane flight mentioned earlier.

[AHoosierMama]

I will not assert that punctuality is not a choice; however, I do think it can be unfair to necessarily think it is a lack of respect. I am often late to work, class, seeing the gf, etc. but my choice is not an active choice that I don't care if I'm on time but a passive one because of my lack of awareness.

Here's a common example, its 6:00, I just got home from work, I call the gf and tell her I gotta work out, and I'll be there by 9:00; 2 1/2 hours to work out (yes, I'm a gym rat), 30 minutes to get there... perfect, right? WRONG! Both of those times are correct, but I forgot to account for the drive to the gym, the drive back, taking a shower, etc. Next thing I know I'm 30 minutes late, and its for no good reason than because I didn't account for other things I have to do.

A similar example, I have routine appointments with my Chiropractor and I usually see him on my day off during the day, so there's no traffic, and it takes about 20 minutes. Sometimes I make an appointment on a work day, and I'm ALWAYS late when I do that, because I fail to account for the increased traffic, which turns a 20 minute drive into a 60+ minute drive.

Obviously, the choice is to try to take into account that I won't take everything into account, and when I do, and the things that slipped my mind come into play, I'm on time, but it's not a simple task.

On the other hand, I used to have a friend that was habitually hours late. I remember one time specifically where we had to leave my house by 6:00 to get to a concert on time, so I told him be at my house by 2:00 (attempting to account for his habitual tardiness). I remember calling him at 1:00, his mom said "He just woke up, he said he'll hop in the shower and be there in an hour." I called an hour later and got the exact same message, repeat several more times, until I call at 5:00 to find out he had left "five minutes ago", and he doesn't arrive at my house until about 6:30 (even though it took about 25 minutes to drive, I still can't figure out how it took him 90 minutes). In my opinion, THAT was a conscious lack of respect, because it wasn't that he failed to account for things, but rather, knew how long it would all take and, instead, chose to go back to sleep.

Now, I'm unsure where exactly in that continuum your friends exist. If you feel it's more toward simple absent-mindedness, you can decide whether you can live with that or not. If you feel it's more toward disrespect, you can decide whether or not you still want that friendship.

So let's imagine you've arrived at the gym for your 2.5 hour workout - maybe a little later than you thought you might, due to traffic. You lift, run - whatever and every now and then you glance at a clock. You realize that you are due for your date in one hour. It takes you 30 minutes to shower and 30 minutes to get to your date. You've only gotten in 2 hours of your workout. Do you cut it short to make your date? Or have you just not considered any of the clocks all over the gym? The heart of this question is probably to address the "time just gets away from me" theme I'm getting from some of the posts.

[jsgoddess]

No one is naturally punctual. Everyone has to prioritize, and schedule, and make plans. Why do feel that you are the only one who bears this burden?

Yep. I am a very disorganized and absent-minded person. But I am rarely late for anything. Why? Because it isn't permissible. I don't allow myself to be late for things, and I don't excuse myself if I am late.

It isn't always easy, but no one said life would be easy.

[Sapo]

Obsidian, I don't know if your lifestyle allows this (feeding animals, dropping kids at school, etc will screw this) but maybe you need to wake up later. Yes, later. Leave everything ready the night before, go to bed showered and with your hair done and under a net, choose your clothes, prep breakfast. Put the alarm clock at 15 minutes before the time you know you need to leave the house to get there on time (allow some extra minutes to make up for that idiot in the blue malibu). When you wake up you just hop into your clothes, grab a bite and take off. The more things you have to deal with before leaving, the more chances you will get distracted and be late.

[Contrapuntal]

Yep. I am a very disorganized and absent-minded person. But I am rarely late for anything. Why? Because it isn't permissible. I don't allow myself to be late for things, and I don't excuse myself if I am late.

It isn't always easy, but no one said life would be easy.Emphasis mine.


That's the key. Don't make excuses for tardiness, especially to yourself. It either matters, or it doesn't. If it doesn't matter, fine. Just don't expect everyone to be cool with it.

[robby]

So let's imagine you've arrived at the gym for your 2.5 hour workout - maybe a little later than you thought you might, due to traffic. You lift, run - whatever and every now and then you glance at a clock. You realize that you are due for your date in one hour. It takes you 30 minutes to shower and 30 minutes to get to your date. You've only gotten in 2 hours of your workout. Do you cut it short to make your date? Or have you just not considered any of the clocks all over the gym? The heart of this question is probably to address the "time just gets away from me" theme I'm getting from some of the posts.Well for me, I start magnifying the consequences of whatever it is that I'm working on.

i.e. "I've got to get this report finished and submit my timesheet before I can leave, or the client will be pissed and I'll get yelled at by the accounting people, and jeopardize my job" vs. "My wife will be annoyed at me for coming home 30 minutes late again."

For the gym rat, he may be thinking, "If I cut my workout routine short, it'll screw up my whole weekly workout schedule, and I'll never get back on track, and the next thing you know is that I'll start losing muscle tone or getting fat" vs. "My gf will be annoyed at me for showing up 30 minutes late."

[AHoosierMama]

I don’t really see how this has to take so much extra work and preparation. Sure, If your going to leave at 7am you should be prepared to leave a 7am. This may mean that you need to get in the shower at 6am. I completely fail to see how this requires any significant amount of planning.

Elaborate planning was an overstatement. I should have said it isn't always easy to be on time, but I usually manage it. I don't have to be at work until 8:30 or 9 a.m.-ish each morning. My commute is 10 minutes tops. But my alarm is set for 6 a.m. beacause I've got to walk and feed the dog, wake a 2.5 year old and a 4 year old. Make breakfast. Clean up breakfast mess. Shower. Dress and fix hair for self and kids. Pack any stuff they need for school. Deal with any unexpected's like kid poops in outfit - start a load of laundry and dress again. Get 'em to school - an on and on. Just like everyone else I also need to make sure I have my cell phone, lock the door, close the garage etc.

It isn't easy to get up at 6. It would be easier to sleep in and be late. But then it would be harder to keep a job.

[Vinyl Turnip]

I think for a lot of people it's a matter of low prioritization, combined with the negative reinforcement of constantly "getting away with" being late in social situations where there may be no repercussions beyond the annoyance of a few friends and family members. (In contrast to a job, for example, where that kind of consistent lateness is likely to get you fired.)

I suspect that almost all of these congenital latesters would, if told to be somewhere at 8:00 on the dot in order to receive a barrelful of cash, damn well find a way to get their dawdling butts there in time.

[Contrapuntal]

I'm in the exact same situation as Obsidian. I tend to be late for everything. Not by a tremendous amount, but consistently late.

If I'm running behind schedule (and I'm always running behind schedule), I can rarely catch up, because the anxiety of running late tends to dramatically increase my obsessive-compulsive tendencies.Do you start off behind schedule? Is it possible that you are over scheduling? Do none of your clients complain about your chronic tardiness?

[Heffalump and Roo]

For the gym rat, he may be thinking, "If I cut my workout routine short, it'll screw up my whole weekly workout schedule, and I'll never get back on track, and the next thing you know is that I'll start losing muscle tone or getting fat" vs. "My gf will be annoyed at me for showing up 30 minutes late."

Then perhaps the gym rat could escalate the other side and tell himself that the next time he's late, his gf may leave him. Rest assured, this may be far closer to reality.

If the balance still is that he'd choose the workout, then his priorities are clear and his gf isn't that important. As has been said here, we all choose our priorities.

[AHoosierMama]

For the gym rat, he may be thinking, "If I cut my workout routine short, it'll screw up my whole weekly workout schedule, and I'll never get back on track, and the next thing you know is that I'll start losing muscle tone or getting fat" vs. "My gf will be annoyed at me for showing up 30 minutes late."

So if the gym rat chooses to be late rather than throw off his workout schedule, IMHO girlfriend has every right to be POed since gym rat sez with his actions "I disrespect you. My workout schedule is more important than your time." No?

[AHoosierMama]

Then perhaps the gym rat could escalate the other side and tell himself that the next time he's late, his gf may leave him. Rest assured, this may be far closer to reality.

If the balance still is that he'd choose the workout, then his priorities are clear and his gf isn't that important. As has been said here, we all choose our priorities.

Jinx :D

[Heffalump and Roo]

If I'm running behind schedule (and I'm always running behind schedule), I can rarely catch up, because the anxiety of running late tends to dramatically increase my obsessive-compulsive tendencies. (Did I remember to grab my cell phone? Did I close the garage? Did I lock the front door. Did I remember to bring all of the files for the meeting? Better stop/go back and check.) Whatever it is that I am doing, from getting ready in the morning to finishing up a couple of things in the office in the evening, it always tends to take a little longer than I figure it will, making me run late.

This is a pretty common reaction. Do you schedule additional time lto get ready for the OCD to kick in?

[robby]

Do you start off behind schedule?
Usually. It's irrelevant, though, since I have far more work to do than I have time to do it in.

Is it possible that you are over scheduling?
Absolutely.

Do none of your clients complain about your chronic tardiness?It doesn't usually affect them. Everything that has an actual deadline usually gets done on time, even if it makes me late getting home in the evening.

[Contrapuntal]

As a follow up to my remark that no one is naturally punctual -- I am very forgetful. I have a specific place to put my keys that I usually use. However, I have two back-up sets stashed away just in case. I write down what I have to do and copy it in several different places (calendar, e-mail, notebook, etc.) I ask friends to remind me if we have something really important scheduled. And I allow for plenty of extra time to get ready. If I am ready an hour early, then I can catch up on e-mail, or read a book, or give the dog an extra walk. The point is that punctuality is not a natural characteristic; it takes work, and a comittment to keeping one's word.

[enipla]

Obsidian, I don't know if your lifestyle allows this (feeding animals, dropping kids at school, etc will screw this) but maybe you need to wake up later. Yes, later. Leave everything ready the night before, go to bed showered and with your hair done and under a net, choose your clothes, prep breakfast. Put the alarm clock at 15 minutes before the time you know you need to leave the house to get there on time (allow some extra minutes to make up for that idiot in the blue malibu). When you wake up you just hop into your clothes, grab a bite and take off. The more things you have to deal with before leaving, the more chances you will get distracted and be late.
I think you may be right Sapo. I can list what I do every morning before I go to work with frightening detail. Forty-five minutes is what it takes to do this, and I get up 45 minutes before I leave, so I don’t do anything else.

[Contrapuntal]

It doesn't usually affect them. Everything that has an actual deadline usually gets done on time, even if it makes me late getting home in the evening.
Robby, it seems like you are not really chronically late, if it is necessary for your job, you are successful at what you do, and being home late is understandable and unavoidable. "Punctual" is just redefined as "getting it all done," and no one's feathers are ruffled.

[Obsidian]

Why does it require so much effort on your part? Barring unforseen circumstances I don't find it all that difficult to be where I am suppose to be when I am suppose to be there. I don't say this to be rude but are you suffering from a mental disorder of some kind?

Marc

I am really sorry I posted in this thread. People were so nice in the Pit, I thought thought this wouldn't be a problem. But honestly, I can't hold up to a point-by-point in GD. You'll win. I'm no where near articulate enough to tangle with y'all without putting my foot in my mouth. I'm still struggling with remembering to hang up my keys every day.

Contraputal, AHoosierMama, if it takes effort for you than you are probably more like me than Mr. Gibson above. That is exactly what I was talking about about flip and insulting. He just magically shows up on time. It's all very simple. I have to set alarms to remind me when to leave the house. I appologize for whining about it-- I usually don't, the thread just got me thinking about it, probably too much. People seemed genuinely, intelectually curious about why I was like this, so I tried to explain, and I got carried away attempting to defend myself.

I don't want to get into a debate defending something I'm not proud of and in fact hate about myself. In my adult life I'm not usually late by anyone else's standards, because I pad my own time. But I only make the time I set for myself (which I set knowing I'm like this) about half the time, so I *feel* chronically late, and stressed out whenever I go somewhere with a time deadline. I can do this under most circumstances, but not all. I make an effort to avoid circumstances where I know I can't be on time. My friends would rather I not do this to myself, and they give me a little breathing room because they love me. That's all I meant.

I work in graphic design, by the way. Heads down and tune out all the way. Sometimes I'm at my desk until midnight because I lost track of time, I was so into my work. I'm very good with deadlines-- my whole life is a deadline.

For things that I simply cannot be late for (like taking a state licensing exam, for instance), I now aim to be there an hour in advance.

If I did this for everything in my life, like a lunch meeting, I wouldn't get anything done.

This is what I was trying to say. This is why I don't do lunch meetings. For me to be absolutely certain I'll be somewhere on time, I need to be an hour early. Life does not always allow you to be an hour early for everything.

I’m really not trying to be snarky. Obsidian, does it take you significantly different amounts of time to get ready on different days, or for different occasions?

It actually does. Sometimes less because I missed something, sometimes more because something happened. I have to allow time for the worst, but be careful not to allow too much time, so that I end up getting distracted by something else. It's a ballance. My tendancies to distractedness and clumsiness are far worse in the morning than at any other time.

I can be somewhere by 8. I can not be somewhere *at* 8. It's a small but very signifigant difference. Punctual people have this ability to show up somewhere at a particular time that just blows me away. I have coworkers who pull into the parking lot at 8:55 every single day. How in hell do they do that?

[jimmmy]

My Dad was late for anything you care to name ... parties, events, Religious observances ... it was horrible and passed the eye roll stage into rage with me as a young person.

But after several sessions with Stuart Smalley (http://www.imdb.com/gallery/ss/0114571/Ss/0114571/fcstil_0761.jpg?path=gallery&path_key=0114571) , and some significant (IANAProfessionalPsych) Independent reads I feel pretty strongly that “more often than not the lateness is about the chronic tardy person and not about the chronic waiter.”. They - the chronic/systemically late person may get a thrill from being late, they may be passively aggressively hoping for a fight or thrilling when one doesn't occur and no one calls them on their B.S., they may be passive aggressively hate being held to a timeframe or hate what they are meeting for ....

Whatever. Is it a “Choice”? Only to the extent that being a hothead or a$$h^le or overly sensitive is a choice -- it is a part of a person’s nature and needs to be controlled and channeled in socially acceptable ways - and if they don’t find a way to fix it to the extent that it doesn‘t hurt/impact others - it isn’t “Oh that’s the way they are” ... they are being rude.

[Blaster Master]

So let's imagine you've arrived at the gym for your 2.5 hour workout - maybe a little later than you thought you might, due to traffic. You lift, run - whatever and every now and then you glance at a clock. You realize that you are due for your date in one hour. It takes you 30 minutes to shower and 30 minutes to get to your date. You've only gotten in 2 hours of your workout. Do you cut it short to make your date? Or have you just not considered any of the clocks all over the gym? The heart of this question is probably to address the "time just gets away from me" theme I'm getting from some of the posts.

Yes, when there are clocks in the gym (there aren't right now because of remodeling), and I notice I'm running late, I will adjust to the best of my ability to be on time. Case in point, last week I had a raid at 8:00 and because the clocks were down, I was running very late (unusual distractions due to the remodelling), and since I normally check the time before I start cardio, I skipped out on cardio and went home, but I was still 30 minutes late because I didn't account for the ride home or the queue (I always seem to forget about the queue).

To make my classes on time, I know I need to leave work around 3:45-3:50, everything was going fine this Monday, but because I took a late lunch, my internal clock was off by an hour, I looked at the clock thinking it was 3:00, noticed it was 4:00, and ended up being about 15 minutes late to class. The professor was upset with me, he probably felt disrespected, but it was simply because my internal clock wasn't set correctly.

The same thing happens to me in the gym. I know for a particular work out about how long it takes within 10 minutes or so (barring lot's of superfluous conversation), but as it draws near the end, I forget to account for time to change weights, drink some water, do my intermediary exercises, etc. and I end up thinking I have more time left than I do. That is, my thought process goes much like this: I have two exercises left, then cardio, I have 75 minutes. Assuming each exercise takes 15 minutes (correctly), and 45 minutes for cardio, I'll be done just in time. But I forgot to account for the ab set I do between sets (1 or 2 minutes), I forgot to account for getting a drink of water between each exercise (1 or 2 minutes), I forgot to account for using the restroom before hitting cardio (2 or 3 minutes), etc. Next thing I know, I'm short 5-10 minutes, and I have to really think back to figure out where I lost time).

Generally, my internal clock is very accurate, assuming my basis is correct (which it wasn't for the class example); I can normally estimate the time within about 2 minutes. However, as I'm trying to point out, it's not because I have a lack of perception of time, but simply that I just plain can't seem to account for all the activities that intervene.

[Blaster Master]

Then perhaps the gym rat could escalate the other side and tell himself that the next time he's late, his gf may leave him. Rest assured, this may be far closer to reality.

If the balance still is that he'd choose the workout, then his priorities are clear and his gf isn't that important. As has been said here, we all choose our priorities.

Actually, she doesn't have room to complain, because she's less punctual than I am. Usually, even when I call her and tell her I'm running a little late, when I show up she's still doing her hair or putting on makeup or whatever. In fact, just this past weekend, the guys and the girls were getting together separately, and she was supposedly running 1 1/2 hours late for an event, and ended up being 6 hours late. A couple hours for a general party-esque gathering, no one could care less about, but 6 hours late was different and we discussed it.

The choice isn't a simply choice of gf vs. workout, it's (gf vs. workout vs. work vs. PhD studies vs. family) + complete absent mindedness due to being burned out with taking on so much. I feel bad when I'm late, and I often apologize, but I won't let them make me feel bad because they feel disrespected.

[Thudlow Boink]

Punctuality, like many other desirable outcomes (e.g. maintaining a healthy weight, or using a credit card responsibly) can be achieved by almost everyone, with effort and self-discipline. But the amount of effort required can vary widely from person to person.

[Obsidian]

I actually wanted to add a coment about work deadlines, since work has been mentioned. The difference between a client delivery and an appointment is you can *really* pad a delivery in a way you can't with going somewhere. I subtract a day off of every due date and have my work done then, a day early. Even if I need to work late to meet this (essentially) arbitrary personal goal. Plenty of time for all the disaster in the world. I was always a procrastinator with homework, so I'm good with compressed schedules.

However, I do not think my dentist would be amused if I showed up on Tuesday for my Wednesday appointment. The smaller a window I have to work in, the more likely it is that something will go wrong.

[Blaster Master]

It actually does. Sometimes less because I missed something, sometimes more because something happened. I have to allow time for the worst, but be careful not to allow too much time, so that I end up getting distracted by something else. It's a ballance. My tendancies to distractedness and clumsiness are far worse in the morning than at any other time.

I can be somewhere by 8. I can not be somewhere *at* 8. It's a small but very signifigant difference. Punctual people have this ability to show up somewhere at a particular time that just blows me away. I have coworkers who pull into the parking lot at 8:55 every single day. How in hell do they do that?

Excellently put, this is the point I was trying to hit at. Of course I can schedule an extra hour to account for the distractions or things I forgot, but even that doesn't always work, and when it does, and I'm 30-60 minutes early, I end up wasting that much of my time. Last time I tried that a few weeks ago, I was all ready with 20 minutes to spare. Next thing I know, I had gotten distracted, and was 20 minutes late instead of 20 minutes early (the gf was still getting ready though ;) ).


I think you may be right Sapo. I can list what I do every morning before I go to work with frightening detail. Forty-five minutes is what it takes to do this, and I get up 45 minutes before I leave, so I don’t do anything else.

I can't speak for the others, but this isn't always true for me. I do the same things in the same order every morning, it generally takes about 40-45 minutes but sometimes it takes as little as 25-30 minutes, and sometimes it can take an hour and I have no idea what I did different when I find it took too long or I was done faster. Strangely, even on days where I cut something out because I'm running late, I still end up taking about the same amount of time.


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Punctuality, like many other desirable outcomes (e.g. maintaining a healthy weight, or using a credit card responsibly) can be achieved by almost everyone, with effort and self-discipline. But the amount of effort required can vary widely from person to person.
Perhaps you're right. I can't comprehend people who can't find the motivation to work out, stay out of debt, go back to school, etc. and I look at it as merely a lack of effort on their part.

[miss elizabeth]

I am always on time. I've been that way my whole life. I have a timer in my head going all the time, and I'm constantly counting down to the next thing I have to do, "Okay, it's 3:20 now, my mom will be here at 6:30, that leaves me 3 hours and 10 minutes to be ready. I need to put in a load of clothes, they take 20 minutes to wash, then I'll put them in the dryer and give myself 10 minutes for the water to heat back up. I can shower for 20 minutes. I can do my makeup and blow dry my hair in half an hour, by then the clothes will be done. I can get dressed in packed in about 10 minutes. That means I can sit here another hour, and then get started, and I'll be ready in time to call my friend before I leave, if I schedule an hour to talk." And then I list what I need to talk to my friend about. I actually write it down and stick it in my pocket. So, basically, I'm crazy, and I cannot help it. BUT, I'm never late.

My boyfriend is always late. You guys who said "Oh, they'd be on time if I were giving out $100"; well, he wouldn't be. While I have everything planned to the last second, he has nothing planned to any second. He's late to work, every day. He's late leaving, every day. He's late for every date. We have never gotten to the movies on time, ever, in the three years we've been together. And I don't mean just missing the previews; I mean like 30 minutes late. And I almost dumped him over it, several times, in fact, because I felt like everyone else on here. I thought it was a choice, and he was disrespecting me, and all that. But, it isn't a choice for him. And he does respect me. So, I deal with it. I have no idea why he can't be on time, it makes no sense to me. But I like him, and I don't hold it against him. I'm not perfect either.

These days, I've decided he's here to teach me patience. And, he is.

[Obsidian]

Obsidian, I don't know if your lifestyle allows this (feeding animals, dropping kids at school, etc will screw this) but maybe you need to wake up later. Yes, later. Leave everything ready the night before, go to bed showered and with your hair done and under a net, choose your clothes, prep breakfast. Put the alarm clock at 15 minutes before the time you know you need to leave the house to get there on time (allow some extra minutes to make up for that idiot in the blue malibu). When you wake up you just hop into your clothes, grab a bite and take off. The more things you have to deal with before leaving, the more chances you will get distracted and be late.

I missed this earlier. I am going to try this. I have discovered I just can't make the things I do go smoothly, so I'm always looking for alternate ways of coming at the problem.

(For example, I often lose my sunglasses. Instead of stressing about them every day, I just have lots of sunglasses. In my office, in my house, in my car. The 1/2 dozen pairs get lost and re-found interchangeably, but 99% of the time I can locate one. I'm so much happier having taken sunglasses off the list of things I have to worry about.)

[Dinsdale]

I can't speak for the others, but this isn't always true for me. I do the same things in the same order every morning, it generally takes about 40-45 minutes but sometimes it takes as little as 25-30 minutes, and sometimes it can take an hour and I have no idea what I did different when I find it took too long or I was done faster. Strangely, even on days where I cut something out because I'm running late, I still end up taking about the same amount of time.


Captain, I think we've encountered a rift in the time-space continuum.

This really strikes me as incredible, unless your "getting ready in the morning" includes something a heck of a lot more than waking up, getting cleaned and dressed, caring for pets, and feeding yourself. Takes me maybe 25 minutes to shower, dress, and fix breakfast and lunch. Then I have up to 20 minutes to sit down and drink coffee, read the paper, and chat with my wife and kids. But at 6:45, I'm on my way out the door, because the train isn't going to wait for me.

I'm not sure why Obsidian took it so critical to be asked if she had a diagnosed disorder, because the behavior she describes certainly strikes me as incredibly far from any range of normal I have encountered. In the other thread she states that she "just can't" hang her keys up when she comes in the door. Bullshit! Instead she chooses to be distracted by cats, people, mail, packages, etc. If she wanted to say, "Everyone wait 5 seconds while I hang up my keys" she darn well could. But she has made a choice as to how she is comfortable living her life.

And she and you have found a way to surround yourselves with folks who tolerate your tardiness and/or are just as (IMO) selfish as you.

Anyone who thinks that "my internal clock wasn't set correctly" is an acceptable explanation/excuse, has a far different worldview than I.

[Blaster Master]

...My boyfriend is always late. You guys who said "Oh, they'd be on time if I were giving out $100"; well, he wouldn't be....

These days, I've decided he's here to teach me patience. And, he is.
I want to reaffirm this as well from someone who is "chronically late", because that importance doesn't make a difference. Just a few weeks ago I had my PhD qualifiers (far more important than $100) of which if I failed more than one, I would have to retake them all. Despite that these exams were pretty much my whole life for 3-4 weeks, I was still 10-15 minutes late for 3 of the 4 exams I had to take. Ironically enough, the one to which I was on time was the only one I failed.

The first day I was 10 minutes late (even though I left with the same amount of time I know to expect to get to class), so I left 10 minutes earlier the next day... and I was still 10 minutes late. The third day I left 10 minutes early and was somehow 20 minutes late. I honestly can't tell you how it happened that way.

[lowbrass]

Question for the "I lose track of time", "I get distracted", and "I have to be an hour early" people: Do you wear a watch, and do you look at it frequently? I wear a watch always, and if I am somewhere with no clocks, I look at it quite often. I don't think I could function in my life without having a pretty good idea what time it is, always. My brother chooses not to wear a watch, and constantly asks me what time it is. This drives me insane. My take on it is that if you choose not to wear a watch, that you have no excuse for losing track of time. I am constantly looking at my watch and recalculating in my mind how much time I have available for whatever task I am planning. The estimate of available time is constantly revised as I continue each activity.

[Dinsdale]

Question for the "I lose track of time", "I get distracted", and "I have to be an hour early" people: Do you wear a watch, and do you look at it frequently?

Good point. Same with clocks. I'm not sure there is a room in my house (other than bathrooms) that doesn't have at least one clock in it.

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

It's not a question of where you stand. ADD is proven scientifically. Science is about fact. Funny how this board is awash in scientists when it comes to religion but not when it comes to - oh - science. :rolleyes: Frankly, it's as useless a question as 'do you believe in diabetes'. Mind you, not everyone who is chronically late has an executive function disorder but plenty of people do. The estimates of ADD in the adult population start at 4%. That's a lot of people.

[Shagnasty]

Some people claim that they are merely oblivious to time in the normal way. If that was the case, you would expect those people who are often tardy to show up very early sometimes as well because of this deficiency. That rarely happens.

I am habitually tardy with some things and exactally punctual on others. It is about priorities and how much trouble I think I will get in for it. I may arrive to work 35 minutes late and give a dirty look back to anyone who gives me a dirty look. However, I have to pick up my kids by 6 sharp and I have a 53 minute commute to get there. Someone better not stand in front of me when 5 pm hits because I am walking out that door. I have never been late for a child pickup in 4 years.

[Dinsdale]

It's not a question of where you stand. ADD is proven scientifically.

I haven't seen anything from you concerning the incidence of ADD (or your beloved broken brains) in the habitually tardy.

Nor, by my layman's understanding, does the mere existence of a valid diagnosis of ADD necessarily condemn one to a life of lateness.

But please show me your "science."

[Blaster Master]

Captain, I think we've encountered a rift in the time-space continuum.

This really strikes me as incredible, unless your "getting ready in the morning" includes something a heck of a lot more than waking up, getting cleaned and dressed, caring for pets, and feeding yourself. Takes me maybe 25 minutes to shower, dress, and fix breakfast and lunch. Then I have up to 20 minutes to sit down and drink coffee, read the paper, and chat with my wife and kids. But at 6:45, I'm on my way out the door, because the train isn't going to wait for me.

I'm not sure why Obsidian took it so critical to be asked if she had a diagnosed disorder, because the behavior she describes certainly strikes me as incredibly far from any range of normal I have encountered. In the other thread she states that she "just can't" hang her keys up when she comes in the door. Bullshit! Instead she chooses to be distracted by cats, people, mail, packages, etc. If she wanted to say, "Everyone wait 5 seconds while I hang up my keys" she darn well could. But she has made a choice as to how she is comfortable living her life.
My morning isn't complicated: wake up, take a shower, get dressed, eat, leave. I honestly can't tell you where extra time shows up or disappears, because there's little room for variance from what I can tell.

You are right about the distraction and hanging up of keys. I HAVE to put my keys, my coat, my shoes, etc. in EXACTLY the same place, or I will not be able to find them. I've been 10 minutes late to work because my keys were on the wrong side of the dresser and I had no idea where to look for them. About half the time when I get home, I get distracted and put my coat in the wrong spot. Come morning, I can't find it. The choice is, I should know to keep myself focused when I have these sorts of rituals because I know how it affects me, but it takes a lot of effort, more for me than for many others.
And she and you have found a way to surround yourselves with folks who tolerate your tardiness and/or are just as (IMO) selfish as you.
This is very unfair of you. For me, as said in an earlier post, this lack of understand must be like when I see someone who is out of shape and can't figure out why they can't get motivated to exercise. Sure, it takes a lot of effort for me but I have no idea how the amount of effort I need compares to theirs. If I'm going to accuse them of consciously "choosing to be fat" or "choosing to be unhealthy", it's just as unfair as accusing me of "choosing to be late" or "choosing to be disrespectful". There absolutely is a choice, but it is not necessarily the choice that it appears to be.
Anyone who thinks that "my internal clock wasn't set correctly" is an acceptable explanation/excuse, has a far different worldview than I.
This is dishonest of you. I never said it was an acceptable excuse, it was simply the explanation of why it happens. An excuse implies that I expect people to accept what happened in light of the excuse; I was not looking to be excused. An acceptable excuse is "Sorry, there was a nasty accident, and they closed the road so the medevac could land." An unacceptable excuse is "Sorry, I was going to be on time, but my show was almost over." An explanation is simply telling you what happened. I'm not looking for sympathy, or approval or whatever else. I simply want you to understand that when I'm late, it's not because I'm disrespecting you, or even expect you to be okay with it, my tardiness has nothing to do with you, so stop taking it so darn personally.

[xanthous]

My random observations on this topic:

I have minor problems with lateness and messiness (I used to be much worse, but I'm better now): out of every 5 times, I am probably late once, and as for messiness, I let mail pile up a bit- enough to annoy me or make my BF think, "why doesn't she just file that away?"

I think the problems of lateness and messiness are related in a way. It seems like there is a "spectrum" of punctuality and tidiness. Some people are really bad at it, and some people are really good at it.

Punctuality and tidiness, to me, are habits (emotional habits, in a way), and sometimes good habits have to be learned. Learning is hard, or we'd all flip a switch and be punctual starting...now!

When I look back at the "old days" when I was late 4 times out of 5, I recognize that I was unhappy, and the "expectation of punishment or disdain" was like this self-perpetuating hatred I was putting on myself- like I deserved punishment and my lateness was "asking for it." It took a while for me to get out of the habit of "hating" myself by being late (stressed out, anxious, expect punishment/disdain, mad at myself, etc) and work more toward the habit of feeling like I deserve to reap the benefits of being somewhere on time (no stress, no anxiety, feel prepared, feel contented). Maybe there are different causes of lateness, but mine is definitely psychological.

So, is punctuality a choice? Yes, in the same way that getting sober is a choice- it's not all that easy to master and it takes a long time to perfect (if being sober isn't a habit with which you're familiar).

Of course- my experience, my opinion.

Signed, Always In Training

[Blaster Master]

Question for the "I lose track of time", "I get distracted", and "I have to be an hour early" people: Do you wear a watch, and do you look at it frequently? I wear a watch always, and if I am somewhere with no clocks, I look at it quite often. I don't think I could function in my life without having a pretty good idea what time it is, always. My brother chooses not to wear a watch, and constantly asks me what time it is. This drives me insane. My take on it is that if you choose not to wear a watch, that you have no excuse for losing track of time. I am constantly looking at my watch and recalculating in my mind how much time I have available for whatever task I am planning. The estimate of available time is constantly revised as I continue each activity.

Yes, I have a watch; though it is currently broken, I still have a cell phone and check the time as I feel it is needed. My bedroom alone has four different clocks in it. I don't have trouble waking up on time or whatever. The problem isn't that some amount of time passes and I can't tell you if it was closer to five minutes or five hours; I have a very good internal clock and don't often "lose track of time" in and of itself. However, I do easily get distracted or forget about the more mundane things, and those small distracts and mundane things, though small in and of themselves, can easily add up to a substantial amount of time.

[lowbrass]

I want to reaffirm this as well from someone who is "chronically late", because that importance doesn't make a difference. Just a few weeks ago I had my PhD qualifiers (far more important than $100) of which if I failed more than one, I would have to retake them all. Despite that these exams were pretty much my whole life for 3-4 weeks, I was still 10-15 minutes late for 3 of the 4 exams I had to take. Ironically enough, the one to which I was on time was the only one I failed.

The first day I was 10 minutes late (even though I left with the same amount of time I know to expect to get to class), so I left 10 minutes earlier the next day... and I was still 10 minutes late. The third day I left 10 minutes early and was somehow 20 minutes late. I honestly can't tell you how it happened that way.

If I might comment on this - and please don't take this as a criticism; I just want to point out how this relates to previous discussion: Even though this was a very important event, I still believe that had it been my previous example where a million dollars hung in the balance, that you could have done it.

You knew that you would still be allowed to take the test if you were late. So while it was important to be on time, it wasn't crucial. And in fact you did fine on the days when you were late.

I notice that while you were 10 minutes late the first day, you only left 10 minutes earlier the second day: Was it your plan to arrive at the exact moment the test was starting? I wouldn't think so. I'm sure you realize that your decision was illogical, yet you did it because for whatever reason, you were more motivated to do what you were doing than to leave earlier. You rationalized to yourself that you were addressing the problem, but surely, deep down, you must have known that you really weren't.

I'm doing a similar thing right now. I have a project that I should be doing, but I am posting on this board instead. It's not a logical course of action and I know it. It's just that the risk of my getting fired isn't big enough at the moment to motivate a behavior change for me.

[Blaster Master]

When I look back at the "old days" when I was late 4 times out of 5, I recognize that I was unhappy, and the "expectation of punishment or disdain" was like this self-perpetuating hatred I was putting on myself- like I deserved punishment and my lateness was "asking for it." It took a while for me to get out of the habit of "hating" myself by being late (stressed out, anxious, expect punishment/disdain, mad at myself, etc) and work more toward the habit of feeling like I deserve to reap the benefits of being somewhere on time (no stress, no anxiety, feel prepared, feel contented). Maybe there are different causes of lateness, but mine is definitely psychological.
This is definitely a similar point, and yet another reason why it's not a lack of respect for the "offended" person. Similarly, as you might guess, I'm not a very tidy person... but I used to be VERY tidy when I had less on my plate. When people ask why my desk is so cluttered I tell them "My space reflects my state of mind." I could clean it today, and it would be that cluttered again within a couple of days.

Similarly, as demonstrated by the clutter in my space, the clutter in my mind makes it very difficult for me to think "Okay, to get ready, first I wake up, and make coffee, then I start the shower, and..." I think along the lines "Okay, I need to get ready". I just plain don't think about all the mundane details and it bites me in the butt more often than not. It doesn't mean I don't still do the mundane things like shampoo my hair and brush my teeth in the morning (I assure you that I do), I simply don't assign any "time" to them as an individual item and instead assign "time" to the entire process of getting ready.

[Kalhoun]

For those who are always late to work; how would you feel if your boss was always late with your pay?

There is no reason to be habitually late. It's about prioritizing and making other people's time more important than your own. If you look at it that way, you'll never be late.

I'm rarely late. Like, maybe a couple times in a year. The places I arrive to late are things that don't require my timely presence, like going to visit my dad. I tell him I'll be there at 2:00 and I get there somewhere between 2 and 2:30 because we stopped for gas or something. I'm never late if food is being served and I'm never late if I'm attending a function as a group.

I was raised to be punctual. We had a curfew and we weren't allowed to be more than two minutes late (to allow for differences on clocks). I never even owned a watch until about 20 years ago. If I was more than two minutes late, I was grounded the following day (unless there was a really, really good excuse).

[monstro]

I'm very sloppy, disorganized, and clumsy, and yet I've always been anal about being punctual. While being organized is helpful, I don't think its the answer all on its own.

I think some people are better equipped at being punctual than others, but I don't believe tardiness is akin to some kind of disability. I think it can be an engrained habit tied to maladaptive behaviors (like OCD), but no one is helpless against these things. However, I think everyone should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. A person who is chronically late may be a first-class jerk, or they may simply be trying to juggle too many activities in their life. You should befriend people who's sense of time matches yours.

I think the OP is wrong by equating tardiness with lack of respect. Some cultures place different emphasis on timeliness than others. For instance, this summer a coworker--a Cuban guy--threw a party at his house. I showed up an hour late, along with another coworker (an Anglo). When we stepped into the house, we expected everyone to be there but we were the first guests to arrive. I was relieved, but my fellow coworker was livid that the party was so "late". It occurred to me that she was experiencing culture clash by expecting a Cuban party to function on Anglo time. She thought the lateness signified lack of organization and planning (the host was actually showering when we arrived), whereas I realized that--like black American parties--the party actually starts an hour or two after the time printed in the invitation. Different cultures have different time zones and grace periods. People should not look to offend others by being tardy, but people should also be aware that not everyone was raised to fear the clock.

[lowbrass]

Similarly, as demonstrated by the clutter in my space, the clutter in my mind makes it very difficult for me to think "Okay, to get ready, first I wake up, and make coffee, then I start the shower, and..." I think along the lines "Okay, I need to get ready". I just plain don't think about all the mundane details and it bites me in the butt more often than not. It doesn't mean I don't still do the mundane things like shampoo my hair and brush my teeth in the morning (I assure you that I do), I simply don't assign any "time" to them as an individual item and instead assign "time" to the entire process of getting ready.
My boss is exactly like you. Say he has a paper that needs to be filed in court in another city. The court closes at 4:00 PM. It takes exactly an hour to drive to the court if there were no traffic. There is always traffic. He needs to print out the paper, photocopy it, assemble it correctly, walk to the parking structure, get in his car, start the car, exit the parking structure, drive to the court, park the car, walk to the courthouse, go through security at the courthouse, and take the elevator to the proper department. Let alone that the traffic will add an extra 20-30 minutes on to the trip. So he continues to edit the paper, fussing over relatively minor details, until 3:00, at which point he just begins printing out the paper. He's thinking "It takes an hour to get to court", so he leaves himself exactly one hour. He has missed more filing deadlines than I can count.

[Blaster Master]

If I might comment on this - and please don't take this as a criticism; I just want to point out how this relates to previous discussion: Even though this was a very important event, I still believe that had it been my previous example where a million dollars hung in the balance, that you could have done it.
I'm not sure the million dollars is a fair example. I'd sit around and waste a whole day and skip my shower or whatever to make sure I'm early as hell and won't miss it. My goal isn't to be early as hell, it's to be there when I expect to be there. If I added an extra hour to all my preparations, I would probably always be early, but that's a little extreme and unnecessary, don't you think?
You knew that you would still be allowed to take the test if you were late. So while it was important to be on time, it wasn't crucial. And in fact you did fine on the days when you were late.
This is a slight omission on my part. The first day I had thought that by being late I would not be allowed to enter and take the exam. Since the proctor was different on the forth day (the one I was actually on time for), I thought similarly. Granted, I "knew better" the other two days.
I notice that while you were 10 minutes late the first day, you only left 10 minutes earlier the second day: Was it your plan to arrive at the exact moment the test was starting? I wouldn't think so. I'm sure you realize that your decision was illogical, yet you did it because for whatever reason, you were more motivated to do what you were doing than to leave earlier. You rationalized to yourself that you were addressing the problem, but surely, deep down, you must have known that you really weren't.

I'm doing a similar thing right now. I have a project that I should be doing, but I am posting on this board instead. It's not a logical course of action and I know it. It's just that the risk of my getting fired isn't big enough at the moment to motivate a behavior change for me.

To a certain extent you're right, but I didn't want to be early, I wanted to be exactly on time because I wanted to maximize my study time. I could have left work 20-30 minutes earlier and probably been to the exam 20-30 minutes early, but that would have been 20-30 minutes less studying which I felt would make a difference since I hadn't quite finished covering everything I wanted to cover. Hence, my thought process was, I was 10 minutes late, only leave 10 minutes earlier. You're probably right, that a wiser choice would have been to leave 15 minutes or so ealier, but hindsight is 20-20.

Unfortunately, that just isn't the way my mind generally operates. I just don't compute for those extra "nickle and dime" things. For instance, like I said earlier, my workout itself takes about 2 1/2 hours, so it lives in my head as 2 1/2 hours, even though when I add in changing, going to/from, showering, etc. it ends up being about 3 hours. Sometimes I account for that, sometimes I just plain don't. It doesn't matter how much I force myself to think of it as 3 hours, it still lives there as 2 1/2 because of that.

...I have a feeling that only makes it more confusing.

[amarinth]

So let's imagine you've arrived at the gym for your 2.5 hour workout - maybe a little later than you thought you might, due to traffic. You lift, run - whatever and every now and then you glance at a clock. You realize that you are due for your date in one hour. It takes you 30 minutes to shower and 30 minutes to get to your date. You've only gotten in 2 hours of your workout. Do you cut it short to make your date? Or have you just not considered any of the clocks all over the gym?For me? Once I noticed, I'd stop the workout. But chances are, I've misestimated the time it takes to shower and misestimated the time it takes to get to my destination (both directions. Those "30 minutes" are probably 15-60 minutes each.)

The thing is, the "every now and then I glance at the clock" phrase - even knowing that I need to check the clock and constantly thinking "check the clock. You need to leave at 5:00pm" The clock would probably end up being checked at 4:37 (too early) and then not again until 5:12 (too late).

Of course, I could have canceled the whole workout and spent the time staring at a clock instead. (Which still doesn't work) But that seems like a poor choice, too, far overbalancing the other way.

It isn't thinking "oh, they'll wait for me." (which would be explicitly saying that someone else's time isn't valuable) Rather, thinking "It's 7:20 already? Damn." Often because I thought I had a 5 minute task and 20 minutes in which to do it when both of those time estimates were dead wrong.

And yes, I might very well miss the million if I didn't get there the week before and plant myself at the spot.

[Blaster Master]

For those who are always late to work; how would you feel if your boss was always late with your pay?

There is no reason to be habitually late. It's about prioritizing and making other people's time more important than your own. If you look at it that way, you'll never be late.

I'm rarely late. Like, maybe a couple times in a year. The places I arrive to late are things that don't require my timely presence, like going to visit my dad. I tell him I'll be there at 2:00 and I get there somewhere between 2 and 2:30 because we stopped for gas or something. I'm never late if food is being served and I'm never late if I'm attending a function as a group.

I was raised to be punctual. We had a curfew and we weren't allowed to be more than two minutes late (to allow for differences on clocks). I never even owned a watch until about 20 years ago. If I was more than two minutes late, I was grounded the following day (unless there was a really, really good excuse).
I was raised under similar circumstances (not quite as strict with the grounding, though). Both of my parents are extremely punctual. I remember weekends with my father where we would be woken up 2-3 hours before church services, so we could around an hour early because "to be early is to be on time, to be on time is to be late, and to be late is unthinkable".

Knowing how bothersome my tardiness can be, I am generally extremely graceful when other people are tardy (yes, even for things like pay checks); unless someone is unfathomly late (like two of the examples I gave earlier), I just let it slide. Further, I generally try to give arrival times to people taking into account how tardy they are as I expect most people who are familiar with me do to me. For instance, I give my girlfriend a time at least an hour earlier, just like when I tell her I'll be there, I generally tell her about 30-40 minutes AFTER the time I'm actually aiming for. I give my punctual brother the actual time, and the one that's even less punctual than me a date about a week earlier (seriously).

I've gotten a lot better, but it really is really hard for me to account for those small things (thanks lowbrass for the excellent example of what I'm talking about). If the item is something I do all the time (like work), then I can eventually figure out how much extra buffer to allow, but the moment it's something slight different (like going to a work buddy's house about 2 miles from where I work), all that extra "nickle and dime" stuff goes straight out the window, and I forget to account for it.

[Obsidian]

Dinsdale, I took it personally because it was said with disdain. I took it personally because it hit a nerve, to be honest.

It's pretty obvious I probably have ADD. I was never diagnosed because my parents felt I was being this way deliberately. If I just cared enough, if I just put my mind to it, I would be able to be attentive. I was choosing to be distracted. I tried as hard as I could from a very young age, but I could never quite get there. I could never remember all the things I needed to remember. I could never not spill things. I "chose" to make their lives difficult. I "chose" to make my life difficult, full of punishment and distain from my parents. I "didn't care" about anyone I loved or anything I did.

(It occurs to me now that if they really believed this, they must have thought they had one sociopath asshole of a six year old, I tell ya)

I actually don't think I'm that outside the norm, though. I think there are lots of people like me. Look at the other people in this thread. Look at the late people in your life. They will continue to insist they can't control it. You will insist they can. And around and around and around. Of course I look like an outlier-- you've already decided the vast majority of late people are just being selfish jerks.

Look, you're not going to believe us if you've already made up your mind. If we are telling the honest truth and you're calling bullshit, what am I supposed to do? You want to come to my house and watch me? You want me to make my roommates and boyfriend post in this thread to attest to this? You want me to post a minute-by-minute diary of my day? It pointless. I'm very interested in exploring/learning about reasons why people are like this, and usefull suggestions for change. Calling me selfish and insisting it's a personal choice is both insulting and useless. The vast majority of the time, the person I screw over is me.

The problem is, we're having a debate of anecdotes, and this thread is probably in the wrong place. I can't cite that I'm telling the truth, and you can't cite that I'm lying (or delusional). So we're just going to indefinitly shout into the wind.

[Heffalump and Roo]

The same thing happens to me in the gym. I know for a particular work out about how long it takes within 10 minutes or so (barring lot's of superfluous conversation), but as it draws near the end, I forget to account for time to change weights, drink some water, do my intermediary exercises, etc. and I end up thinking I have more time left than I do. That is, my thought process goes much like this: I have two exercises left, then cardio, I have 75 minutes. Assuming each exercise takes 15 minutes (correctly), and 45 minutes for cardio, I'll be done just in time. But I forgot to account for the ab set I do between sets (1 or 2 minutes), I forgot to account for getting a drink of water between each exercise (1 or 2 minutes), I forgot to account for using the restroom before hitting cardio (2 or 3 minutes), etc. Next thing I know, I'm short 5-10 minutes, and I have to really think back to figure out where I lost time).

The amount of times that you "forgot" in this example is extremely high. I've often found that when we forget things, it's a psychological way of not wanting to remember. In a sense, it's a way to allow ourselves to do what we want when we actually *know* that what we want doesn't comport with reality. For you, how does this forgetting work? Do you forget other things, like the colors or words or the like? If not, why do you feel that forgetting in regards to time should be different?

[Vinyl Turnip]

For instance, this summer a coworker--a Cuban guy--threw a party at his house. I showed up an hour late, along with another coworker (an Anglo). When we stepped into the house, we expected everyone to be there but we were the first guests to arrive. I was relieved, but my fellow coworker was livid that the party was so "late". It occurred to me that she was experiencing culture clash by expecting a Cuban party to function on Anglo time.

I've found this to be a Brazilian thing, too, at least among those I've met in the U.S. If you make the mistake of showing up to a Brazilian party, dinner, wedding, etc., at the proposed time, be prepared not only to be the very first arrival, but probably to find that the hosts/planners have not come close to finishing the preparations. It drove me bonkers until I learned to just add a couple of hours to any scheduled start time, and roll with it. (Actually I still have trouble acclimating to "dinners" that sometimes get started at midnight or later, but... baby steps.)

I guess it's a cultural thing that's self-perpetuating, in that no one is ever going to show up on time if they know nobody else will.

[Hogwash]

Is punctuality a choice?

Well, I don't think so. As a punctual myself, I believe I was born that way. I didn't make a choice to be punctual, punctuality is all I know. How am I hurting anybody else by being punctual? I remember when I first realised in my teens that I might very well be punctual. It seemed that everybody else was different, all laid back, while my own punctual feelings grew daily and I felt like a freak. When I first sat my parents down and told them that their son was punctual, they were very understanding and accepting, something that I am grateful for.

It can be tough when I get verbal abuse, like when I'm walking down the street and some guy calls me a 'sick punco', but I believe that in time we will come to see that being punctual is nothing to be ashamed of and punctuality will be widely tolerated. I will definitely be marching in this year's Early Pride festival.

[MLS]

I think a certain amount of chronic lateness can be due to upbringing and cultural expectations. In my family, being on time was always a top priority. For example, my dad got home from his job in the factory at 4:30. He would come proceed to wash up, change out of his dirty clothes and come back downstairs. Dinner would be served at 5:00. Not 5:15. Not 4:45. Certainly not at 5:30. And it wasn't because otherwise he would complain. That was my mother's way, too, and she was very comfortable with it. And let me tell you, if we kids were not AT the dinner table at 5:00 there was heck to pay. Why, that's just the way it was done. To behave otherwise was simply unspeakable.

In my husband's eastern European culture, however, time was a vague concept. Maybe growing up as a displaced person and war refugee had something to do with it, too. After all, if the Nazis are about to capture you and put you in a "work camp," and meals would be obtained whenever food could be obtained, the idea of being in a particular place at a particular time was kind of irrelevant. My husband's parents were ALWAYS late. If you invited them to dinner at 2:00, they might show up then, or maybe 2:30, or maybe 4:00.

It used to drive me crazy with rage, until I realized there was a flip side. If I was late getting something ready, it didn't matter!

Now when it comes to getting to the airport or to the theater, that's another story, so I have learned to tell him that the plane leaves at 3:00 when it really leaves at 4:00. Forty years later he knows exactly what I'm doing, of course. I've also learned that if I really want to be someplace on time, I tell him what time I'm leaving. If he's ready to go, fine. If not, I leave without him.

He also is a very optimistic person. He just assumes there will not be a 45-minute backup at the Holland tunnel, that there will be no accident on Route 1, and that all the lights will be green. Then he fumes and frets when stuck in traffic.

So, yeah, he's one of those chronically late people, but in his case it's not that he's intentionally dissing folks selfishly. It's just the way he is. Could he change? Yeah, some. And he has, some. On the other hand, he doesn't yell at anybody else who makes him late.

[msmith537]

I am neither too early or too late. I show up exactly when I am meant to be there.

If I have a 3:00 meeting at work, I show up a little before. I expect people to be ready at the specified time. Showing up late show disrespect to me and to anyone who has a meeting after me.

Social functions, on the other hand, I like to be fashionably late. I don't like showing up while people are setting things up.

[Obsidian]

The amount of times that you "forgot" in this example is extremely high. I've often found that when we forget things, it's a psychological way of not wanting to remember. In a sense, it's a way to allow ourselves to do what we want when we actually *know* that what we want doesn't comport with reality. For you, how does this forgetting work? Do you forget other things, like the colors or words or the like? If not, why do you feel that forgetting in regards to time should be different?

For me, I think forgetting is my brain/psyche's way of simplifying things. It's way of saying, "I can't deal with all this chaos shouting at me, there are too many details, so I'm going to pare it down to the bare necessities, or else we'll never get anywhere."

My short term memory is also poor. If you tell me something, I have 2-5 minutes tops to write it down, or it's gone. If I talk to someone else or see something interesting before I do so, it's gone. I think things like colors are in long term memory.

(And I found his level of forgetting unsurprising)

[doreen]

To a certain extent you're right, but I didn't want to be early, I wanted to be exactly on time because I wanted to maximize my study time. I could have left work 20-30 minutes earlier and probably been to the exam 20-30 minutes early, but that would have been 20-30 minutes less studying which I felt would make a difference since I hadn't quite finished covering everything I wanted to cover. Hence, my thought process was, I was 10 minutes late, only leave 10 minutes earlier. You're probably right, that a wiser choice would have been to leave 15 minutes or so ealier, but hindsight is 20-20.


This part, about not wanting to be early because of the wasted time, is the part that leads to the whole "makes a choice issue". Because that's where the choice really is- to risk being early or to risk being late. It's also the part where the late person values their time more highly, or doesn't respect the other person comes in. Somebody doesn't want to waste time by being 20 minutes ( or an hour) early, but they're perfectly willing to make the other person waste 20 minutes ( or an hour) waiting.

[StarvingButStrong]

I think it's hopeless to answer the OP's question, because there are different reasons people are late: some have ADD, some are bad at estimating time, some have cultural/familial habits in play, on and on.

Here's another that hasn't been brought up, I think: there may be a genuine psychological quirk in play. For a time, I had a friend who was ALWAYS late. ALWAYS.

By exactly 20 minutes.

Now, she was always full of excuses, but the thing is, if the problem was truly the random phone call/lack of gas in her car/missing keys and so forth, obviously she would arrive being late by random amounts.

Being exactly 20 minutes late requires just as much planning and effort as being on time, it seemed to me, so finally I called her on it. It took some arguing, but finally she admitted that she simply *couldn't bear* to have to wait for anyone. That sitting by herself in a public place kicked off a whole anxiety chain of thought. Never mind if it was before the appointed time, she would start worrying that the other person(s) were going to stand her up, that they didn't care about her or her time, even that they'd planned to leave her sitting there all alone as practical joke.

So, to avoid ever having to wait for another person, she came 20 minutes late.

She thought this was a reasonable solution to her fears. Maybe so. But from my side I saw it as "Waiting is a horrible pain, too horrible for me to bear. THEREFORE I will deliberately inflict this horrible pain on everyone else."

The exact opposite of "Do unto others" as it were.

And, once I got that idea in my head -- that this person was *deliberately* trying to torture me at each meeting -- well, who could be friends with someone who tried to harm you every time you met?

(Yes, I could have been all big and understanding of her psychological problem, but I'm not that crazy about waiting around in public either.)

[marshmallow]

If it's not a choice and not a mental disorder then the only explanation left would be vast cosmological forces arranged against you. Or a brain slug.

[dangermom]

BlasterMaster, is there some reason that you couldn't take your study materials with you and hang around outside the door, finishing the study time? That would seem to me to be the solution to that particular problem. I have done it many times myself.

Also, why not get a watch that has a little alarm? You're working out, you know you need to finish by x time, but your problem is that you do not look at the clock often enough. So why not set a little alarm to go beep at the right time?

[kanicbird]

In order for it to be a choice it has to be intentional. To be intentionally late one has to realize the time it is, and what time it takes to make the appointment. As such I contend that people who are usually late are not making a choice, as they typically don't have the skills to manage time.

Now one can argue that once one realizes that they are usually late, and that is a problem, that person can make a choice to address that shortcoming, but it is still not a choice to be late, it's a choice for not addressing your lateness.

[Scarlett67]

Unfortunately, that just isn't the way my mind generally operates. I just don't compute for those extra "nickle and dime" things. For instance, like I said earlier, my workout itself takes about 2 1/2 hours, so it lives in my head as 2 1/2 hours, even though when I add in changing, going to/from, showering, etc. it ends up being about 3 hours. Sometimes I account for that, sometimes I just plain don't. It doesn't matter how much I force myself to think of it as 3 hours, it still lives there as 2 1/2 because of that.
But now you HAVE computed for it. You don't have to compute it every time. Why can you not say to yourself, "Gee, self, I thought my workout takes 2 1/2 hours, but it turns out it takes 3 hours. So I'll allow 3 hours for my workout, from door to door, from now on."

Does your brain never process new information? When you move, can you remember your new address and telephone number, or does your brain keep feeding you the old one?

Seems like a strange form of doublethink: you know it's really 3 hours, but you also know it's 2 1/2? Even though you know it's in your best interest to recognize the 3 hours as the correct figure?

[Blaster Master]

The amount of times that you "forgot" in this example is extremely high. I've often found that when we forget things, it's a psychological way of not wanting to remember. In a sense, it's a way to allow ourselves to do what we want when we actually *know* that what we want doesn't comport with reality. For you, how does this forgetting work? Do you forget other things, like the colors or words or the like? If not, why do you feel that forgetting in regards to time should be different?
I imagine you're being a little facetious with "the colors", but you're not far from the truth. My memory and thought processes work in, what I understand, are very unusual ways. That is, I can specifically remember anything if I put forth the effort to do so (like most people), but other times I'll forget things like "important" conversations as recently as earlier in the morning or names of people I know very well. I'll remember directions to a place I haven't been in months or years, but get lost (at least, as close as I can get to getting lost) going to places I go all the time. Similarly, as far as thought processes, sometimes I have to spend an excessive amount of time on simple arithmatic, othertimes I simply "know" the answer to a fairly complicated problem, and can't explain how I arrived there. This carries over into conversations as well, where one moment I'll dumb something down so much it offends the person I'm talking to because it makes them feel stupid, but other times I'll talk completely over his head and not know how I can possibly make it any simpler. But to me, each explanation seems equally complex (or not so, as the case may be).

I understand that, in many cases, that sort of behavior can be treated as a psychological underpinning, such that I think I want to remember, but deep down I don't. For instance, when I was in middle school, I was somewhat of an underacheiver because I simply didn't study, didn't do homework, didn't pay attention, whatever... Now, I'm a 4.0 PhD student, but my habits have only changed slightly. I almost never study for exams, and when I do, only briefly, I only do work that's graded (including not doing text book readings or practice problems), and I still don't pay attention by playing videogames, instant messaging, or even sleeping in class. One could argue that I was unconsciously choosing to underperform. The difference is, there, the habits (or rather, lack thereof) I can change to improve my performance are obvious; I could have paid more attention, studied, etc.

For my punctuality, it seems it would require a complete rewiring of how my mind functions... keeping day planners, setting alarm clocks, whatever, doesn't seem to change it. The only way I've found to correct it is to REALLY think of the time I have to be there as much earlier than it actually is, but even that is a fragile illusion. For instance, the ONLY way I can get to work before 7:00 is to think about it as if I have to be there by 6:30 and plan for that... but in that case, I'll get there anywhere from 6:20 to 6:55ish. I REALLY just plain don't understand how some of the people I can work with can show up every single day within 5 minutes of their scheduled arrival time.

[Full Metal Lotus]

I live in a northern Canadian city (Edmonton Alberta).. My commute takes me from litterally one side of the city to the other..

In the summer, spring and fall, I am almost always on time or early. In the winter, I can leave 20 minutes early, and show up 20 minutes late (or worse). I am an excellent winter driver (I can go 60 km/hr while others go 40). The problem is Edmonton has two things going against it regarding winter driving. we are experiencing a population boom, due to our exploding local economy, and many of the people on the road "freak out" at a mere 8 inches of snow over glare ice. They Drive 15 km/hr (actually more dangerous in a properly equipped car (snow tires, and aware driver) ) and slow things down hideously. The other thing is our "traffic infra structure" is built for a city of about 750,000 population, and we are pushing if not exceeding 1 million, due to the population boom).

Where I work, a "rarely" have to open up the builkding for other employees. If it is minus 40, and wind chill turns that into - 60, or worse, I am there early and have a pot of coffee brewing by the time they show up. Even if I have to wake up at 4:30AM to get there for 7 AM.

As it is, other than that I have little regard for punctuality. I show up when I show up, and I leave when my work for the day is done. (Unless I am expecting a call or an early appontment). My boss understands, and gives me the benefit of the doubt when it comes to my "personal interpretation of "the clock"". he knows I give more time than I take, and that he can generally call me on a day off, (emergency) and not expect me to put in for a salary time bonus because of it.

I really think people are too hung up on "punctuality"... I am more spanish than swiss that way, I guess, but respect everyone's right to form their own ideal.

Waiting on someone for a lunch/dinner date; well 10-15 minutes is acceptable... (no reason/excuse/call required). It balances out to this, for me, Am I more glad to see the person, or more pissed off about the time they kept me waiting? I tend not to make dates with people that will leave me, or cause them, to be pissed off by a few minutes of opportunity to explore the self, or read a book, day dream or otherwise occupy the time spent "waiting".

But that's just me....

Regards...
FML

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

But please show me your "science."

Other behaviors that may stem directly from ADHD are chronic lateness and forgetfulness, anxiety, difficulty organizing, difficulty controlling anger, impulsiveness, and substance abuse.

People with ADHD are easily distracted by sights and sounds in their environment, cannot concentrate for long periods of time, are restless and impulsive, or have a tendency to daydream and be slow to complete tasks.
http://depts.washington.edu/hhpccweb/article-detail.php?ArticleID=354&ClinicID=6

See also:
Therapists with psychodynamic training may view an individual's chronic lateness as "resistance" to therapy rather than considering the possibility that this pattern is related to an ADD (ADHD) time-management problem that needs to be directly addressed on more practical terms.
http://www.addvance.com/help/professionals/neurocognitive.html
Note that Kathleen Nadeau is one of the experts in ADD

www.add.org/pdf/Fact_Sheet_Final.pdf

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0902/is_2_30/ai_85500252/pg_8

http://www.webmd.com/content/article/89/100385.htm

I could go on for a long time but you should be getting the gist by now.

[Obsidian]

If it's not a choice and not a mental disorder then the only explanation left would be vast cosmological forces arranged against you. Or a brain slug.

No, the explaination is that being punctual is just something some people are shitty at. It's not a cause for a shrink. It's not an intentional, spiteful choice. It's something I'm bad at, and I'm working on. All deviations from perfection are not mental disorders. Sometimes they're just aggravating personality traits.

Blaster Master, you sound very familiar to me. My life is much the same.

[monstro]

I REALLY just plain don't understand how some of the people I can work with can show up every single day within 5 minutes of their scheduled arrival time.

Routine. You learn how long it takes to get dressed, brush teeth, do hair, make breakfast, feed the cats, toss out the trash and plan accordingly. Then you don't stray from the plan.

Sleep is precious to me. So I have trained myself to squeeze all getting-ready-for-work activities within 30-35 minutes. This means I shower the night before. I have my clothes laid out (and ironed) the night before. I'll locate keys and wallets the night before. I don't chitchat or daydream, even when I really want to. I do these things because I know 1) I'm a space cadet in the morning, 2) I really want to maximize my sleep, and 3)I really want to get to work on time.

Blaster Master, it seems like you've got a lot of excuses. You know what your problems are, so the most obvious answer is to address them with small, achievable goals. Why not shoot for 30 minutes early and then target practice so that you arrive closer and closer to the scheduled time? That way, you train yourself to get into a routine and learn to be more conscientious of the passing time.

One thing I've learned, being a quirky individual myself, is that it's alright to beat to a different drum as long as you don't inconvenience others, or use your quirkiness as a crutch for personality flaws. I don't care so much that I'm generally disorganized because I have trained myself to get it together when it matters. So if your tardiness hasn't been a problem for you or others, then I wouldn't worry about it. But I think you are perfectly able to learn punctuality. Having a Ph.D will not free of this burden. Absent-minded professors still have to show up to class on time. And when you show up late to receive the Nobel Prize, they may just decide to give it to someone else. ;)

[doreen]

I REALLY just plain don't understand how some of the people I can work with can show up every single day within 5 minutes of their scheduled arrival time. Most of them probably aren't really. They may walk in every day within 5 minutes of their scheduled time, but I bet most of them are varying something toward the end of the trip, when they no longer need the cushion. For example,I'm supposed to be at work at 8:30 , plan to get there at 8, and get there anywhere between 8 and 8:30 depending on the traffic. If I get there 30 minutes early, I might hit the ATM and pick up breakfast. If I'm ten minutes early, I just get coffee, and if I'm right on time, I go straight to work.

[HazelNutCoffee]

Most of them probably aren't really. They may walk in every day within 5 minutes of their scheduled time, but I bet most of them are varying something toward the end of the trip, when they no longer need the cushion. For example,I'm supposed to be at work at 8:30 , plan to get there at 8, and get there anywhere between 8 and 8:30 depending on the traffic. If I get there 30 minutes early, I might hit the ATM and pick up breakfast. If I'm ten minutes early, I just get coffee, and if I'm right on time, I go straight to work.
This would be me. I usually try to plan to be where I have to be half an hour earlier than I actually have to be there. If I end up arriving half an hour early, I find something to do - read, get coffee, do some shopping, whatever. I'd rather be the one waiting than make other people wait. I suppose I'm the opposite of StarvingButStrong's friend, in that I can't stand the thought of making other people wait but have no problem with waiting myself. Even when I'm meeting with a friend that is ALWAYS 10 minutes late, I end up getting there 10 minutes early on the off-chance that she might, just this once, be on time. (She never is.)

Seriously, I am known among my friends for being the most laid-back person ever when it comes to waiting - once I waited over an hour for a friend to show up and I was only mildly annoyed. But for some reason I can't be as lenient when it comes to myself. Go figure.

[jsgoddess]

I'd rather be the one waiting than make other people wait.

Absolutely.

And if I'm meeting my mother, we both show up early and then do what we were going to do earlier than planned. It's all good. :D

[Frylock]

Some people are just bad at planning ahead, through no choice or fault of their own.

-FrL-

[Blaster Master]

BlasterMaster, is there some reason that you couldn't take your study materials with you and hang around outside the door, finishing the study time? That would seem to me to be the solution to that particular problem. I have done it many times myself.
You're right, seriously. The problem is that honestly didn't occur to me. Maybe it was a bad example on my part due to poor forethought. :(

Routine. You learn how long it takes to get dressed, brush teeth, do hair, make breakfast, feed the cats, toss out the trash and plan accordingly. Then you don't stray from the plan.
This may sound strange coming from me after all of this discussion, but I'm one of most routined people I know. One of the guys at work who has kids and works two jobs among many many other crazy things in his life seems amazed at what I get accomplished (likewise, I don't feel like my life compares to the complexity of his). Before I had a routine, I was 1000 times worse... I could plan a single thing for an entire day and still be horribly late, or not even show at all. The difference is, my routines don't work the same way yours probably do. It's not "get out of bed, 2 minutes, take a shower, 10 minutes, get dressed, 5 minutes, etc."... its more of a "get out of bed, take a shower, get dressed... all of that takes about 45 minutes". Its not "get to work at 9:00, work 'til 5:00, get to school by 5:30, etc." ... its more of a "wake up, go to work, go to school, go to the gym..." It's abstract, and I really have no idea how to explain it any better than that even knowing that the way I'm describing it doesn't look much different.

I just plain can't seem to operate on a rigidly timed, activity by activity, schedule, simply because I don't account for those small things and thus my estimates are more often than not incorrect. I have no idea how anyone, especially so many people, can do it. I've tried day planners, I've tried setting up alerts in my e-mail, I've tried setting alarms... all it does is stress me out (oh, crap, I'm running late!), and it doesn't seem to make a bit of difference to my punctuality one way or the other.
Sleep is precious to me. So I have trained myself to squeeze all getting-ready-for-work activities within 30-35 minutes. This means I shower the night before. I have my clothes laid out (and ironed) the night before. I'll locate keys and wallets the night before. I don't chitchat or daydream, even when I really want to. I do these things because I know 1) I'm a space cadet in the morning, 2) I really want to maximize my sleep, and 3)I really want to get to work on time.
Maybe that is part of my problem. Maybe I try to do too much in the morning. For instance, I can't stand to leave the house without a shower; I just don't feel right, even if I'd showered just before bed. I don't lay out clothes at night, but I never spend more than a minute or two to pick out clothes; I pretty much grab the first shirt and pants unless they absolutely look horrible together (eg, dress shirt with jeans)... though even then, I sometimes don't care. But it's not getting to work that's the problem, I have the same problem getting everywhere... hell, I was more than 2 hours late leaving WORK today (good thing I told the gf I wouldn't have time to see her until tomorrow ;) ).
Blaster Master, it seems like you've got a lot of excuses. You know what your problems are, so the most obvious answer is to address them with small, achievable goals. Why not shoot for 30 minutes early and then target practice so that you arrive closer and closer to the scheduled time? That way, you train yourself to get into a routine and learn to be more conscientious of the passing time.
I'm really honestly trying, and was actually doing quite well getting to work and school and everything on time for about about a year or so (over a year ago), and then I decided I could cram more stuff in my schedule (i.e., more coursework and a girlfriend). The thing is, I'm not oblivious to the passing of time... it's obliviousness to how long things will take ahead of time. lowbrass's boss in post 56 is exactly the type of obliviousness to which I'm referring. How do I know how much early to aim? Like i said earlier, if it's something I do daily, I generally don't need to because if I'm late, which is less often in these cases, it's not by much. But what about the cases that aren't every day occurences? 30 minutes is sometimes enough, sometimes its not anywhere close to enough. And often when I try to allow that extra time, I get distracted playing my keyboard or whatever.

Another good example would be a time when I was supposed to meet up with the gf on Saturday. My only plans for the day were to do some cleaning, work out, do some work on a group project, and meet up with her at like 6:00... a perfectly reasonable time for what I had planned for the day. You know what I forgot to account for? Basic human needs like say, breakfast and lunch, and other "obvious" things like packing up my laptop for the classwork and basic items to spend the night at her house. All that time adds up to about an hour and I was late meeting up with her by an hour. Do you ever just plain forget to account for things like that?
One thing I've learned, being a quirky individual myself, is that it's alright to beat to a different drum as long as you don't inconvenience others, or use your quirkiness as a crutch for personality flaws. I don't care so much that I'm generally disorganized because I have trained myself to get it together when it matters. So if your tardiness hasn't been a problem for you or others, then I wouldn't worry about it. But I think you are perfectly able to learn punctuality. Having a Ph.D will not free of this burden. Absent-minded professors still have to show up to class on time. And when you show up late to receive the Nobel Prize, they may just decide to give it to someone else. ;)
You're absolutely right. I know it's not something that is completely beyond my ability to learn, but I also know it's not something that is as easy for me to do as it is for others. Considering my many personality quirks (I certainly don't have any personality flaws ;) ), I try hard not to hold things against others that seem as bizarre to me, like a few I've mentioned earlier, as a lack of punctuality or my extermism does to so many others. At this point, it does cost me some frustration, but it seems most people have generally found they can tollerate my relationship with time as a quirk that goes along with the rest of me. If people can't tollerate it, it's no skin off my back either. For instance, the people at my job don't seem to care if I work a 6-4 shift one day, and a 9-7 the next, or one 6 hour day and then a 10 hour day later. Of course, I like to believe it's because they know when I am there I'm very productive and my knowledge is indispensible... or maybe it's just because they don't really notice...

Of course, my hope in getting a PhD is to obtain a research position, which, while it won't free me completely of a burden of time, will allow me to be compensated with a closer correlation to how much work I do, and not just how long I'm sitting at my desk. I think I might actually be on time when I get a Nobel Prize... at least I'd like to believe I would have this stomped by then. ;)

Blaster Master, you sound very familiar to me. My life is much the same.Likewise :)

[Vinyl Turnip]

Some people are just bad at planning ahead, through no choice or fault of their own.-FrL-

So whose choice or fault is it if I consistently fail to plan my own actions?

[Frylock]

So whose choice or fault is it if I consistently fail to plan my own actions?

What I meant by "bad at planning" wasn't "tending not to plan" but rather "planning badly."

-FrL-

[lowbrass]

Blaster, I hope you don't think I'm picking on you, but this is really interesting to me, especially since this is a problem my boss has and one that I've had myself to varying degrees at different times in my life. So again, I hope you don't take any of this as criticism.

I'm not sure the million dollars is a fair example. I'd sit around and waste a whole day and skip my shower or whatever to make sure I'm early as hell and won't miss it.

But that's my point - you CAN do it if you really want to. What you're saying is that it's too inconvenient for you. Granted, it sounds like it takes much more effort for you, but you can do it. And really, being on time isn't easy for anyone. Perhaps not as difficult as it is for you, but it is difficult. I think people who are punctual have simply developed the behavior patterns that allow them to accomplish it.


My goal isn't to be early as hell, it's to be there when I expect to be there. If I added an extra hour to all my preparations, I would probably always be early, but that's a little extreme and unnecessary, don't you think?


This has been addressed by someone else, so at the risk of being repetitive, I actually don't think it's extreme to be very early. I know many people who make a habit of being extremely early to everything. In addition to my part-time office job I mentioned earlier, I work as a free-lance musician, and I knew a guy who would arrive at an out-of-town gig as much as 3 hours early. He would rather spend the day there than suffer the stress of worrying about being on time. As for me, I started my career being late to a lot of gigs. I soon figured out that I wasn't going to have a career for long, because that simply is not allowed in this business. It was imperative for me to learn to be on time. I did it because I had to; the motivation to be on time was finally stronger than the motivation to continue whatever leisure activity I was doing before leaving for work. So what I do is simply plan on being 45 minutes early. I usually eat dinner when I get to my destination. If there's really really horrible traffic, I might have to skip dinner to get there on time, so I will. That's pretty extreme, but sometimes it's necessary. But since I left that time cushion, the worst that can happen is that I'll be right on time. Most of the time, when traffic is normal, I'm ridiculously early.

To a certain extent you're right, but I didn't want to be early, I wanted to be exactly on time because I wanted to maximize my study time. I could have left work 20-30 minutes earlier and probably been to the exam 20-30 minutes early, but that would have been 20-30 minutes less studying which I felt would make a difference since I hadn't quite finished covering everything I wanted to cover.

Well I have to agree with Doreen on this. What you're really doing is making a choice that you value your own time more than you value being punctual. It wasn't that you couldn't get there on time, it's that you didn't want to risk being early. But actually, in my opinion, that's exactly what punctual people do. They don't have magical powers that allow them to arrive everywhere right on the dot, they just risk being early, all the time. And sometimes they are early, and they just figure it's better to be early than late.

Again, my boss does the same thing as you. He rationalizes in his mind that it's more important to stay and do what he's doing and risk missing his deadline, even though that's illogical. The consequences of completely missing the deadline are much more severe than the consequences of missing a couple of typos because he didn't spend that last 15 minutes proofreading.

What do you think? Do you agree?


Hence, my thought process was, I was 10 minutes late, only leave 10 minutes earlier. You're probably right, that a wiser choice would have been to leave 15 minutes or so ealier, but hindsight is 20-20.

I don't even think that's enough. That's still only 5 minutes cushion.


Unfortunately, that just isn't the way my mind generally operates. I just don't compute for those extra "nickle and dime" things. For instance, like I said earlier, my workout itself takes about 2 1/2 hours, so it lives in my head as 2 1/2 hours, even though when I add in changing, going to/from, showering, etc. it ends up being about 3 hours. Sometimes I account for that, sometimes I just plain don't. It doesn't matter how much I force myself to think of it as 3 hours, it still lives there as 2 1/2 because of that.

This is fascinating to me. I'm starting to wonder if you are my boss. Because I have no doubt that the next time he has to file a paper in that same court, it will still be one hour in his mind. It doesn't matter how many deadlines he misses or how many angry clients he has to apologize to, he simply will not change his behavior. It would seem that such things require behavior modification, that reasoning is not sufficient.

[lowbrass]

My short term memory is also poor. If you tell me something, I have 2-5 minutes tops to write it down, or it's gone. If I talk to someone else or see something interesting before I do so, it's gone. I think things like colors are in long term memory.


I sometimes can't remember what I'm doing tomorrow. I have to keep a datebook, and I have to look at it every day - perhaps several times per day. If I'm asked whether I'm available Thursday, I say, "let me check my book". If I have a phone message on my machine and have to call the person back the next day, I place a post-it note on my front door so that I cannot leave the house without being reminded that I have to make the phone call. If I have materials I must bring to work, I place them right in front of the door the evening before.

Even doing all that, I'm still much less organized than a lot of people.

Often, it's not that organized people possess inherently better memories, it's just that they have learned some skills for dealing with the problem. We use external means to force ourselves to remember.

[Obsidian]

Often, it's not that organized people possess inherently better memories, it's just that they have learned some skills for dealing with the problem. We use external means to force ourselves to remember.

I think this is very important. I am still learning many of these things. When growing up, I was not encouraged to develop habits that would remind me of the things I needed to do. I'm kind of bumbling around as a grown up, working on the right ballance of functional enough, yet simple enough I can follow it consistantly. I think I do okay, most days.

I did have a boss once who felt to do lists, post-its, calendar notes, reminders, etc, were unprofessional and the sign of a weak mind. I was not allowed to have them. Man, did I fail spectacularly at that job.

Btw, I'm glad you (and others) think arranging to be very early in common. I thought I was alone that I had to do this. I feel less like a freak now. Though, bizarely enough, I got bitched at in the other thread for supposedly exagerating because I claimed to need an extra half-hour. I can't win. :)

[Stratocaster]

I'm not sure the million dollars is a fair example. I'd sit around and waste a whole day and skip my shower or whatever to make sure I'm early as hell and won't miss it. My goal isn't to be early as hell, it's to be there when I expect to be there. If I added an extra hour to all my preparations, I would probably always be early, but that's a little extreme and unnecessary, don't you think?There, you've answered the OP's questions. All the rationalization and excuses aside, you've decided that punctuality is just not as important to you as some other things. Whether or not your personality makes punctuality more difficult, it is certainly something you could decide to achieve. But you consider that an unreasonable effort.

[China Guy]

Punctuality is a choice. (caveat that there is a very small minority of people out there with personality disorders, attention deficits, etc).

I work in sales in a country that's pretty lax about being on time and traffic can be unpredictably horrendous. It's really rare that I'm late. Sheesh, I go early and leave a "reasonable" margin barring the sky is falling to get to a client site on time. It helps that I use a phone/pda/smart device and can be on line 24/7. My to do list goes into one place on my phone, and it synchs with my PC. I've got a calendar and to do system. I've got waaaaaaay to many deadlines to not be organized.

I routinely have to be on group concalls at 5:00 am and in the evening. I work in a global group for a global company. I am a real bastard with organizers that are late when I'm getting up a 5:00 am to fix their problem.

Yep, being late is mighty personal.

I also make the distinction for when a meeting or get together is 8:00 ish versus 8:00. I ask to just to make sure. Or we meet somewhere where it's no big deal if someone is 90 minutes lates. Let's meet at the Long Bar after work and go to dinner at 8:30. Most people get of work sometime between 6 and 7, and with traffic and whatever, well, you know you'll be having a beer with them sometime from 6 to 8:30, and then going out to dinner. It's no big deal because both parties know what the score is. Especially in a school/work situation, it's on time.

I've always been early or punctual. I learned that probably from my father. It was certainly reinforced when I worked in investment banking for 8 years. Don't matter squat unless you get the information you need before the market opens, and your trade gets done before the closing bell. it's just like habitually late people seem to make their flights a helluva lot more often than being to work on time.

[jsgoddess]

When growing up, I was not encouraged to develop habits that would remind me of the things I needed to do.

Neither was I. I've simply made it a priority in my life.

[monstro]

I think this is very important. I am still learning many of these things. When growing up, I was not encouraged to develop habits that would remind me of the things I needed to do. I'm kind of bumbling around as a grown up, working on the right ballance of functional enough, yet simple enough I can follow it consistantly. I think I do okay, most days.

I think everyone is still learning, especially since we're all aging and our lives always getting more hectic. It used to be that I could remember what I'd bought at the grocery store last week, so that I wouldn't buy things I don't need. But after my sister noticed I had five, practically brand-new cartons of vanilla ice cream in the freezer, I realized I need to get better organized. Now I know I need to go through my cabinets and make a list of needed items before I head to the store. No one taught me this. It's just a habit I've picked up. I think the only thing that separates people who are "put together" from those who are not is that the former knows how to compensate for the deficits that everyone has. I think it is quite rare for someone to be punctual without having to try.

IBtw, I'm glad you (and others) think arranging to be very early in common. I thought I was alone that I had to do this. I feel less like a freak now. Though, bizarely enough, I got bitched at in the other thread for supposedly exagerating because I claimed to need an extra half-hour. I can't win. :)

I'm as guilty of this as much as you are, but I'm going to say the following anyway: You need to stop caring so much about how you compare to other people. As long as you're functioning and doing what you're supposed to be doing (and when), why should anyone care about your coping strategies? Fuck them!

[Dinsdale]

I could go on for a long time but you should be getting the gist by now.

I admit I did not thoroughly study each of these cites, but my review of the first 3 indicates that many folk believe that chronic lateness is one of a cluster of behaviors frequently exhibited by persons with ADD/ADHD.

What I did not see, however, is anything stating the percentage of persons who are chronically late who have ADD/ADHD. Perhaps O and MB have ADD/ADHD. But those 2 case studies tell me nothing about the incidence of ADD/ADHD in the chronically tardy.

The main thing that bugged me about O and MB's posts was their claim of helplessness to explain/deal with their behavior. O says she "can't" hang up her keys. MB says he "can't" explain why a 25 minute task sometimes takes him an hour.

IMO&E, folks can do a whole heck of a lot - even things more impressive than placing their keys in a designated spot or getting out the door in the morning - if they want to.

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

Punctuality is a choice. (caveat that there is a very small minority of people out there with personality disorders, attention deficits, etc).

Not that small. 4%. Four out of every hundred people you know. Got a hundred people in your office? Imagine four having ADD. It may not be the case in your particular office but that's what four per cent means. So it's not that rare at all.

[aruvqan]

Wee Bairn, just because it was that easy for you does not mean it's that easy for everyone else. I'm actually laughing right now. Get up earlier? Well, why didn't I think of that? Oh, wait. . . it's because I already do. It's just not that simple.

I don't mean to snark you, but this is *exactly* what I'm talking about about people being flip. Everyone has a one line solution to a complex problem. In truth, it involves a lot of scheduling, reminders, and advance preparation. Its more work than my naturally-punctual roommates ever have to put into anything.

Actually, *work* and *school* are that important.

I work very hard at punctuality. I set my alarm, and have a clock near me at all times in the morning as I get ready for work. I know I need to be in the shower at a specific time. I have a cd burned to listen to in the shower. When the CD is on a specific song, I know I HAVE to get finished. I have my clothes for work as error proof as possible. I actually DO own 7 identical pair of black work pants, and 7 assorted colors of polo shirts, and 7 identicalsets of underthings. I never have to think about what i am going to wear. I usually take prepackaged leftovers for lunch, and all I have to do is grab the package out of the fridge and put it into a bag. mrAru likes the ramen cup soup things and keeps a case of tehm in his work car so he never has to worry about what is for lunch.

Yes, we do a minute by minute schedule to get out of the house. We have 3 people and 1 bathroom so scheuling in the morning is crucial.

All it takes to remain punctual is to keep an eye on your watch, and if needed set your watch alarm to remind you you have something to do/somewhere to go *NOW*.

[Frylock]

I did have a boss once who felt to do lists, post-its, calendar notes, reminders, etc, were unprofessional and the sign of a weak mind. I was not allowed to have them. )
What an ultimate motherfucker! :mad:

Reminds me of the math teacher my wife had as a kid who wouldn't
allow his students to take notes. :mad: :mad:

-FrL-

[dangermom]

I'm going to chime in agreeing that I always arrange to be somewhat early. I would rather wait than be late. I always have a book in the car, so I always have something to do. Now that I have kids, I try to leave the house quite early, because they are slow. As a result, I'm always at least a few minutes early for work, even though I often take the kids out to a friend who lives on a farm that is miles out of town and on the other side of a train track first.

If I plan to be somewhere exactly on time, then I'll probably be a little late, so I plan to be there quite early.

Here's a funny example: my dad recently had to go pick up my mom at the airport, 90 miles away. The plane was going to be late due to fog in Denver. He had already planned to be about 2 hours early, so he left about an hour later and was 3 hours early. My dad is perfectly happy to sit around an airport for 3 hours until 2am in order not to have to worry about being late. He just takes a nap or reads.

[Zsofia]

Waiting on someone for a lunch/dinner date; well 10-15 minutes is acceptable... (no reason/excuse/call required). It balances out to this, for me, Am I more glad to see the person, or more pissed off about the time they kept me waiting? I tend not to make dates with people that will leave me, or cause them, to be pissed off by a few minutes of opportunity to explore the self, or read a book, day dream or otherwise occupy the time spent "waiting".

But that's just me....

Regards...
FML


See, where I come from that's called "seriously rude". I have an hour for lunch, you show up 15 minutes late (meaning a quarter of my time) and I'm supposed to be grateful that you've left me alone at a restaurant to "explore the self"? Yeah, thanks for that. It's nice, in a way, that friendships between the rude and the not rude tend to be self-un-selecting.

[Frylock]

Here's a question:

If people are saying "You should be on time, even if it means being willing to wait a little while by being early," then have they thereby lost the right to complain "You shouldn't be late, because I am not willing to wait a little while for you to get here?"

-FrL-

[Frylock]

you show up 15 minutes late (meaning a quarter of my time)

What about that quarter of your time? Are you implying the other has somehow stolen it away? Clearly false: You experienced that 15 minutes. It was yours to do with as you wished. No one took it from you.

I think there's a valid point you're trying to make, but couching it in terms of "my time" and "your time" and so on makes things... unclear...

-FrL-

[StarvingButStrong]

It's nice, in a way, that friendships between the rude and the not rude tend to be self-un-selecting.


This is sooo true. And sometimes it benefits the waitee: If it weren't that I was waiting for then boyfriend to show up late YET AGAIN, I wouldn't have fallen into a conversation with the nice man sitting alone at the next table. Who was going to spend the evening at his friends photography showing... which started sounding a heck of a lot more interesting than continuing to wait for a guy who claimed to love me but couldn't manage to ever meet up with me even approximately on time.

Mr. Guy at the Next Table and I were marriage six months later, and it's still going strong. And HE gets to places on time. ;)

[Vinyl Turnip]

Here's a question:

If people are saying "You should be on time, even if it means being willing to wait a little while by being early," then have they thereby lost the right to complain "You shouldn't be late, because I am not willing to wait a little while for you to get here?"

Not really. If we make a date for 5:00, 5:00 is the latest time I expect both of us to arrive. Both you and I are free to get there as far ahead of, or as close to that appointed time as we wish. Just like you would expect if going to a movie. Nobody, to my knowledge, tries to lay blame elsewhere for "their time" being wasted if they arrive at the theater a half an hour before the film starts.

Your equivalence of "my 15 minutes before" v. "your 15 minutes after" just doesn't wash in real life. Try consistently showing up 30 minutes early for a job, then arrive 30 minutes late every day for a while, and compare the reaction you get.

[Frylock]

This is sooo true. And sometimes it benefits the waitee: If it weren't that I was waiting for then boyfriend to show up late YET AGAIN, I wouldn't have fallen into a conversation with the nice man sitting alone at the next table. Who was going to spend the evening at his friends photography showing... which started sounding a heck of a lot more interesting than continuing to wait for a guy who claimed to love me but couldn't manage to ever meet up with me even approximately on time.

Mr. Guy at the Next Table and I were marriage six months later, and it's still going strong. And HE gets to places on time. ;)

"You claim to love me, but you're always late."

In this thread, we are clearly dealing with a very deep difference in ways of thinking. I can not even imagine a rational person saying the above--yet I know that in fact, rational people can say it, as I have seen on this very thread. It's like you're some kind of alien being from another world as far as I'm concerned! :p

-Kris

[Frylock]

Not really. If we make a date for 5:00, 5:00 is the latest time I expect both of us to arrive. Both you and I are free to get there as far ahead of, or as close to that appointed time as we wish. Just like you would expect if going to a movie. Nobody, to my knowledge, tries to lay blame elsewhere for "their time" being wasted if they arrive at the theater a half an hour before the film starts.

Your equivalence of "my 15 minutes before" v. "your 15 minutes after" just doesn't wash in real life. Try consistently showing up 30 minutes early for a job, then arrive 30 minutes late every day for a while, and compare the reaction you get.

You are accurately describing the convention we are discussing, but you are not addressing my point about one way people are justifying their reaction to one's failure to conform to that convention.

If you say "this is the convention, this is just how we do it," then I don't have an argument for you. But if you say "you should be willing to waste some time by waiting for me to get there at five," then it seems to be open to your interlocutor to say "you should be willing to waste some time waiting for me to get there at five fifteen."

I'm not arguing that its okay to be late. I'm arguing that the "you should be willing to wait on me" defense of sticklers for punctuality doesn't work. The argument is a hypocritical one, at least as its been formulated on this thread.

-FrL-

[msmith537]

Not that small. 4%. Four out of every hundred people you know. Got a hundred people in your office? Imagine four having ADD. It may not be the case in your particular office but that's what four per cent means. So it's not that rare at all.


ADD? Half my office are freakin retards.

[monstro]

Here's a question:

If people are saying "You should be on time, even if it means being willing to wait a little while by being early," then have they thereby lost the right to complain "You shouldn't be late, because I am not willing to wait a little while for you to get here?"

-FrL-

No. That's ludicrous.

My rule is that people should be able to handle a five minute period of lateness and waiting. So don't yell at me if I'm arriving five minutes after the appointed hour, and I won't get snippy if I had to wait that amount of time. If I arrive five minutes early and end up waiting ten minutes, well, that's not your fault. But if I arrive at the appointed hour and end up waiting ten minutes, well, yes, I will be a little impatient. We came up with an appointed time and we should both strive to hit it as close to possible. It should be a mutual effort. And if we're frequently having dates, neither one of us should feel more responsible about the time than the other. I shouldn't always be the one who arrives on time and has to wait. But if it happens occassionally, no biggie.

Sometimes you cannot really afford to wait for someone. Let's say I'm supposed to meet you at your place so we can catch the last rush hour train together. I can wait for you if we have lots of time to spare, as I would expect you to do for me. But if the train is due in five minutes and you're still putting on your fake eyelashes, I'm sorry but I can't wait. The difference between waiting when you're early and waiting when you're late is huge and shouldn't be treated similarly.

[Zsofia]

What about that quarter of your time? Are you implying the other has somehow stolen it away? Clearly false: You experienced that 15 minutes. It was yours to do with as you wished. No one took it from you.

I think there's a valid point you're trying to make, but couching it in terms of "my time" and "your time" and so on makes things... unclear...

-FrL-
Well, if we're trying to have lunch together somewhere, and I have no idea if you're showing up or what, because you don't find 15 minutes worth calling over, do I order? Do I wait on you? If I order, and you show up half an hour late and then order, I've had to eat by myself and your food is going to come as I'm leaving. In other words, I made these plans so we could have lunch together, but you think I ought to be grateful that you've given me this opportunity to read my book or explore my innermost self.

I'm not requiring you to show up early, I'm just requesting that, especially since I only have an hour for lunch, that you show up in time to eat lunch with me. If I wanted to read my book, I wouldn't have invited you. Like somebody else said, if we're going to a movie, I don't care how early you get there, I don't care how early I get there, but we both better be there when the movie starts. It's not about "who has to wait", it's about what time you're supposed to be there!

[Vinyl Turnip]

You are accurately describing the convention we are discussing, but you are not addressing my point about one way people are justifying their reaction to one's failure to conform to that convention.

Yes, it is a convention, largely borne out of the fact that time moves in one direction. You can arrive at 4:45 and be present at 5:00, but (until personal time machines are perfected) you cannot arrive at 5:15 and be there at 5:00.

And there's nothing "hypocritical" about it, unless one accepts your shaky premise that 15 minutes = 15 minutes, regardless. The fact is that you are responsible for when you arrive; I am not. I will neither take blame for your late arrival nor feel guilt at your getting there early. You don't want to "waste" time, manage your time better.

"You claim to love me, but you're always late."

In this thread, we are clearly dealing with a very deep difference in ways of thinking. I can not even imagine a rational person saying the above--yet I know that in fact, rational people can say it, as I have seen on this very thread. It's like you're some kind of alien being from another world as far as I'm concerned!

Indeed, as it's difficult for me to understand how a rational person can fail to realize that consistently failing to fulfill one's promises, including being where you say you will when you say you will, shows a real lack of consideration toward the person(s) you are inconveniencing with your unreliable behavior.

Obviously you are from Mars, while I am clearly from Uranus.

[monstro]

I'm not arguing that its okay to be late. I'm arguing that the "you should be willing to wait on me" defense of sticklers for punctuality doesn't work. The argument is a hypocritical one, at least as its been formulated on this thread.

-FrL-

I hear the sticklers saying "you should be willing to risk waiting on me to ensure that you arrive on time". No one is saying you should arrive early. But being the early arriver is definitely preferable than being the late arriver when it comes to showing respect. If someone is willing to give up an extra minute just so they can avoid offending someone by being tardy, that's classy. I'd rather be with someone who doesn't want me to wait than someone who takes for granted that I will wait.

[Zsofia]

The thing is, most of the time there's no penalty to arriving early, and there is a penalty for arriving late. We miss the first part of the movie. We lose our dinner reservations. I have to get back to work at a certain time. We miss our flight. In other words, you being late is having a serious effect on others, unless they want to board the flight without you (and isn't it the point that we're going to Maui together?) Your inconsideration has, in fact, taken something from the people you're supposed to be meeting.

[HazelNutCoffee]

I hear the sticklers saying "you should be willing to risk waiting on me to ensure that you arrive on time". No one is saying you should arrive early. But being the early arriver is definitely preferable than being the late arriver when it comes to showing respect. If someone is willing to give up an extra minute just so they can avoid offending someone by being tardy, that's classy. I'd rather be with someone who doesn't want me to wait than someone who takes for granted that I will wait.
Word. You have no responsibility to arrive early, but you do have a responsibility to arrive on time. For me it's better to be ten minutes early than five minutes late. As I've already mentioned, I'd rather be the one waiting. My one philosophy in life is "do whatever you want, as long as it doesn't inconvenience anyone else." But I suppose it's a matter of personal priorities.

[StarvingButStrong]

"You claim to love me, but you're always late."

In this thread, we are clearly dealing with a very deep difference in ways of thinking. I can not even imagine a rational person saying the above--yet I know that in fact, rational people can say it, as I have seen on this very thread. It's like you're some kind of alien being from another world as far as I'm concerned! :p

-Kris

Without context, I suppose it sounds weird. What you don't know is the kind of reasons he gave for being late: a phone call from a friend and he wanted to get caught up on the past; having a beer with office mates after work; his brother calling for help working on a car he was rebuilding; wanting to finish reading a magazine; seeing a sale sign in a store window and remembering he wanted to upgrade his stereo, etc.

Now, all of those are fine things to do BUT if you know that you have made plans with your girlfriend to meet at the Tropical Moon at 7pm for dinner, and it's currently 6:45 and it'll take a good 20 minutes to get there then IMHO you ought to make heading for the Tropical Moon a high priority. Instead, he decided he wanted to do these other things more than he wanted to keep to the plans he'd made with me.

And, frankly, if a boyfriend doesn't consider spending time with you pretty high on his priorities, or is so rude that he thinks leaving you to sit around waiting for him needlessly doesn't matter, or even simply isn't the type of person who keeps his word when he says he'll do something.... Well, I think crossing his name off your list and moving on is the sensible thing to do.

[Ferret Herder]

I have a boss who is consistently late to a weekly meeting - with people from other departments - every single time. It makes him and our department look like we don't care about the important meeting and about the other people there, and typically the meeting cannot start until he arrives.

He's also late in arriving on days that we see research patients. These patients are typically there for very long visits anyway (a few hours!) and so my coworker and I try our best to make the visit go as smoothly as possible - but when he's late a half hour or more, that completely fouls up our schedules, and messes with every patient who arrives afterwards as well - so even if those later patients are on time, they're still delayed as a result. Oh, and he refuses to carry a cell phone, so we couldn't even find out how delayed he'll be. He acts resentful if we even remind him of how early he has to see a patient on a particular day, and he avoids telling us about things that will be happening until the last minute - anything from "let's have a meeting" to "we're having a candidate for the job opening in today" to "oh yeah, I hired so-and-so."

I have a sister-in-law who is such a procrastinator in getting ready that she has at times missed the infrequently-running train to the suburbs, resulting in her having to take a train an hour or two later. Not only does this throw off dinner, but someone has to get up during the family gathering, get their coat on, and drive a couple miles to the train station to pick her up and bring her back to the house. (She, however, is improving a lot in this respect through serious effort on her part, and that of her husband pushing her.)

There's another sister-in-law who between she and her daughter are such huge dawdlers that they're never on time. We avoid whenever possible being the ones who pick them up to bring them somewhere, because they wouldn't be on time and then we wouldn't either.

I posted about this in the thread in the Pit - I am terribly scatterbrained, forgetful, disorganized, and frankly think I could well have ADD at times. I have poor short-term memory and can't even pick up a few things at the store successfully without a list. At times I can't even vaguely remember that someone asked me to do something/be somewhere, so I try to write down as much as I can. I even get distracted while playing video games and want to pay attention to something else. However, I suck it up and force myself into habits that improve things for me and people who interact with me. It took months to finally implement consistently my "keys go here" habit. My PDA is my auxiliary brain, and if I'm wearing clothes, I'm wearing a watch - and checking it pretty frequently. I don't do the "one last post/check E-mail/answer that call" when I should be getting my stuff together and leaving; yes, it's hard, that's the way it is. I force myself to get my stuff together well before I have to be out the door, and just leave the coat-on part for when I'm about to go. I leave for somewhere around twice as long ahead as I know it takes - over 20 minutes ahead to pick up my husband 10 minutes away, 45 minutes ahead for a vet appointment that's 25 minutes away. Then I bring something to look at/do in the meantime (knitting, book, PDA, iPod, etc.) because dammit, it is not a fucking stressful imposition to get somewhere on time, it is life, and it is respectful of other people.

[nashiitashii]

When growing up, it was never okay to be late to a meeting, appointment, or dinner. Often enough, we were there early. Why this insistence? I was on the lowest rung of the hierarchy, and my schedule had to be completed on time in order to make sure that everyone else was on time. This meant that I got to school, work, etc. early every day. If I wasn't ready by the time everyone else was, I left without being fully prepared for the day.

To complicate things, I am nearsighted. I started out being mildly nearsighted in the third grade, and I rapidly got worse over the next few years. Part of how I adapted to make sure that my scheduling didn't upset anyone else's was to employ two methods: 1) make sure that I put my things out beforehand in the same place every time in an organized manner (this really isn't that difficult) and 2) if I put something in a different place for any reason, I memorized its location. If this meant repeating it in my head several (hundred) times until I remembered it easily, I did it. I still do that for things that are not going to easily stick in my head.

I'm on time for work just about every day. Most days I'm 10 to 15 minutes early because traffic wasn't so bad. (I calculate for bad traffic because it's super common for someone to have gotten into an accident along my route to work.) I know how long it takes to get to work on a traffic free day (20 minutes) and how long it takes on a bad traffic day (40 minutes). I set my alarm for a certain time, and if I don't get up at that time, I don't have as much time to get everything done. I prioritize what is absolutely mandatory, and I have days when I take too long in the shower. Navel gazing happens sometimes, but I don't allow it to make me late. My goal is to be ready to leave by 8 am; if by 7:45 I am ready except for eating, I grab food on the way to work and worry about ingesting it on the way there or when I get there. (BTW, I have to be at work by 8:30 am.) If I do not do one or two things by the time I leave (eat breakfast, make lunch, wash hair), I have coping mechanisms. I keep spare lunch in my desk at work in addition to snacks, I will braid my hair back to hide the greasy hair, and I know that I can always pick something up on my lunch hour if I forget lunch. (There's also the lunch truck at 10:15-30 in case I forget breakfast.) I'm not nearly as busy as I used to be, and I am completely in control of my schedule these days, especially in comparison to when I was in school.

While in college, I took the bus. The last year I was in school, I didn't live a walkable distance to campus, so I had to make sure that I was able to catch the bus. Yes, I'd be 20 minutes early, but I had time filler options to make this perpetual earliness tolerable. (Computer labs, a book, homework, and music were all viable options.) In my last semester of college, I worked 40 hours per week between my internship and my paying job, and I took two regular classes on top of it. I had little control over whether the bus would be late or early, so I got to the stop 5 minutes early every day. Yes, this would mean that I'd be waiting, but I always had a small textbook or something I could be reading while I waited. I did a lot of waiting, but I prioritized those chunks of time into time spent doing something productive. The only way that I didn't go a little crazy while doing all that I did is because I kept myself on a highly organized schedule. This included cleaning, laundry, homework, and social time. If I didn't do things on a regular routine all the time, I wouldn't have made it. I also padded my time allowances for things I couldn't control, like the dog getting sick or me having to change my clothes for whatever reason.

I developed a LOT of organizational coping methods to make sure that I was on time or early because I was taught all throughout my childhood that being early was more important because of the possibility of inconveniencing others. I can't really relate to the idea that you can't eventually learn to control how late you are, but I do know that it's an effort to make sure you're consistent with time-keeping. (My watch is my best friend, and if I can't find it within a reasonable amount of time, I give up and move on. It will show up somewhere when I have more time to look for it.)

For me, being consistent is the key to being on time and organized the majority of the time. This has also been true of my friends who were severely ADD/ADHD; if they got distracted from their schedule or tasks, they would lose control over their organization and timekeeping skills. It's entirely possible to work up to this, and it takes a lot of time, patience, and for most people, experimenting until you get it right.

Why the focus on being on time? It's all about respect for both myself and the other person. Being consistently late or unreliable does not project a positive image, and not caring enough to uphold a set of behaviors that are interpreted by others as positive and respectful (and acknowledging of your actions having an effect on others) of the people around you, people are going to make assumptions that may not be fair in a broader context, but will be reflected on the reliability of your timekeeping.

[olivesmarch4th]

Interesting.

Everyone in my family is chronically late, which might explain why I hate being late SO MUCH. I'd personally rather crawl in a hole and die than show up late somewhere. Most of the time, especially with job interviews and other crucial and potentially life-changing events, I'm early. During day to day things like school and work, I stick with a routine and usually fare pretty well. Some times stuff happens and I show up 5 minutes late. It doesn't happen very often.

When I am egregiously, egregiously late, it is always because I'm terrible with directions. Put me in a car in my own damn neighborhood and I just can't find my way around. My most recent late horror story was my consultation for getting my wisdom teeth extracted. I busted out the Mapquest, printed out directions, wrote down the phone number, and asked my husband for directions. I left 20 minutes early in case of traffic. It took me-- get this -- one hour and thirty minutes to find the place. Most of that hour and a half was spent casing the street it was supposed to be on. I called the office repeatedly but nobody picked up. I called my husband to verify directions and he had a sudden memory lapse. Finally he got to a computer and verified the phone number I had written down. It was of course, incorrect. I immediately called the office in a panic and learned that I was parked about thirty feet from their office.

I was AN HOUR LATE. She said, "Don't feel bad. I got a call yesterday from someone else across the street. Nobody can find this place." Fortunately for me they still fit me in for consultation.

I was so shaken up by that experience that the next time I had an appointment for both me and my husband, I dragged him into the car a day before and we "practiced" driving there. It took some extra time, but I guarantee you on that day in which we were rushing from work to the office it gave us a lot more confidence about where we were going, and we arrived early.

And that's I think one of the things that separates punctual people from non-punctual people: we learn from our mistakes. I've been late before--as I said, mostly from getting lost--but I always remember why I was late and double-check that factor so it doesn't happen again. Once I was forty five minutes late for some thing because of a traffic jam and incorrect directions. When I called the place I was supposed to be, they had no idea where I was, how to give directions to their establishment, and didn't even know I was supposed to be showing up that day or why! It was partially due to incompetence on my boss' part--not only did they give me completely incorrect directions, they also told me it would take an hour to get there when in truth (considering traffic) it was closer to a two hour drive -- so what did I do? Anytime they tried to send me anywhere I didn't trust their directions. I confirmed their directions with other people before I went.

So from my perspective that's what punctuality is all about -- learning from your mistakes, and controlling as many variables as you can possibly manage to minimize the odds of screwing up. If you're running late, always, always call and give an estimated time of arrival. Always.

Now keep in mind, I have an atrociously late family. Even my best friend is chronically late. My grandmother is so bad she often will just call two hours after she's supposed to show up and say she can't make it (and anyone who makes a snarky comment about how selfish my Grandma is is going to HEAR FROM ME about it.) Am I going to disown my freakin' Grandma or my best friend? No. I get furious when they don't show up, but the instant they do all that self-righteous masturbation goes right out the window and the anger vanishes instantly. Why? Because the reason I was pissed in the first place is not that they "don't respect my time" but that I was really excited to see them and I'm sad our time together is being cut short.

Generally, and this may be partially due to how I was raised, time is of the ESSENCE when it comes to professional engagements, but when it's about family and friends we mutually understand "shit happens." As long as you call it really doesn't matter in our family. That's part of what community is about--embracing others despite their flaws, not judging their moral worth on something so arbitrary as punctuality. I've learned to accept that some people are just flakes. Most likely all these people who are being crucified in this thread for daring to ever be late are just flakes. Don't take it personally. Some people are just flakes.

And I just wanted to add, because I haven't seen it mentioned yet, as far as I understand this idea of Sacred Punctuality is completely cultural. There are some cultures where it's perfectly acceptable to show up for a business engagement 45 minutes late and hang out and shoot the shit for hours before getting down to business. This might be starting to change with the Westernization of many countries' business practices, but what I'm trying to point out is punctuality is not by a long shot a universal moral value.

That's all.

ETA: So nobody thinks I'm insulting them, my actual definition of "flake" is "Someone who is easily distracted and often unintentionally loses track of time/conversations/etc."

[dart]

I am habitually late -- I can't tell you why but I can tell you that it isn't because I don't respect the people I'm meeting. I am constantly worried and trying really hard to get places on time, it just doesn't work out very often. The person who mentioned having a clock in every room of the house made my blood pressure triple with that one statement. My mother works in cultural competency, that is helping people in business and other disciplines to understand how to work across cultures, and I can say that having to be somewhere at a precise minute is a concept that is foreign to a large portion of the world. We evolved to do things at instances that spanned more than 60 seconds. The difference between darkness and morning is not marked every day at 6:32 am. Our biology does not care about such a precise unit of time. If you have a talent for being somewhere at a preordained moment, that's great, and I can see why getting things together within a five minute window is crucial for business as it exists. But there is no reason to look down upon people who are habitually late, or to think that they disrespect you. I, for one, can be on time for a one-time event, but if I have to be there on a regular basis, it's either I mostly succeed, or I have a huge level of anxiety all the time. Many times when I'm late for work, I woke up several times in the early morning because I was nervous that I'd missed the alarm to wake up and go to work. Then I am so tired that I sleep through the real one.

[Stratocaster]

I am habitually late -- I can't tell you why but I can tell you that it isn't because I don't respect the people I'm meeting.That's where the disconnect occurs in this thread. Those "on the other side of the aisle" would counter that you may well tell yourself that you respect these people. But in practice you don't do the things you need to do to demonstrate respect, which is more important.

The punctuality contingent would tell you that if you can find a way to make it to a "one time event" on time then you've conceded that you can decide to be punctual and figure out a way to make that happen. After that it just becomes a question of whether you'll apply that discipline in any given instance or conversely decide it's not worth the effort.

That's what I happen to believe. I am a very punctual person, and I pay a price for that. I always allow too much time to get places, too much time to get ready, and the more important or urgent the event is, the likelier I'll find myself circling the block or sitting in an airport way ahead of time. So in my mind, when someone makes me wait they have done a similar cost-benefit analysis in their head that told them I am not important enough to pay the price to be punctual. Someone else in the thread already made the point, that if you needed to show up on time somewhere to get a million dollars, you'd find a way, because that would be important enough for you. When you don't, it was because you effectively decided it was not important enough for that effort.

[eenerms]

I've enjoyed this thread. It's too bad I was late in read it. :D

[jimmmy]

wrong thread sorry

[Shagnasty]

If you have a talent for being somewhere at a preordained moment, that's great, and I can see why getting things together within a five minute window is crucial for business as it exists. But there is no reason to look down upon people who are habitually late, or to think that they disrespect you. I, for one, can be on time for a one-time event, but if I have to be there on a regular basis, it's either I mostly succeed, or I have a huge level of anxiety all the time.

Like I said before, if people are truly oblivious to the meaning of time, you would expect them to get places early as well as late in nearly equal measure. That doesn't happen however and the problem lies in getting anything done within a set amount of time. Another word for being constantly behind other people is retarded.

[Frylock]

That's where the disconnect occurs in this thread. Those "on the other side of the aisle" would counter that you may well tell yourself that you respect these people. But in practice you don't do the things you need to do to demonstrate respect, which is more important.

The disconnect plays the other way for at least some of us. I myself don't feel disrespected by people when they are late, and I can't understand why anyone would. The connection between respect and being on time just isn't there for me and others like it seems to be for some people.

-FrL-

[Silence of the clams]

Punctuality is absolutely a choice. I used to be late for work every day because it didn't matter, and I set the alarm clock for 7:20. Once I was cautioned for tardiness, I set the alarm clock for 7:00 and have not been tardy since.


I second. When I went to high school, I lived a 3 minute bikeride away, and was always late for class, until I got a conduct mark. After that I was always on time.

I have friends who are chronically late, so I usually tell them to show up a bit earlier than intended.

[Shagnasty]

Modern physics tells us that space-time is all part of the same thing and encompasses a standard set of dimensions. Imagine if you told your friend that you would meet at a certain place at a certain time every week at 5:00 pm. One time you arrive at 5:10 pm, another time at 5:20 and another at 5:15. You screwed it up every time and it is of very strong note that you were never there early contrary to the idea that you have no awareness of time.

Now imagine that you showed up at 5:00 pm each time but one time you showed up three buildings away once and on the roof of another building another. You seem to have no awareness of the dimensions of the universe. Your friends never have any idea where to find you in this multidimensional universe. You are a lost sheep causing grief in frustrated shepherds.

You can't seem to navigate our universe in all its dimensions. That is nothing to be proud of or at least make excuses for. That is a fundamental flaw like not being able to operate your limbs properly. In those cases, you should acknowledge the egregious deficit and ask others with strengths in that ability for help in compensating for it.

It isn't necessarily your fault per se but it is a cross to bear and a fundamental handicap that must be acknowledged. No one can help you if you don't ask for help.

[Stratocaster]

The disconnect plays the other way for at least some of us. I myself don't feel disrespected by people when they are late, and I can't understand why anyone would. The connection between respect and being on time just isn't there for me and others like it seems to be for some people. Yep, I've heard that in this and other threads. Frankly, it's so alien a perspective for me, I can't get my head around it. For me, chronic lateness is the equivalent of someone promising something, then deliberately not delivering. Over and over again. And in the process inconveniencing me. You may classify this any way you want, but for me it's not respectful, and it's hard for me to fathom how someone--even if he disagrees--can't understand that perspective.

You probably feel the same way about me. Oh, well....

[Dinsdale]

But there is no reason to look down upon people who are habitually late, or to think that they disrespect you.

I'm not sure I "look down on" latesters, but I do know that I choose not to associate with them if I have any choice. And I have no problem with them feeling the same about me.

The late folks may not "disrespect" me, but I do feel as though they are wasting my time. I generally consider time spent waiting for people to be a waste of my time. Sure i can bring reading material or find other ways to spend my time, but given the choice I would nearly always be able to find something else to do someplace other than waiting for someone. It essentially keeps me in "suspended animation", preventing me from being elsewhere and doing other things.

I have a very low tolerance for folks who waste my time, and try to avoid them whenever possible. If anyone is going to waste my time, it is going to be me! ;)

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

That's where the disconnect occurs in this thread. Those "on the other side of the aisle" would counter that you may well tell yourself that you respect these people. But in practice you don't do the things you need to do to demonstrate respect, which is more important.

And this assumes that people are able to do so. Which means that it ignores that the inability to do so is scientifically linked to a disordered function of the brain. Which equates to ignorance.
The punctuality contingent would tell you that if you can find a way to make it to a "one time event" on time then you've conceded that you can decide to be punctual and figure out a way to make that happen.
And that would be because the punctuality contingent is ignorant of the fact that, particularly with ADD, the deficits do not present identically or consistently. Nobody knows exactly why yet though it likely has to do with fluctuating levels of serotonin, I'm thinking.

At any rate, getting on one's high horse about this and acting morally superior about one's punctuality and judgmental of others' lack thereof merely writes you down as lacking in knowledge of current neuroscience. Not the greatest of sins, but not really a laudable position to hold, particularly after you have been put to rights.

[Liberal]

Modern physics tells us that space-time is all part of the same thing and encompasses a standard set of dimensions. Imagine if you told your friend that you would meet at a certain place at a certain time every week at 5:00 pm. One time you arrive at 5:10 pm, another time at 5:20 and another at 5:15. You screwed it up every time and it is of very strong note that you were never there early contrary to the idea that you have no awareness of time.

Now imagine that you showed up at 5:00 pm each time but one time you showed up three buildings away once and on the roof of another building another. You seem to have no awareness of the dimensions of the universe. Your friends never have any idea where to find you in this multidimensional universe. You are a lost sheep causing grief in frustrated shepherds.

You can't seem to navigate our universe in all its dimensions. That is nothing to be proud of or at least make excuses for. That is a fundamental flaw like not being able to operate your limbs properly. In those cases, you should acknowledge the egregious deficit and ask others with strengths in that ability for help in compensating for it.

It isn't necessarily your fault per se but it is a cross to bear and a fundamental handicap that must be acknowledged. No one can help you if you don't ask for help.I read to read a lot of long posts in a long thread to find one that made perfect sense. Thanks for writing it, Shagnasty.

[blondebear]

This guy I used to work with always showed up exactly 7 minutes late. The reason: per the union contract, you couldn't be written up for tardiness unless you were more than 7 minutes late. So, for him, non-punctuality certainly was a choice.

[Kalhoun]

I have a very low tolerance for folks who waste my time, and try to avoid them whenever possible. If anyone is going to waste my time, it is going to be me! ;)
I agree. Punctuality is a social contract. I know I CAN pursue other activities while I'm waiting, but the thing is, we've agreed that we were going to spend THIS chunk of time doing THIS activity and I've planned my schedule around that. If I wanted to be reading or balancing my checkbook during THIS chunk of time, I would have told you that and we would have agreed on a DIFFERENT chunk of time to do THIS activity. Likewise, if this time was going to be inconvenient for you, YOU have the right to say you can't make an engagement at the specified time. These things are negotiated up front.

[JKellyMap]

Great thread.
I'll just add that I have discovered a common element to nearly all the occasions that I have been very late for something -- COMPUTERS. We have been so conditioned to think of the damned computer as a "timesaving device", but the reality (at least for me) is that, at least several times a week, I find that I have been far too optimistic about how long a computer-assisted task was going to take. "Honey, I'll be home in ten minutes, I just have to do this one quick little thing on the computer..." but then it doesn't quite work, but you're sure it should be easy to fix, so you try this, or that...or the thing is slow, or crashes, so you reboot... or.... or... , and suddenly, forty minutes have gone by and the missus is furious.

[Stratocaster]

And this assumes that people are able to do so. Which means that it ignores that the inability to do so is scientifically linked to a disordered function of the brain. Which equates to ignorance. No, ignorance would be to assume that anyone who is chronically late has such a disorder. In case you're taking notes.And that would be because the punctuality contingent is ignorant of the fact that, particularly with ADD, the deficits do not present identically or consistently. Nobody knows exactly why yet though it likely has to do with fluctuating levels of serotonin, I'm thinking. And here would be another example of ignorance, since you ignored the fact that the person I was responding allowed that "one time events" he could make on time. Not only some of the times due to the fluctuating levels of serotonin you detected in dart's noggin over the Internet with your divining rod. His point was that for one time things he could, in fact, seem to regularly muster the effort or energy or focus or serotonin surge required to get there on time. If that wasn't his point, I have no idea what distinction he was drawing.At any rate, getting on one's high horse about this and acting morally superior about one's punctuality and judgmental of others' lack thereof merely writes you down as lacking in knowledge of current neuroscience. Not the greatest of sins, but not really a laudable position to hold, particularly after you have been put to rights.Oh, is that what I did? After what post exactly?

[Beware of Doug]

Something I don't think anyone has pointed out:

While punctuality may or may not be a choice, being smug, snarky, or self-righteous about it definitely is. And I notice that a large plurality of people who make an issue of punctuality do so with varying degrees of smugness, snarkiness, and/or self-righteousness.

A minority appeal to practicality ("we've got a lot to do tomorrow", "we're all depending on each other", etc.). But the majority are neither smug nor practical about being on time. It's what you do because it's what you do.

[Contrapuntal]

While punctuality may or may not be a choice, being smug, snarky, or self-righteous about it definitely is. And I notice that a large plurality of people who make an issue of punctuality do so with varying degrees of smugness, snarkiness, and/or self-righteousness.I'll ask you to point to a few examples of said smugness.

minority appeal to practicality ("we've got a lot to do tomorrow", "we're all depending on each other", etc.). But the majority are neither smug nor practical about being on time. It's what you do because it's what you do.Yes. And what you are doing by being habitually late is stating in very clear terms that you consider your time to be more important than mine.

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

Oh, is that what I did? After what post exactly?

I tend to forget to note that I'll respond to a trend I've observed which will be sparked by a particular post. I wasn't necessarily addressing you specifically but rather the collective set of people who have descended upon this thread to issue, as
Beware of Doug noted, opinions containing varying degrees of smugness, snark, and/or self-righteousness.

Fine if people being late bothers you (the general 'you'). Not at all fine to make this an issue of moral superiority.

[Contrapuntal]

Fine if people being late bothers you (the general 'you'). Not at all fine to make this an issue of moral superiority.Where has anyone injected morality into the discussion? Who has claimed moral superiority?

[Stratocaster]

I tend to forget to note that I'll respond to a trend I've observed which will be sparked by a particular post. I wasn't necessarily addressing you specifically but rather the collective set of people who have descended upon this thread to issue, as
Beware of Doug noted, opinions containing varying degrees of smugness, snark, and/or self-righteousness.

Fine if people being late bothers you (the general 'you'). Not at all fine to make this an issue of moral superiority.And you also tended to forget the other points in my post, which I mention now only because you tossed out the "ignorance" bomb so blithely. Oh, right, I was point person for the "collective you" at that point.

[Frylock]

Where has anyone injected morality into the discussion? Who has claimed moral superiority?

Isn't respect a moral concept?

-FrL-

[Stratocaster]

Of course morality is in play, to the extent someone believes another is doing (or not doing) something he shouldn't (or should). Certainly that implies some form of moral superiority, as any "I behave properly, and you don't" position would. Since that's the theme of this thread, it seems a bit, well, self-righteous to point out an air of moral superiority in a thread that essentially invited it. Or should only people respond who have no real opinion on the matter?

[Stratocaster]

By the way, Frylock, I was directing that to the "collective you." ;)

[Contrapuntal]

Isn't respect a moral concept?

-FrL-Perhaps. But it is a bit of a stretch to state that someone has claimed moral superiority by simply pointing out that a particular habit is disrespectful. By that logic, anytime someone expresses displeasure at the behavior of another he is proclaiming moral superiority.

[Vinyl Turnip]

And this assumes that people are able to do so. Which means that it ignores that the inability to do so is scientifically linked to a disordered function of the brain.

Ah, once again the "brain damage" canard. Unfortunately, the region of my brain that would need to be disordered to find this argument credible is functioning normally.

You are cordially invited to prove me wrong by citing these neuroscientific discoveries, though, and in particular the evidence suggesting the extremely high incidence of this brain disorder in the general population.

[Frylock]

Perhaps. But it is a bit of a stretch to state that someone has claimed moral superiority by simply pointing out that a particular habit is disrespectful. By that logic, anytime someone expresses displeasure at the behavior of another he is proclaiming moral superiority.

The gist of what several have said is 'When you are late, you are being disrespectful. And the disrespect involved in being late is part of why I generally succeed in being on time.'

That's a claim of moral superiority, if respect is a moral concept.

-Kris

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

Ah, once again the "brain damage" canard. Unfortunately, the region of my brain that would need to be disordered to find this argument credible is functioning normally.

You are cordially invited to prove me wrong by citing these neuroscientific discoveries, though, and in particular the evidence suggesting the extremely high incidence of this brain disorder in the general population.

I already did. (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=8219362&postcount=75)

[Vinyl Turnip]

I already did. (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=8219362&postcount=75)

Thank you. But as Dinsdale already stated, your cites suggest that habitual tardiness is one of several possible symptoms of ADD, but not that lateness itself necessitates having the disorder.

Crohn's disease can cause flatulence, but every soul who breaks wind after eating broccoli isn't afflicted with Crohn's.

[Frylock]

Thank you. But as Dinsdale already stated, your cites suggest that habitual tardiness is one of several possible symptoms of ADD, but not that lateness itself necessitates having the disorder.

Crohn's disease can cause flatulence, but every soul who breaks wind after eating broccoli isn't afflicted with Crohn's.

I believe QG's point is that one ought not to condemn someone who one finds is always late, because for all one knows that person really actually can't make himself be on time consistently.

-FrL-

[Stratocaster]

Thank you. But as Dinsdale already stated, your cites suggest that habitual tardiness is one of several possible symptoms of ADD, but not that lateness itself necessitates having the disorder.

Crohn's disease can cause flatulence, but every soul who breaks wind after eating broccoli isn't afflicted with Crohn's.Quite right. I readily allow that there are people with mental defects that make it virtually impossible for them to be routinely punctual. Just as I allow for the fact that there are people with a mental defect that renders them unable to leave the house without debilitating anxiety. Who would argue that there are a minority of people with all kinds of mental issues that make "normal" behavior difficult?

But the fact that some minority of latesters may have an excuse does not lead to the conclusion that it's always wrong to call people on their lateness, much as Quiddity would like that to be the case.

[Stratocaster]

I believe QG's point is that one ought not to condemn someone who one finds is always late, because for all one knows that person really actually can't make himself be on time consistently.That's not what I'm hearing him say. Any whiff of moral superiority in any instance ought to be sanctioned for the ignorant slander it clearly is. Or something like that.

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

That's not what I'm hearing him say. Any whiff of moral superiority in any instance ought to be sanctioned for the ignorant slander it clearly is. Or something like that.

Frylock's got it right. And I'm a she. And, again, people with ADD are 4% or more of the adult population; it's not like ALS or something, which is indeed rare. Too, ADD is not the only condition which damages the frontal lobe/executive function so the real proportion of people you know who might have this damage could be fairly high.

[Contrapuntal]

The gist of what several have said is 'When you are late, you are being disrespectful. And the disrespect involved in being late is part of why I generally succeed in being on time.'

That's a claim of moral superiority, if respect is a moral concept.

-KrisOK,for the sake of the argument, respect is a moral concept. It still does not follow that calling a person disrespectful is a claim of moral superiority. If a friend advises you not to cheat on your taxes, is he asserting moral superiority over you? If a mother warns her child not to curse, is she asserting moral superiority? If you believe that respect is a moral concept, why do you believe that it is OK to break your word by choosing to do something other than show up on time for an appointment? Is telling the truth not a moral concept?

If someone absolutely is incapable of prioritizing his life in such a way as to be on time, then that person cannot be on time for anything. Al others are choosing to place more importance on their time than to the time of those to whom they promised an appearance. It is really quite that simple. Don't make promises that you can't keep. Grade school morality. If asserting that I have, at the very least, the personal pride and moral integrity of a sixth grader is asserting moral superiority, then so be it. It is not much of an assertion, and is a mark that an adult should be ashamed of falling short of.

[nashiitashii]

Something I don't think anyone has pointed out:

While punctuality may or may not be a choice, being smug, snarky, or self-righteous about it definitely is. And I notice that a large plurality of people who make an issue of punctuality do so with varying degrees of smugness, snarkiness, and/or self-righteousness.

A minority appeal to practicality ("we've got a lot to do tomorrow", "we're all depending on each other", etc.). But the majority are neither smug nor practical about being on time. It's what you do because it's what you do.

I honestly don't understand why, for people who OBVIOUSLY don't have some sort of mental defect causing them to be late (most of the people I've met who are consistently late do not have a disorder that'd cause lateness), it is acceptable to expect me to want to wait later to meet with them when I can do other things with that wasted time. JKellyMap made an excellent point by noting that computers are a horrible distraction for a lot of situations of lateness-causing, and another person earlier in the thread mentioned that a lot of the time they were late was caused by computer use distracting their [possibly limited] sense of time when they could make it on time if the computer wasn't so distracting. I understand this distraction, and when I've got somewhere to go, I try to avoid the things that I know are distracting.

Why is my time less valuable than the person who is habitually late? I'm generally a busy person, and rarely have close friends who are habitually late because I don't have the spare time to waste when meeting habitually late people for social occasions. There are very few people for whom I make exceptions to the "lateness" issue, and one of them has improved drastically now that he's acclimated to a regular schedule.

I honestly do not believe that more than 10% of people who are habitually late have NO control over their own behavior.

[Vinyl Turnip]

I honestly do not believe that more than 10% of people who are habitually late have NO control over their own behavior.

I think you're being extremely generous with that estimate. Even accounting for the percentage that may have ADD, this is a still ultimately a behavioral problem, and one that can be managed. I would not expect a blind person to be able to read a billboard or a quadruple-amputee to breakdance (excepting maybe headspin moves, but even those would require assistance). But a person with poor concentration—whether or not it results from a diagnosed disorder—can use tools (like making notes, lists, setting alarms, leaving earlier, etc.) to help improve their punctuality, if they really want to. But that last clause is the sticking point: it has to be important enough to them to make that extra effort. Clearly for some, it is not worth it for many of their social engagements.

And that's actually fine, if that's the choice they make. But I believe it is fundamentally a choice, and throwing up one's hands and saying "I have ADD, therefore I am incapable of being on time" is not going to get a lot of traction with me.

[Stratocaster]

Frylock's got it right. And I'm a she. And, again, people with ADD are 4% or more of the adult population; it's not like ALS or something, which is indeed rare. Too, ADD is not the only condition which damages the frontal lobe/executive function so the real proportion of people you know who might have this damage could be fairly high.4% of the population, if that's accurate, does not mean that 4% of the population has issues with being punctual. Some ADD folks have difficulty with being on time. It is a possible (not inevitable) symptom. That's not the first time this is being pointed out to you. At what point do we assume you are debating dishonestly? Are we there yet?

[Frylock]

It seems like a perfectly reasonable argument to me.

If someone is consistently late, it may be the case, for all you know, that that person is literally incapable of being reliably on time. Therefore, while its fine to refrain from relying on such people, it is not okay, without further evidence, to think them in any way morally deficient or of deficient character in some other sense.

This argument does not rely on a notion that most or even many late people have problems with their brain. It only relies on the fact that at least some of them, and that a proportion which, while small, is large enough to make it likely you know at least one such person.

Given that fact, the argument appears to me to be a sound one.

Is it a misfire? In other words, does its conclusion fail to have significance because no one here is judging others' characters based on their being late? That seems implausible to me, as the term "respect" is being thrown around quite a bit. To say that someone is consistently disrespectful is to impugn their character.

-FrL-

[Blaster Master]

Blaster, I hope you don't think I'm picking on you, but this is really interesting to me, especially since this is a problem my boss has and one that I've had myself to varying degrees at different times in my life. So again, I hope you don't take any of this as criticism.
Absolutely not. I appreciate a positive intellectual discussion even if it is about one of my "quirks".
But that's my point - you CAN do it if you really want to. What you're saying is that it's too inconvenient for you. Granted, it sounds like it takes much more effort for you, but you can do it. And really, being on time isn't easy for anyone. Perhaps not as difficult as it is for you, but it is difficult. I think people who are punctual have simply developed the behavior patterns that allow them to accomplish it.

I think this is a little bit misleading. For instance, I can guarantee I get to work on time every morning if I wake up 45 minutes beforehand, don't eat, don't shower, don't brush my hair, etc. If I just roll out of bed, put on my shoes, get in the car and drive, I'll be there on time every morning. The difference comes in when I start adding extra things between when the plan is made (or the preparation for the event begins) and the actual onset. When we add taking a shower, getting dressed, having breakfast, etc. it makes my ability to estimate the time it requires go straight out the window; hence my response that I could get there on time if I forego the shower, etc.
This has been addressed by someone else, so at the risk of being repetitive, I actually don't think it's extreme to be very early. I know many people who make a habit of being extremely early to everything. In addition to my part-time office job I mentioned earlier, I work as a free-lance musician, and I knew a guy who would arrive at an out-of-town gig as much as 3 hours early. He would rather spend the day there than suffer the stress of worrying about being on time. As for me, I started my career being late to a lot of gigs. I soon figured out that I wasn't going to have a career for long, because that simply is not allowed in this business. It was imperative for me to learn to be on time. I did it because I had to; the motivation to be on time was finally stronger than the motivation to continue whatever leisure activity I was doing before leaving for work. So what I do is simply plan on being 45 minutes early. I usually eat dinner when I get to my destination. If there's really really horrible traffic, I might have to skip dinner to get there on time, so I will. That's pretty extreme, but sometimes it's necessary. But since I left that time cushion, the worst that can happen is that I'll be right on time. Most of the time, when traffic is normal, I'm ridiculously early.
I'm unsure if this is the result of a difference in philosophy or a difference in our actual schedules... I just generally can't allow that amount of leeway for earliness. While I agree that it is generally preferable to be early, that is not always reasonable. I want to show respect for the time of other people, especially since I'm taking my own time to meet with them, but at the same time I think it's a bit extreme to show such complete disregard for my own. I you're right, in that I very much COULD show up early for just about everything, but in my mind, that seems just as bad, except toward myself. I could set all my clocks ahead by some indeterminable amount of time (and in fact, at times I HAVE done that). If I could find a solution where I was just 5-10 minutes early for most things, that, to me, would be ideal; if the only solution is showing up 45 minutes early because I'm now grossly overestimating instead of grossly underestimating, it seems to just twist the problem without resolving it; naming, poorly judging how long things will take ahead of time AND remembering all things that will be involved.
Well I have to agree with Doreen on this. What you're really doing is making a choice that you value your own time more than you value being punctual. It wasn't that you couldn't get there on time, it's that you didn't want to risk being early. But actually, in my opinion, that's exactly what punctual people do. They don't have magical powers that allow them to arrive everywhere right on the dot, they just risk being early, all the time. And sometimes they are early, and they just figure it's better to be early than late.
I want to be careful with this one. I don't dispute that choice is involved, per se; I do dispute that the choice I'm making is objectively and consciously to be late and/or to disrespect the other person. In this particular case, as I realize more and more the poor example that it is, the choice, as I saw it, was "risk failing or not". Not only was tardiness wasn't a concern the first day, not because I dismissed it, but because it didn't even enter my mind as one. On the second and third, I had thought it was addressed, but it was clearly addressed poorly on my part.
Again, my boss does the same thing as you. He rationalizes in his mind that it's more important to stay and do what he's doing and risk missing his deadline, even though that's illogical. The consequences of completely missing the deadline are much more severe than the consequences of missing a couple of typos because he didn't spend that last 15 minutes proofreading.

What do you think? Do you agree?
In this case, that was precisely the issue. I was so concerned with ensuring I was getting the last couple of things on the study sheet covered that the more obviously important point of actually sitting for the exam took a back seat (NPI).
This is fascinating to me. I'm starting to wonder if you are my boss. Because I have no doubt that the next time he has to file a paper in that same court, it will still be one hour in his mind. It doesn't matter how many deadlines he misses or how many angry clients he has to apologize to, he simply will not change his behavior. It would seem that such things require behavior modification, that reasoning is not sufficient.
This is a difficult concept for me to explain, but I can try giving a similar (but opposite) example that actually results in me being early (believe it or not). There is a stretch of road a near my home that I travel on a fairly regular basis and have been for several years. It is about 10-12 miles and, when I first began travelling on it, it took about 25-30 minutes on average. Because of that, that stretch of road forever lives in my head as 30 minutes. Over the next few years, traffic got much worse and it turned into 35-40 minutes and I was chronically late when I drove on it because it still lived as 30 minutes to me. Recently, they've been build a number of overpasses resulting in more than half of the lights disappearing and making it a 20-25 minute road again. Assuming no other variables are involved, I still plan 30 minutes for that road and will actually show up earlier than expected because of that. However, because that is the main component in that trip, if I had something else to do along the way, I would invariably still only plan 30 minutes, and be late yet again.

[Heffalump and Roo]

At any rate, getting on one's high horse about this and acting morally superior about one's punctuality and judgmental of others' lack thereof merely writes you down as lacking in knowledge of current neuroscience. Not the greatest of sins, but not really a laudable position to hold, particularly after you have been put to rights.

So let me try this from a different angle.

In your post addressing the same topic in the Pit, you gave the argument that: "Time sense is an 'executive function'. It's governed by a specific area in the brain. A lot of people have deficits in that area of the brain. It's a fairly easy spot to fall on or get hit on when you're young." (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=8215920&postcount=32)

and you noted in that same post that: "Life would be so much easier if people would learn to understand others rather than always finding reasons to condemn them, shun them, or cast them off."

Now, extending your argument and quoting the entire paragraph of the Wikipedia article you used as reference in your post (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontal_lobe), which is:
The Frontal lobes have been found to play a part in impulse control, judgment, language, memory, motor function, problem solving, sexual behavior, socialization and spontaneity. The Frontal lobes assist in planning, coordinating, controlling and executing behavior. People that have damaged frontal lobes may experience problems with these aspects of cognitive function, being at times impulsive; impaired in their ability to plan and execute complex sequences of actions; perhaps persisting with one course of action or pattern of behavior when a change would be appropriate

(bold added)

So using your same reference and extending your argument, it could be argued that rapists and child molesters have frontal lobe damage and therefore do not have the impulse control to control their sexual behavior. So we should try to "understand them" and not find reasons to "condemn them, shun them, or cast them off."

Oddly, I agree with that assessment ~to some extent~. It's possible that *some* people who are displaying inappropriate sexual behavior have some damage to their frontal lobe. The difficulty (and this is the same difficulty with those who are chronically late) is that we can't *know* which people are affected by frontal lobe damage and which are not. Science has not progressed that far. So I personally don't find myself to be morally superior to any human being. But I think that's a pretty unpopular viewpoint around here, given all the threads of moral outrage that I've seen. And as a society, it seems acceptable to "condemn them, shun them, or cast them off." And I have to agree that something should be done so that people who have shown to have a propensity to hurt others are not in a position to continue hurting them. But I could make the same argument for the chronically late, which is the same argument others have made. Many have cut the chronically late people out of their lives to avoid the damage that they can potentially cause.

And in those threads of moral outrage about rapists and child molesters, I haven't seen you (Quiddity Glomfuster) speaking up for the fact that moral indignation is not called for since the people committing these acts may have frontal lobe damage.

While my view may not be popular, it has the advantage of being internally logically consistent.

So, will I be seeing you in those threads of moral outrage about those acts speaking out for those who *might* have frontal lobe damage and therefore did not make the choice to act, or does your argument only hold true for those who are chronically late? If you chose the latter, please explain the discrepancy.

[Heffalump and Roo]

I think this is a little bit misleading. For instance, I can guarantee I get to work on time every morning if I wake up 45 minutes beforehand, don't eat, don't shower, don't brush my hair, etc. If I just roll out of bed, put on my shoes, get in the car and drive, I'll be there on time every morning. The difference comes in when I start adding extra things between when the plan is made (or the preparation for the event begins) and the actual onset. When we add taking a shower, getting dressed, having breakfast, etc. it makes my ability to estimate the time it requires go straight out the window; hence my response that I could get there on time if I forego the shower, etc.

If you don't do anything after you wake up, where does the 45 minutes go?

I'm unsure if this is the result of a difference in philosophy or a difference in our actual schedules... I just generally can't allow that amount of leeway for earliness. While I agree that it is generally preferable to be early, that is not always reasonable. I want to show respect for the time of other people, especially since I'm taking my own time to meet with them, but at the same time I think it's a bit extreme to show such complete disregard for my own. I you're right, in that I very much COULD show up early for just about everything, but in my mind, that seems just as bad, except toward myself. I could set all my clocks ahead by some indeterminable amount of time (and in fact, at times I HAVE done that). If I could find a solution where I was just 5-10 minutes early for most things, that, to me, would be ideal; if the only solution is showing up 45 minutes early because I'm now grossly overestimating instead of grossly underestimating, it seems to just twist the problem without resolving it; naming, poorly judging how long things will take ahead of time AND remembering all things that will be involved.

You've just answered the question. Punctual people consistently choose to be 45 minutes early in order to be punctual instead of telling themselves it's not fair to themselves for doing it. It is also why punctual people sometimes seem resentful to those people who are chronically late who feel that the same rule doesn't apply to them.

[Blaster Master]

It seems like a perfectly reasonable argument to me.

If someone is consistently late, it may be the case, for all you know, that that person is literally incapable of being reliably on time. Therefore, while its fine to refrain from relying on such people, it is not okay, without further evidence, to think them in any way morally deficient or of deficient character in some other sense.

This argument does not rely on a notion that most or even many late people have problems with their brain. It only relies on the fact that at least some of them, and that a proportion which, while small, is large enough to make it likely you know at least one such person.

Given that fact, the argument appears to me to be a sound one.

Is it a misfire? In other words, does its conclusion fail to have significance because no one here is judging others' characters based on their being late? That seems implausible to me, as the term "respect" is being thrown around quite a bit. To say that someone is consistently disrespectful is to impugn their character.

-FrL-
This is the crux of the point I've been trying to make. For all I know, I most likely have some form of ADD or somethign similar. I've never been diagnosed because I've never had enough of a problem coping that it necessitated an intervention (eg, I was intelligent enough to overcome my inability to pay attention in class).

However, that being said, I won't use that, my memory (or rather lack thereof), or poor foresight skills as an excuse. When I'm late to an appointment, I apologize, and if it results in a fee, I pay without complaint.

I do no claim that it is impossible for me to control, or that there is not conscious choice involved. I do claim that it is difficult, likely moreso than for the average individual, and that the choices involved are often either poor (ie, poorly estimating time), or ignorant (ie, forgetting about other events that must also occur), or oblivious (ie, concerned with other aspects to the point that punctuality is not even a thought at all). I AM making a conscious effort, and Lord knows I've made some slow progress in my several years of being a "grown up".

In our society, it is a flaw and a negative characteristic; but I believe it to be unfair to conclude that the individual is also necessarily rude, disrepectful, or otherwise immoral. I concede that there are individuals who are absolutely disrespectful in their tardiness; I will also concede that, at times, my tardiness has been blatantly disrespectful. However, if I am late for one of the above reasons, that is, not a plainly consicous choice to be late, or poor effort at planning (I am differentiating between a poor effort and a poor skill or result), I only ask that you not take it as a personal insult.

[Blaster Master]

If you don't do anything after you wake up, where does the 45 minutes go?
Apologies, I was unclear. The assumption was that the 45 minutes was for the commute. If I wake up 45 minutes before I had to be to work, roll right out of bed into the driver's seat and drive, I'll be on time. The moment I have to begin estimating and calculating for a shower, and getting dressed, the error grows exponentially. I swear, one day I can take a shower and it is 5 minutes, and the next day it is 20, and I have NO IDEA what I could have possibly done differently, cleaned anything extra (I clean everywhere everyday, thank you :) ), or taken extra time.
You've just answered the question. Punctual people consistently choose to be 45 minutes early in order to be punctual instead of telling themselves it's not fair to themselves for doing it. It is also why punctual people sometimes seem resentful to those people who are chronically late who feel that the same rule doesn't apply to them.
But that's the point, people who are always 45 minutes early are chronically early. It seems to me to be using a hand grendae to kill a house fly. This solution resolves the tardiness problem by introducing a more socially acceptable, but no less destructive problem.

When I consider punctuality, it means, to me, and ability to plan my day and stick to that schedule fairly closely, always favoring early. THIS is the ability I lack. Of course I can completely over-compensate for my inability to estimate time, but that doesn't solve the underlying problem. Further, it introduces more opportunity for distraction, potentially complicating it further. Am I punctual if I show up for work 3 hours early or am I neurotic?

A punctual person says "It takes me 45 minutes to get ready in the morning (whatever that entails), and 30 minutes to get to work, plus 15 minutes for traffic; therefore, if I have to be at work at 9:00, I should wake up at 7:30." For me, I follow the same logic, but it doesn't always take 45, it's variable by an indefinite amount for an indeterminable reason. If I'm running late because of that, then there you go. If I'm running early, the probability of me getting distracted grows enormously, resulting again in my tardiness.

Even worse, as I have attempted to explain in previous posts, if any of those estimates are grossly wrong (even if on well reasoned intellectual level, I know better), that can only further complicate things. I know, as I think about it now, that my workout, after all is said and done, takes about 3 hours; thus, if I can consciously plan for that, I will likely not be late. However, if I think of my Satyrday as relax, workout, see the gf, etc; I am no longer breaking down a single event, and the indeterminant value of my workout becomes 2 1/2 hours at a glance (as that is the actual amount of time spent working out), even though, as I am well aware on a deeper analysis, that that is an underestimate (because the workout also involves changing cloths, going to the gym, etc.). Generally, when I'm making that kind of time estimate, it's likely to be when I'm sitting here watching TV trying to figure out how long I have before I have to go to the gym, not because I am closely analyzing my time, and so my thought process is brief, and, while completely accurate with the actual times I'm selecting, it's deficient as to all the events that must unfold, and thus constantly resulting in an underestimation.

Thus, I'm not oblvious to time (though my relationship with it is tenuous at best), I am simply bad at planning. But even that, I think, is not the reason in it's entirety. I also find I am constantly overestimating what I can accomplish in a day, or any distinct period of time, and thus I am constantly underestimating the time things take, I am constantly late, and I am constantly disappointed. The only times I find I can accomplish everything I intend to do is when I intend to do very, very little (ie, a "lazy" day).

But I don't think even those two are the entire reasons alone. As stated before, I have a distinct inability to 100% focus on the task at hand for any reasonable amount of time (ie, more than a couple minutes). Distraction immediately leads to unplanned use of time, inevitably resulting in lateness.

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

So let me try this from a different angle.
I see that you mean by 'a different angle', taking what I've said and stretching it to a ridiculous extreme. Othewise known as the fallacy of converse accident. (http://www.answers.com/topic/converse-accident)
So using your same reference and extending your argument
To the point where it becomes fallacy. You can do it if it amuses you, but it's neither honest nor logical.
it could be argued that rapists and child molesters have frontal lobe damage and therefore do not have the impulse control to control their sexual behavior. So we should try to "understand them"
There are findings showing that the most violent of criminals do indeed have significant brain damage. Point being if it's broken, someday it might be repairable.
Oddly, I agree with that assessment ~to some extent~. It's possible that *some* people who are displaying inappropriate sexual behavior have some damage to their frontal lobe. The difficulty (and this is the same difficulty with those who are chronically late) is that we can't *know* which people are affected by frontal lobe damage and which are not. Science has not progressed that far.
You'll want to read up on PET scans and SPECT scans. MRIs can also be used. Science has actually progressed pretty impressivlely in this regard in the past 5 years or so.
See this (http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/001998.html)
and this (http://www.mcmanweb.com/article-243.htm) and this (http://jnnp.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/71/6/720) and this (http://www.gladwell.com/1997/1997_02_24_a_damaged.htm) for starters.

So I personally don't find myself to be morally superior to any human being. But I think that's a pretty unpopular viewpoint around here, given all the threads of moral outrage that I've seen
Yep, well it seems that climbing on high horses seems to be a very popular sport these days. Which is very depressing.
And as a society, it seems acceptable to "condemn them, shun them, or cast them off."
Society used to accept condemning, shunning, and casting off people with epilepsy. I'm not all that fond of accepting 'society' as moral authority.
Many have cut the chronically late people out of their lives to avoid the damage that they can potentially cause.
Then they're drama queens. 'Damage they can potentially cause'? Puhleeze. At best it's an inconvenience. People need to get over themselves. Seriously.
And in those threads of moral outrage about rapists and child molesters, I haven't seen you (Quiddity Glomfuster) speaking up for the fact that moral indignation is not called for since the people committing these acts may have frontal lobe damage.
I'm totally against the death penalty and I do think it's much more useful for us all to keep those folks alive and study them to figure out how somebody's dear little boy or girl can grow up to turn into someone who harms others. And learn how to cure or prevent it.

So, will I be seeing you in those threads of moral outrage about those acts speaking out for those who *might* have frontal lobe damage and therefore did not make the choice to act, or does your argument only hold true for those who are chronically late? If you chose the latter, please explain the discrepancy.

1. I've already pointed out your fallacy
2. One of my great desires for my life is to help to facilitate understanding and the elimination of stigma and ostracism of people who are broken through no fault of their own. And so I do get into some of those debates sometimes, but quite frankly, it's an uphill battle and sometimes it's soul-crushing to see how many people are seriously vested in finding ways to disapprove of each other. And not just disapprove but look down on, condemn, reject. In fact, I fled another board because I could no longer stand reading people do just that time and again.

It is my impression that SDMB has a lot of members who can be persuaded by logic, who will listen to information like the information I've presented here, and who are perhaps not as willing to find ill in their fellow-humans.

But I could be wrong, in which case I'll flee this place as well and await the opening of the Dalai Lama centre in Vancouver where maybe (maybe) I'll find some like-mindeds. Because all the hate I see does my heart violence and I need some refuge so that I can continue to function.

[lowbrass]

I think this is a little bit misleading. For instance, I can guarantee I get to work on time every morning if I wake up 45 minutes beforehand, don't eat, don't shower, don't brush my hair, etc. If I just roll out of bed, put on my shoes, get in the car and drive, I'll be there on time every morning. The difference comes in when I start adding extra things between when the plan is made (or the preparation for the event begins) and the actual onset. When we add taking a shower, getting dressed, having breakfast, etc. it makes my ability to estimate the time it requires go straight out the window; hence my response that I could get there on time if I forego the shower, etc.

I'm unsure if this is the result of a difference in philosophy or a difference in our actual schedules... I just generally can't allow that amount of leeway for earliness. While I agree that it is generally preferable to be early, that is not always reasonable.

Hmmm...I suspect you harbor a misconception about what it means to be punctual. I don't think anyone can time their showers down to the second, or account for every little thing that might happen in the morning. Punctual people allow, as a matter of course, extra time to get where they're going on time. They might be 45 minutes early one day, or only 5 minutes early the next day, but they are always early. The time they agreed to be there is a limit, not an average. Punctual people do NOT consider it unreasonable to do what is necessary to be on time. They do not consider being early as a waste of their time. What I'm getting from you is not that you are incapable of being on time, but that you don't want to bother to be on time, because you consider it an unreasonable use of your time and effort. I'm just going by what you wrote, so please correct me if I'm misinterpreting what you said.


I want to show respect for the time of other people, especially since I'm taking my own time to meet with them, but at the same time I think it's a bit extreme to show such complete disregard for my own. I you're right, in that I very much COULD show up early for just about everything, but in my mind, that seems just as bad, except toward myself.


O.K., but do you understand what other people are saying about respect? What you are saying is that you consider your time to be more valuable than the time of the person who's waiting for you, whereas most people try to show respect to others by viewing the other person's time as more valuable. They don't consider that to be "extreme" at all.


I could set all my clocks ahead by some indeterminable amount of time (and in fact, at times I HAVE done that). If I could find a solution where I was just 5-10 minutes early for most things, that, to me, would be ideal; if the only solution is showing up 45 minutes early because I'm now grossly overestimating instead of grossly underestimating, it seems to just twist the problem without resolving it; naming, poorly judging how long things will take ahead of time AND remembering all things that will be involved.


Most people wouldn't consider 45 minutes early as a big deal. Bring a book. In what way is the problem not solved?


I want to be careful with this one. I don't dispute that choice is involved, per se; I do dispute that the choice I'm making is objectively and consciously to be late and/or to disrespect the other person. In this particular case, as I realize more and more the poor example that it is, the choice, as I saw it, was "risk failing or not". Not only was tardiness wasn't a concern the first day, not because I dismissed it, but because it didn't even enter my mind as one. On the second and third, I had thought it was addressed, but it was clearly addressed poorly on my part.


I'm still thinking you're choosing to be late, though. If you hadn't expressed your disdain for being early, I wouldn't think so, but you made it pretty clear that you have some sort of objection to being early. As someone pointed out earlier, if you were merely bad at estimating time, wouldn't you be early 50% of the time and late 50% of the time? That's not the case, is it?


In this case, that was precisely the issue. I was so concerned with ensuring I was getting the last couple of things on the study sheet covered that the more obviously important point of actually sitting for the exam took a back seat (NPI).


Yeah, that's what my boss does. I believe that, on some level, he is choosing to be late. He is a highly intelligent person, and certainly possesses the reasoning skills to determine how long a trip will take. But he is somehow failing to prioritize correctly, even though he is smart enough to figure out what the priorities should be. In his case, I suspect it is a form of OCD that is overriding his rational decision-making ability.

Anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts with us. I hope I didn't come off as condescending - I probably did. It's not like I'm perfect; I've certainly been guilty of doing many of these things myself at one time or another.

[Stratocaster]

I see that you mean by 'a different angle', taking what I've said and stretching it to a ridiculous extreme. Othewise known as the fallacy of converse accident. (http://www.answers.com/topic/converse-accident)

To the point where it becomes fallacy. You can do it if it amuses you, but it's neither honest nor logical.No, this was an example of reductio ad absurdum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum), if anything, which is not a logical fallacy. The comparison he drew was based on the same premise as your position, which means it isn't an argument such as the example in your cite: "If we allow people with glaucoma to use medical marijuana then everyone should be allowed to use marijuana."

You toss notions like "dishonest" and "ignorant" around rather freely, don't you?

[Contrapuntal]

That seems implausible to me, as the term "respect" is being thrown around quite a bit. To say that someone is consistently disrespectful is to impugn their character.What about self-respect? If you make an appointment, do you think so little of your own word that you care not whether you keep it?

[Dinsdale]

I swear, one day I can take a shower and it is 5 minutes, and the next day it is 20, and I have NO IDEA what I could have possibly done differently, cleaned anything extra (I clean everywhere everyday, thank you :) ), or taken extra time.

You've said this kind of thing a few times. Which is absolutely foreign to me. I know some people are more attentive to detail than others - I wonder if this is similar to such inattentiveness taken to an extreme.

If that happened to me I would seriously wonder if I were experiencing some kind of seizures, causing me to "lose" portions of my day. Strikes me as tho it might be an interesting experiment to set up a video camera (if your residence makes it practical) and comparing your different-duration routines.

[Nava]

Here's another that hasn't been brought up, I think: there may be a genuine psychological quirk in play. For a time, I had a friend who was ALWAYS late. ALWAYS.

By exactly 20 minutes.

In a combination between that and cultural differences, my mother used to organize these religious retreats, involving people from half a dozen towns. Often she only knew personally about half of the people attending. She'd give them starting times between "6 o'clock Friday" and "8 o'clock Friday", depending on where they came from.

By the twentieth or so time she was doing this, everybody was getting there between 19:50 and 20:05. For Spain this is the kind of amazing achievement that should make front page news.

I apply that trick when giving deadlines to people, setting them to take into account the delays that I know are going to happen. Easier for me to work that into my calculations than to try to change somebody's clock.

I think Dinsdale is thinking about petit mal seizures... you know, that might need looking into.

[AHoosierMama]

Wow - sorry I missed all this during the weekend away from my computer!

What was running through my mind all weekend after reading the first 30 or so posts was the question "What are they getting out it?" (they being the late ones.) Hate to invoke Dr. Phil :eek: but he tends to try to get people to ask that question of themselves when they have a destructive behavior/habit/relationship they can't break and it seems applicable here.

Different answers for all the different reasons people may be late. Getting fuel for their OCD? Getting relief from the anxiety of wasting one's own time by being early. Getting the rush of the "my life is so hectic" drama. Getting back (in a passive/aggressive way) at the gf who is still doing her hair when you arrive on time. Or maybe not getting much of a benefit for being early, but less of a personal penalty for being late. Costs you less to be late (my friends will forgive me anyway or what kind of judgemental, self-righteous, morally superior people are they anyway?) than the cost of all the planning and effort it would take to be on-time?

[AHoosierMama]

In a combination between that and cultural differences, my mother used to organize these religious retreats, involving people from half a dozen towns. Often she only knew personally about half of the people attending. She'd give them starting times between "6 o'clock Friday" and "8 o'clock Friday", depending on where they came from.

By the twentieth or so time she was doing this, everybody was getting there between 19:50 and 20:05. For Spain this is the kind of amazing achievement that should make front page news.

I apply that trick when giving deadlines to people, setting them to take into account the delays that I know are going to happen. Easier for me to work that into my calculations than to try to change somebody's clock.

I think Dinsdale is thinking about petit mal seizures... you know, that might need looking into.

What a waste of my own time it would be to try to keep a log book or all my friends different time tendencies and create custom invitations for each in order to gather everyone together at the same time. Your mom gets extra points for going above and beyond the duty call of a gracious hostess!

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

No, this was an example of reductio ad absurdum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum), if anything, which is not a logical fallacy. The comparison he drew was based on the same premise as your position, which means it isn't an argument such as the example in your cite: "If we allow people with glaucoma to use medical marijuana then everyone should be allowed to use marijuana."


No because people who are late is the group being discussed and is therefore the specific group.

As for seizures, this is getting ridiculous. It's just that punctual people have trouble comprehending how any brain but their own works so they cannot conceive of losing track of time. Here's what would be grand; if people would accept that humans differ quite spectacularly so just because the earlybirds are constantly conscious of time (and oh-so-righteously so :rolleyes: ) does not mean that people who aren't are having seizures.

Time sense is not natural. It's societally induced. There is one tribe in Indonesia that pays no attention to time. If you take all clocks and windows away from people, they don't default to society's time; they default to circadian rhythms that are built in.

Folks who are late are coming under a pretty nasty browbeating by the earlybirds and it's ridiculous. Enough, already. If you have a friend who's always late, and you keep expecting friend to change, you're the foolish one. Rather than try to change them, change yourself the way Nava's mom did. Recognize. Adapt. Wise, in other words, up.

[Nava]

Quiddity, that trick only works if the "late people" are consistent. It wouldn't have worked with this boyfriend I had who was always late, but between 30 and 240 minutes.

I'm punctual but it's not "inborn". I work at it. When I'm in a new place or doing a new job, I make an effort to determine how long the new routines take so I can work the new timetable. I make an effort to pare down my "to do list": if I don't have time to do something, I don't take it up; if someone gives me an unavoidable duty too many, I make sure everybody who gives me duties is clear on the new schedule. I refuse to drop what I was doing to start on the latest urgency rightaway unless the people from whom I was already working are OK with it.

I also recognize that, same as I can read maps and not everybody can, I can figure time and others can't, and it's Not My Job to teach them something their momma should have. If you're late by a consistant amount, I can take that into account when I tell you when to come; if it's between 30-240 minutes, there's going to be times when you come to pick me for dinner and I've already eaten because you were supposed to be here at 7pm and it's 9 already... would you like some? I made enough for two!

[Liberal]

I must be missing something obvious. I don't understand why this is so difficult. Isn't it just simple addition and subtraction? Add up all the time segments for the activities that are required to effect getting there and subtract those from the time you're supposed to arrive.

And voila! That's the time you should leave to arrive on time! :)

[AHoosierMama]

If you have a friend who's always late, and you keep expecting friend to change, you're the foolish one. Rather than try to change them, change yourself the way Nava's mom did. Recognize. Adapt. Wise, in other words, up.

What if all the bad drivers of the world had this attitude: "I'm bad at driving. Don't expect me to change. Adapt. All you good drivers just stay off the road if you don't like it."

[Dinsdale]

Quiddity - do you understand the request that several people have directly made of you, that you document the prevalence of ADD/ADHD/brain dysfuntion in persons who are habitually late?
If you understand the request, do you understand that you have not responded to it?

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

Quiddity - do you understand the request that several people have directly made of you, that you document the prevalence of ADD/ADHD/brain dysfuntion in persons who are habitually late?
If you understand the request, do you understand that you have not responded to it?

I did, twice. You really ought to read a whole thread before you get snarky with someone.

[Kalhoun]

Time sense is not natural. It's societally induced. There is one tribe in Indonesia that pays no attention to time. If you take all clocks and windows away from people, they don't default to society's time; they default to circadian rhythms that are built in.


For many people, that's true. We buy watches and set timers to aid ourselves in being punctual. We live in THIS society; not in tribal Indonesia.

[jsgoddess]

As for seizures, this is getting ridiculous. It's just that punctual people have trouble comprehending how any brain but their own works so they cannot conceive of losing track of time.

I lose track of time all of the time.

But if I know that I have to be somewhere, I do something to make sure that my "losing track of time" doesn't go on very long.

I'm no more naturally organized or time-aware or punctual than you are. I change what I do because the outcome is important to me.

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

Quiddity, that trick only works if the "late people" are consistent.
No it doesn't. Because, again (I really wish people would read what I've already written), in people with ADD the behaviour is not consistent. People aren't sure why but it may have to do with fluctuating levels of serotonin.
I'm punctual but it's not "inborn". I work at it. When I'm in a new place or doing a new job, I make an effort to determine how long the new routines take so I can work the new timetable.
Good for you. You haven't got a malfunctioning executive function. It is that bit of your brain that enables you to do those things.
if it's between 30-240 minutes, there's going to be times when you come to pick me for dinner and I've already eaten because you were supposed to be here at 7pm and it's 9 already... would you like some? I made enough for two!
Congratulations! That's exactly what people who have to live with people with ADD are told to do. See, you have it figured out.

[bump]

I'm not sure it's really a disorder or anything like that... I think it's possibly a slightly different way that people think, coupled with differences in individual people's reinforcement for it.

I am one of the habitually punctual, usually show up between on-time and 5 minutes early, etc... types. I'm also a slob, to a great degree.

My fiance is also kind of a slob, but she's one of these habitually late types. She has figured out how to be places on time, but it usually involves concentrating on that one thing until she gets there, or else her attention is grabbed by something else, and she'll be late.

I actually ran into this yesterday. On Saturday evening, we were discussing going to eat lunch at a particular place we like. They start serving lunch at 11, but if you get there much after that, you'll have to wait in a fairly significant line.

We talked about it, and said that we'd get up early in order to get there by 11.

So 9 o'clock rolls around yesterday morning, and I was awake. It was like pulling teeth to wake her up.

Once we're up, I took a shower and got dressed. She took her shower, had to put lotion on, make tea, screw around, get dressed, etc... and when all was said and done, we ended up at the restaraunt at about 10:48. There was already a line, but not a huge one.

If I hadn't pestered her constantly to get a move on, we'd have been late, in spite of having awakened two hours early.

If it had been me, the thought process would have been as follows: "Hmm... I want to get there by about 10:50. It takes me about 20 minutes to get there and park. (10:30). It'll take me about 30-40 minutes to get a shower and get dressed. (9:50). I should probably tack on another 5-10 minutes just in case. (9:40).

It's not like my fiance doesn't know exactly how long it'll take her to do the usual things in getting ready, it's more like she doesn't account for the non-essential things she decides to do in between("OMG! We have to take out the trash now!"), or for things like parking.

One important thing about being punctual is making it a priority. If that's what's important, you'll achieve it. If it's not, then you won't be on time. Case in point- my fiance thought it was very important to take out the trash BEFORE we went to eat, despite the fact that it might make us late, and that it didn't smell bad or anything like that. That's the kind of faulty prioritization that makes people late.

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

I must be missing something obvious. I don't understand why this is so difficult. Isn't it just simple addition and subtraction? Add up all the time segments for the activities that are required to effect getting there and subtract those from the time you're supposed to arrive.

And voila! That's the time you should leave to arrive on time! :)

There's a piece of your brain that does this. I bet you can follow a set of instructions when they're given to you, too. You also remember consequences from the past and apply those lessons to your current activities. That's because your executive function is functional.

Be thankful. The people who are missing this function have a very hard time of it; not in the least because of the attitudes of people who cannot and will not understand.

Not for nothing one of the more famous books about ADD is You Mean I'm Not Lazy, Stupid, Or Crazy? (http://www.amazon.com/MEAN-NOT-LAZY-STUPID-CRAZY/dp/0684815311)

That's because ADD causes people to behave in ways that seem lazy, stupid, selfish, etc. People punish ADD kids over and over again for the same thing thinking they are stupid or wilfully disobeying when the truth is that they have trouble remembering and applying lessons from the past. As in, for their whole lives. Some learn to mitigate. People who are habitually late can buy special timers and watches and reminders.

So if you must (BTW, this is all aimed at the general 'you') make 'helpful suggestions' to people who are chronically late, what you could do is point them to
resources (http://addwarehouse.com/shopsite_sc/store/html/index.html)
they can buy to help them.

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

What if all the bad drivers of the world had this attitude: "I'm bad at driving. Don't expect me to change. Adapt. All you good drivers just stay off the road if you don't like it."

:rolleyes: Have you seen anybody say that? No. You've seen people who are late anguish about it and you're all doing a great job of browbeating them. Nobody's excusing themselves; they're saying they can't manage to change even though they want to. Classic ADD. Classic.

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

I lose track of time all of the time.

But if I know that I have to be somewhere, I do something to make sure that my "losing track of time" doesn't go on very long.

I'm no more naturally organized or time-aware or punctual than you are. I change what I do because the outcome is important to me.

That's because your executive function is working fine. One of the really great software programs for folks with ADD features the ability to set multiple reminders for people to stop what they're doing and do something else.

What people also don't get is that ADD is not the inability to pay attention, but a disorder of attention such that people are inattentive to things that don't interest them but hyperfocused on things that do. To the point that they lose track of time. Completely. Consistently. Throughout their lives.

In short, they are not you so that you are able to keep time does not mean they can.

[Kalhoun]

I know a number of people who have ADD and not a one of 'em is chronically tardy. They compensate for their problem with watches, timers, notes, electronic calendars and other techniques to ensure they're not a burden to the people in their lives.

[Dinsdale]

I did, twice. You really ought to read a whole thread before you get snarky with someone.

Okay, so you do not understand. Thanks for clearing that up. (Tho I guess we could debate whether your obduracy reflects a choice or results from a "broken brain"! ;))

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

One important thing about being punctual is making it a priority. If that's what's important, you'll achieve it. If it's not, then you won't be on time. Case in point- my fiance thought it was very important to take out the trash BEFORE we went to eat, despite the fact that it might make us late, and that it didn't smell bad or anything like that. That's the kind of faulty prioritization that makes people late.

And 'faulty prioritization' is an executive function. That doesn't work in some people.

And now I'll be late for work because my 'faulty prioritization' said that I ought to try to disabuse people of the notions they hold that allow them to abuse others.

[Kalhoun]

What people also don't get is that ADD is not the inability to pay attention, but a disorder of attention such that people are inattentive to things that don't interest them but hyperfocused on things that do. To the point that they lose track of time. Completely. Consistently. Throughout their lives.


Therein lies the key. If you're interested in being punctual, you will be, most of the time.

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

Okay, so you do not understand. Thanks for clearing that up. (Tho I guess we could debate whether your obduracy reflects a choice or results from a "broken brain"! ;))


I POSTED A WHOLE BUNCH OF LINKS ALREADY!!!!!!!!!


WTF is up with you?

[pizzabrat]

I must be missing something obvious. I don't understand why this is so difficult. Isn't it just simple addition and subtraction? Add up all the time segments for the activities that are required to effect getting there and subtract those from the time you're supposed to arrive.
But doing all of that takes effort.

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

I have to go but go find the ADHD e-guide online and read chapter 9. It's about kids but the deficits don't go away.

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

BTW, it's interesting to see how hard some people fight to have their ignorance unfought.

[Vinyl Turnip]

Nobody's excusing themselves; they're saying they can't manage to change even though they want to.

Actually I'd call that pretty much the definition of an excuse.

And I'm sorry, but despite your valiant attempts to convince me that the world is teeming with millions upon millions of adults who cannot tell time even with a watch, for whom even the most simple concepts of mathematics are an insurmountable task, who are essentially helpless, childlike individuals floating through life in a timeless void, to be pitied and indulged but never criticized, because to do so is unmatched cruelty—I'm just not buying it. I can tell you're convinced, and that it makes you feel better to believe it, but it simply isn't credible. (And your links certainly prove nothing of the sort.)

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

Therein lies the key. If you're interested in being punctual, you will be, most of the time.

:rolleyes: Not that kind of 'interest'.

Are you planning to read the links? Learn about this?

[dangermom]

BlasterMaster, one aspect of your posts I notice is that you seem to feel that if you arrive early someplace, the time until the actual appointment will then be wasted. You also don't seem to be able to think about things to do while you wait--like the exams, where you didn't think of studying onsite. I would suggest that you think about productive things you can do when you arrive early; people who are happy to arrive a few minutes early usually have something they do with that waiting time, such as organizing a planner, studying, reading, knitting, doing some work, and so on. That way the time is productive, and the anxiety about lateness is gone; you simply transfer some of your work to a different place and are ready for the appointment at the same time.

So, for example, if I have a meeting with a work associate, and I have some materials to look at before I do so, I'll spend some time reading the material and then take it along so that I can review it again when I get there if I arrive early. I have a friend who consistently shows up a few minutes early to my house and then sits in her van, making out grocery lists or reviewing her plans for the next day.

Presumably, as a student, you usually have something to study, so why not study when you arrive early?

Also, your account of time 'disappearing' is really kind of strange. I do think it would be interesting to videotape you getting ready in the morning!

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

Actually I'd call that pretty much the definition of an excuse.

And I'm sorry, but despite your valiant attempts to convince me that the world is teeming with millions upon millions of adults who cannot tell time even with a watch, for whom even the most simple concepts of mathematics are an insurmountable task, who are essentially helpless, childlike individuals floating through life in a timeless void, to be pitied and indulged but never criticized, because to do so is unmatched cruelty—I'm just not buying it. I can tell you're convinced, and that it makes you feel better to believe it, but it simply isn't credible.

:mad: Said nothing of the sort


(And your links certainly prove nothing of the sort.)

What part of 'chronic lateness' listed as a symptom of ADD did you miss? How hard is that to understand?

[Kalhoun]

I'm not buying it as a general symptom of ADD because plenty of ADD sufferers don't find it difficult to substitute outside stimuli for an inner "feel" for time. Not only that, but I don't believe for a second that most chronically tardy people are even suffering from ADD. I think they're suffering from "I'm-more-important-than-you" syndrome.

[AHoosierMama]

:mad: Said nothing of the sort




What part of 'chronic lateness' listed as a symptom of ADD did you miss? How hard is that to understand?

I think the gap in understanding lies in that you can't really prove whether someone is late becasue of ADD or soemthing else.

[jsgoddess]

And I'm sorry, but despite your valiant attempts to convince me that the world is teeming with millions upon millions of adults who cannot tell time even with a watch, for whom even the most simple concepts of mathematics are an insurmountable task, who are essentially helpless, childlike individuals floating through life in a timeless void, to be pitied and indulged but never criticized, because to do so is unmatched cruelty—I'm just not buying it.

As I commented in the Pit thread, it's weird to see people claim essentially to be brain damaged or retarded.

[Contrapuntal]

If someone is capable of holding down a job, she is capable of buying a day planner, writing down her appointments, and setting her watch to remind her of said appointments. If the problem truly is that she loses track of time, this is the solution.

[Frylock]

What about self-respect? If you make an appointment, do you think so little of your own word that you care not whether you keep it?

I don't understand the point of your comment as a response to the comment of mine that you quoted.

You seem to me to simply be providing another example of the fact that moral claims and claims about deficiencies in character are being made here about people who tend to be late. And that's the point of the very comment you quoted.

-FrL-

[Dinsdale]

You have provided cites that (IIRC) 4% of the population may have ADD/ADHD, and that lateness can be a significant symptom of that condition.

You have provided absolutely nothing to show what percentage of people who are chronically late in fact have ADD/ADHD.

We all agree with you that at least some people who are chronically late are that way because of ADD/ADHD. But I, at least, see no showing that ADD/ADHD is the sole - or even most prevalent - reason for tardiness. It may well be (tho I doubt it.) But whether it is, nothing you provided as yet shows it. If you feel it does, please direct me to the specific language, and I will readily apologize for my error.

I am unable to be more clear than that, and I am uncertain why you are unable or unwilling to see this distinction. But I am not particularly interested in stating the same thing any more.

[Smitty]

As I commented in the Pit thread, it's weird to see people claim essentially to be brain damaged or retarded.

This is the comment that finally made me want to jump in on this thread. After college, I spent 6 years working at a state school for the mentally retarded. One of the dorms had people who were severely retarded (IQ of 20-35) who also had pretty severe behavioral problems. This was a locked dorm with constant supervision, so serious were the behavioral issues. Now, if ANY people could be said to "not be able to help themselves" when it comes to their actions, it would be the residents of this dorm.

There were a handful of staff who were brutal when it came to enforcing discipline on this dorm. I'm talking about dealing out serious pain when the residents didn't "behave". These residents, even though they had severe retardation, would look out of the window at shift change to see who was coming on duty. If they saw one of these staff members coming, they would IMMEDIATELY go to their chairs and stay quietly seated for the entire 8 hour shift unless told otherwise. If these residents are able to choose their behavior, then anyone can.

I have a very hard time believing that anyone of normal IQ is fundamentally unable to control being late to every appointment they have, ADD or not. The consequences of doing so are simply not severe enough to warrant a change in behavior. When those consequences are of a dire nature (losing one's job, for instance), the behavior does not occur. If a person with ADD or some other disability is able to show up on time for a job, then he is able to show up on time for other things. I'm not saying it is equally easy for everyone to do so. In fact, the effort may be so great and the repercussions mild enough that it is not worth it to that person. But it IS a choice.

[Contrapuntal]

I don't understand the point of your comment as a response to the comment of mine that you quoted.

You seem to me to simply be providing another example of the fact that moral claims and claims about deficiencies in character are being made here about people who tend to be late. And that's the point of the very comment you quoted.-FrL-If it is a moral claim it is on the level of "I wouldn't do that if I were you," or " Please don't treat me that way." Asking for respect is not asserting moral superiority, at least not in the smug and high-handed manner that you say it is. The fact that respect may or may not be a moral concept (and I would be interested in your support of that assertion,) does not make every conversation about respect a philosophical treatise, and stating that A does not respect B is not an implication of the moral superiority of A. At most, and I say this guardedly, so that we can continue the dialogue, it is an assertion of moral superiority in one tiny instance. And only then if B asserts that he respects A. Your attempt to make it seem like a general comment on the relative moral character of the two people involved is foolish, IMO. If the lowest scumbag drug dealing father raper motherfucker in the hood upbraids the head of the soup kitchen for standing him up, is he claiming to be a better person? Of course not. Similarly, if I complain to you about your tardiness, and state that it shows a lack of respect for me, I am not claiming to be your moral superior. For all I know, it may be your only flaw, while I am riddled with them. Stop trying to make this about the behavior of the people who actually keep their word.

And I will ask you again (for the third time, I think) why do you have so little regard for the promises you make?

[Frylock]

You have provided cites that (IIRC) 4% of the population may have ADD/ADHD, and that lateness can be a significant symptom of that condition.

You have provided absolutely nothing to show what percentage of people who are chronically late in fact have ADD/ADHD.

We all agree with you that at least some people who are chronically late are that way because of ADD/ADHD. But I, at least, see no showing that ADD/ADHD is the sole - or even most prevalent - reason for tardiness.

QG's argument doesn't rely on a premise that the sole or most prevalent reason for lateness is ADD/ADHD (or any other disjunct of brain disorders). The premise is just that:

It is plausible that someone you know who is chronically late may very well be so as a result of a brain disfunction.

If it is possible that this is the case--if it is plausible that there is a decent chance (note a "decent chance" doesn't mean "more than a 50% chance) that any given "late" person may well suffer from some such disfunction--then QG's point is, as far as I can see, made.

-Kris

[Frylock]

Asking for respect is not asserting moral superiority, at least not in the smug and high-handed manner that you say it is.


I've been misunderstood. What I said would be "asserting moral superiority" was to say "It is disrespectful to X and that is at least part of why I generally succeed in not Xing." The superiority part comes in the final phrase, which is not in itself part of "asking for respect."

I have also used the phrase "impugning character." I have intended this to mean something different than "asserting moral superiority." By "impugning character" I mean a comment such as: "To do Y is thereby to do something which shows negative character trait Z." So for example "Being late shows a disrespectful attitude." This is not to claim moral superiority, it is merely to impugn character.

And I will ask you again (for the third time, I think) why do you have so little regard for the promises you make?

I myself am not one of the chronically late people we are discussing. But I can answer in the following way. Your question presumes the debate we are having is already settled. In other words, the question presumes that people who are chronically late have little regard for the promises they make. But that is exactly what is being debated on this thread--whether in fact chronic lateness is, in itself, a sign that someone does not care to keep her own promises. The argument from QG and others is that it may well be that a chronically late person cares to keep her own promises, but is unable to do so.

-FrL-

[Liberal]

So if you must (BTW, this is all aimed at the general 'you') make 'helpful suggestions' to people who are chronically late, what you could do is point them to
resources (http://addwarehouse.com/shopsite_sc/store/html/index.html)
they can buy to help them.How about an invisible clock (http://addwarehouse.com/shop-bin/sc/productsearch.cgi?storeid=*1a689319f01138dd05d27cce966ad2). Would that help? (They didn't have any calculators.)

[Frylock]

I have a very hard time believing that anyone of normal IQ is fundamentally unable to control being late to every appointment they have, ADD or not.

But I am sure you are aware that the question whether someone has a low IQ and the question whether someone has a disfunction such as ADD are entirely different question. This fact renders the argument implicit in your post invalid.

Also, you've given room for the following possibility as well: Perhaps there are people who can control their tardiness, but only when there are unreasonably severe consequences involved. (Anyone can do amazing things while under duress.) Should we impugn the character of such people?

-FrL-

[Frylock]

How about an invisible clock (http://addwarehouse.com/shop-bin/sc/productsearch.cgi?storeid=*1a689319f01138dd05d27cce966ad2). Would that help? (They didn't have any calculators.)

For some reason, when I click on your link, it just sends me back to this thread. Is anyone else having this problem?

-FrL-

[Contrapuntal]

I've been misunderstood. What I said would be "asserting moral superiority" was to say "It is disrespectful to X and that is at least part of why I generally succeed in not Xing." The superiority part comes in the final phrase, which is not in itself part of "asking for respect."If it is an assertion of moral superiority, it is of a sort so common, and of so little import, as to be meaningless.

I have also used the phrase "impugning character." I have intended this to mean something different than "asserting moral superiority." By "impugning character" I mean a comment such as: "To do Y is thereby to do something which shows negative character trait Z." So for example "Being late shows a disrespectful attitude." This is not to claim moral superiority, it is merely to impugn character.Shall we not call a spade a spade? Is disrespect a character flaw or not? If it is, then impugning it (a rather strong word) is fair. If it is not, then no character was impugned.



I myself am not one of the chronically late people we are discussing. But I can answer in the following way. Your question presumes the debate we are having is already settled. In other words, the question presumes that people who are chronically late have little regard for the promises they make. But that is exactly what is being debated on this thread--whether in fact chronic lateness is, in itself, a sign that someone does not care to keep her own promises. The argument from QG and others is that it may well be that a chronically late person cares to keep her own promises, but is unable to do so.They are arguing that some unknown portion of perhaps 4% of the population may have ADD such that it is difficult to keep appointments. I will stipulate that someone who claims that that pertains to them is being incorrectly charged with disrespect. I would further submit that a fair portion of them are aware of the situation, and therefore don't make promises they can't keep, so they are, in effect, not tardy. (Sorry, Bob, you know me. I'll try to be on time but that's all I can say.) That leaves us with 96% + x% of the population who in fact are disrespectful if they are chronically tardy. I fail to see how pointing out the obvious is some claim to moral superiority.

If someone really is unaware of the passing of time, and calendars, clocks, alarms, and schedules are truly incomprehensible to them, then it is not their fault if they are late all the time. No one in this thread has claimed such to be true on a personal level. I suspect that such creatures are few and far between. All others are choosing not to take the steps required of them to be punctual. And many of them, while hiding behind the claim that "you don't know how my brain works," simultaneously claim that punctuality just comes easy for some people. How can they know that? How can they possibly know how hard it is for me to be on time, and what steps I have to go through to insure that I am?

[Liberal]

For some reason, when I click on your link, it just sends me back to this thread. Is anyone else having this problem?

-FrL-Weird. Okay, well you can just go to http://addwarehouse.com/shopsite_sc/store/html/ and search on clocks. There's only one, called the "invisible clock".

[Vinyl Turnip]

The premise is just that:

It is plausible that someone you know who is chronically late may very well be so as a result of a brain disfunction.

If it is possible that this is the case--if it is plausible that there is a decent chance (note a "decent chance" doesn't mean "more than a 50% chance) that any given "late" person may well suffer from some such disfunction--then QG's point is, as far as I can see, made.

If her point is that a statistically insignificant number of the chronically late, compared to the whole, may have a brain disorder that makes getting places on time difficult for them, then I'd agree that the point has been made.

However, it has not been demonstrated why it makes sense to presume that an individual who is frequently late is a member of that tiny minority—or that having the disorder makes it impossible, rather than just more difficult, for the afflicted person to find a way to be punctual.

If there is evidence for that, I would still like to hear it.

[lowbrass]

There were a handful of staff who were brutal when it came to enforcing discipline on this dorm. I'm talking about dealing out serious pain when the residents didn't "behave".

Sorry to sidetrack the discussion, but don't you think you should have reported these staff members to the proper authorities? I haven't worked in that field, but I have to think physically abusing mentally-challenged residents is almost certainly illegal.

[Contrapuntal]

Weird. Okay, well you can just go to http://addwarehouse.com/shopsite_sc/store/html/ and search on clocks. There's only one, called the "invisible clock".'Clocks' won't do it. It has to be 'clock' or 'invisible clock.' And I have no idea why that would not work, as I have more or less stated above. I can accept that someone loses track of time, what I don't understand is how someone can function at all if he is unable to use timers, clocks, calendars, etc.

[Smitty]

But I am sure you are aware that the question whether someone has a low IQ and the question whether someone has a disfunction such as ADD are entirely different question. This fact renders the argument implicit in your post invalid.

Also, you've given room for the following possibility as well: Perhaps there are people who can control their tardiness, but only when there are unreasonably severe consequences involved. (Anyone can do amazing things while under duress.) Should we impugn the character of such people?

-FrL-
#1 - No, it doesn't. I was saying that almost anyone can choose their behavior, if the motivation is high enough, despite dysfunction.

#2 - Did I say anything about character? I said being timely or not is a choice. In fact, I said "the effort may be so great and the repercussions mild enough that it is not worth it to that person." That pretty clearly indicates that the mental strain for some people to be on time (as has been claimed by some in this thread) may be so stressful that the negative consequences (receiving the reprobation of one's friends) are not severe enough to make the required effort. If this is truly the case, then I think the person has no moral onus to bear, because the consequences for him are much worse than for others. I don't think that particular argument is conclusive, and if it is, it probably is only true for a small percentage of people; but my post said nothing of the kind.

[Smitty]

Sorry to sidetrack the discussion, but don't you think you should have reported these staff members to the proper authorities? I haven't worked in that field, but I have to think physically abusing mentally-challenged residents is almost certainly illegal.

It is very illegal. Unfortunately, I never directly witnessed anything like this. I only got the information 2nd hand. I do believe it was reliable, however.

[Kalhoun]

If someone really is unaware of the passing of time, and calendars, clocks, alarms, and schedules are truly incomprehensible to them, then it is not their fault if they are late all the time. No one in this thread has claimed such to be true on a personal level. I suspect that such creatures are few and far between. All others are choosing not to take the steps required of them to be punctual. And many of them, while hiding behind the claim that "you don't know how my brain works," simultaneously claim that punctuality just comes easy for some people. How can they know that? How can they possibly know how hard it is for me to be on time, and what steps I have to go through to insure that I am?
I suspect that they are a small fraction of 1% of the ADD or otherwise brain-damaged population and their numbers are so small as to render this reasoning inconsequential to the discussion. ADD diagnoses are freekin' rampant in the U.S. today, and I don't see the ones I'm acquainted with showing up late all the time.

[nashiitashii]

I know a number of people who have ADD and not a one of 'em is chronically tardy. They compensate for their problem with watches, timers, notes, electronic calendars and other techniques to ensure they're not a burden to the people in their lives.

Exactly. In high school, I had a number of friends who had trouble with getting locked into a mental "time warp" because of having severe ADD/ADHD, and every single one of them had adapted a method or set of tools to ensure that they didn't have to succumb to being late or not getting what they needed to get done because they were easily distracted.

As for QG's argument that I should be forgiving of every late person because they just might have some sort of brain abnormality that causes them to be incapable of keeping track of time, I'm not going to do that, especially when a large proportion of the latesters I know have disregarded other social norms because they didn't feel that rules or societal norms applied to them. This may not be everyone's experience, but it certainly is mine. I really am under no obligation to bend to everyone else's whims, but I will make exceptions for people who are earnestly trying to do what's socially obligated. (Generally, though, I'll try to help them find adaptive behaviors that'll counteract the "time warp" syndrome that often causes their lateness.

[Beware of Doug]

Speaking as a PWADD with a certain passive-aggressive streak, I don't run late most or even much of the time. I most often run late when I have past experience that the other person doesn't get right down to business or give any indication that they value my time with them.

If you're one of the hard core who get your back up, say, when someone's 10-15 minutes late for a lunch date, you're more or less insisting on punctuality as an end in itself. People like that strike me as self-righteous (does that answer your question, Contrapuntal?), and I freeze them out whenever possible.

[Kalhoun]

Speaking as a PWADD with a certain passive-aggressive streak, I don't run late most or even much of the time. I most often run late when I have past experience that the other person doesn't get right down to business or give any indication that they value my time with them.

If you're one of the hard core who get your back up, say, when someone's 10-15 minutes late for a lunch date, you're more or less insisting on punctuality as an end in itself. People like that strike me as self-righteous (does that answer your question, Contrapuntal?), and I freeze them out whenever possible.
I don't know about the others, but punctuality isn't the end in itself for me. Respecting other people's time is the end I'm striving toward. Punctuality is the vehicle with which we meet that end.

[Frylock]

If it is an assertion of moral superiority, it is of a sort so common, and of so little import, as to be meaningless.

In fact, I agree, which is why I've been trying to shift the discussion away from "moral superiority" to "impugning character." As to the latter concept, see my next comment.

Shall we not call a spade a spade? Is disrespect a character flaw or not? If it is, then impugning it (a rather strong word) is fair. If it is not, then no character was impugned.


A generally disrespectful attitude is a character flaw. It is therefore fair to impugn (lets not worry about the strong connotation of the word for now, but call me on it if I implicitly rely on the strong connotation by accident) someone's character who it has been established has a disrespectful attitude.

But what QG (and now me) are arguing is that chronic lateness is not a sign of disrespect (necessarily). To impugn someone based on their being disrespectful is fine. But to impugn someone based on their being late chronically is not--because their being chronically late is not (necessarily) a sign of their having a character flaw worth impugning.


They are arguing that some unknown portion of perhaps 4% of the population may have ADD such that it is difficult to keep appointments. I will stipulate that someone who claims that that pertains to them is being incorrectly charged with disrespect. I would further submit that a fair portion of them are aware of the situation, and therefore don't make promises they can't keep, so they are, in effect, not tardy. (Sorry, Bob, you know me. I'll try to be on time but that's all I can say.) That leaves us with 96% + x% of the population who in fact are disrespectful if they are chronically tardy. I fail to see how pointing out the obvious is some claim to moral superiority.

What you take to be obvious is this: Most people who are chronically late are being disrespectful in so doing. That is fine. It is not an undue impugning of any indivudual's character.

What I am saying one shouldn't do is this: "Bob is late all the time. I therefore condemn him as disrespectful."

Again, this is okay: "Most people who are late all the time are thereby disrespectful."

This is not okay: "Joe is late all the time. Therefore, he is disrespectful."

This would be okay: "Joe is late all the time. I happen to know there's nothing wrong with his brain. Therefore, I can treat his tardiness as disrespectful."

This would not be okay: "Joe is late all the time. I don't know much about him except that I need him to be on time and he almost never is. Therefore, I can treat his tardiness as disrespectful."

The reason the non-okay ones are not okay is as follows. There is a good chance (a "good chance" is not the same as "a greater than 50% chance") that any given person I encounter who is chronically late has a brain disfunction of some kind. Since there is a good chance this is true, I should refrain from any impugnment of their character based on their lateness, unless I have further data about the cause of their lateness. This means it is not okay to decide, about any particular individual, that they are disrespectful, just because they are late.

This is true even if the majority of chronically tardy people are chronically tardy out of disrespect. If there's a good chance that someone you know might be chronically tardy because of a brain disfunction, then you can not fairly accuse any chronically tardy individual of disrespect unless you know more about them than the simple fact that they are chronically late.

"Most X are Y" does not always imply "I can safely assume about this individual X that it is Y." Sometimes it does imply that, sometimes it doesn't.* This is a case in which it doesn't.

-FrL-

*I can't think of a really good example right now, but I think its fairly clear that what I've said is correct. Here's a not so good example: "Most frogs are safe to lick, therefore I can safely assume this individual frog is safe to lick." In fact, you probably shouldn't lick a frog unless you have further data as to its species and so on, even though it is indeed safe to lick most frogs.

[Frylock]

As for QG's argument that I should be forgiving of every late person because they just might have some sort of brain abnormality that causes them to be incapable of keeping track of time, I'm not going to do that, especially when a large proportion of the latesters I know have disregarded other social norms because they didn't feel that rules or societal norms applied to them.

Right: You have further data about them other than simply the fact that they are late alot, and that is what justifies you in not being forgiving of them.

One problem: You said the majority of latesters you know generally think rules don't apply to them. But what about that minority of latesters you know who don't think this? Is there some reason you think you shouldn't be forgiving of them as well?

-FrL-

[Kalhoun]

The reason the non-okay ones are not okay is as follows. There is a good chance (a "good chance" is not the same as "a greater than 50% chance") that any given person I encounter who is chronically late has a brain disfunction of some kind. Since there is a good chance this is true, I should refrain from any impugnment of their character based on their lateness, unless I have further data about the cause of their lateness. This means it is not okay to decide, about any particular individual, that they are disrespectful, just because they are late.


Based on the 4% figure you posted, I'd say there's a slight chance; not a good chance, that tardy people are brain-damaged and lacking control over their tardiness. With those odds, I think it's safe to assume they're rude rather than incapable of keeping appointments. Though if someone offered me proof (or even evidence pointing toward the probability of this connection) as opposed to a WAG theory, I'd mea culpa my ass off.

[Contrapuntal]

The reason the non-okay ones are not okay is as follows. There is a good chance (a "good chance" is not the same as "a greater than 50% chance") that any given person I encounter who is chronically late has a brain disfunction of some kind. Since there is a good chance this is true, I should refrain from any impugnment of their character based on their lateness, unless I have further data about the cause of their lateness. This means it is not okay to decide, about any particular individual, that they are disrespectful, just because they are late.

This is true even if the majority of chronically tardy people are chronically tardy out of disrespect. If there's a good chance that someone you know might be chronically tardy because of a brain disfunction, then you can not fairly accuse any chronically tardy individual of disrespect unless you know more about them than the simple fact that they are chronically late.I suppose you and I disagree on what constitutes a good chance. No evidence has been offered, despite several requests, to show what percentage of the population suffers from ADD or brain damage related chronic tardiness. If less than 4% suffers from ADD, and some unknown percentage of them is therefor chronically late, I just don't see how that suggests that any particular person whom s chronically late has a good chance of having ADD.

At any rate, the people who I accuse of being disrespectful to me are able to make other appointments on time, as are all of the posters in this thread who claim that their brains do not process time, or whatever. If you can get to work on time, you can make an appointment with me on time.

And here is I think a crucial point, that thought I had made before, but perhaps not clearly enough. A person is only late if he commits to a time and fails to show on time. If you know you cannot be trusted to be punctual, don't say that you can. It is a further matter of disrespect to essentially lie to me about whether you will be on time. No one who suffers from ADD related tardiness should ever make such a commitment. The corollary to that is, in the absence of such a commitment, no tardiness can be alleged, and therefore no accusations of disrespect are possible.

I simply refuse to meet with people who cannot be trusted to be on time. By "on time," I mean whatever we agree upon beforehand. Hell, I tell most folks "you tell me," when questioned as to what time we should met. You would be surprised how many of them can't make it.

[Vinyl Turnip]

This would not be okay: "Joe is late all the time. I don't know much about him except that I need him to be on time and he almost never is. Therefore, I can treat his tardiness as disrespectful."

How about "Joe is late all the time. Unless I discover he is brain-damaged in such a way to render time meaningless, which is an extremely tiny probability, I will interpret his chronic tardiness as a sign he does not consider meeting me on time important enough to ensure that it happens."

Just because someone does not consciously intend to send a message of contempt (e.g. "I am going to be late on purpose to make everyone wait, because I don't respect them") does not mean the actions cannot be disrespectful. Indifference, or obliviousness to the impact of your behavior on others, also shows a lack of respect.

[Frylock]

I simply refuse to meet with people who cannot be trusted to be on time.

I also have a policy of not setting appointments with people I don't think will keep them. In my case, I do this without a thought as to whether they are being respectful toward me or whether their tardiness says anything about their character.

To your post and Kalhoun's last post I will say: I think it's turning out to be a matter of how much caution a person thinks they should show in deciding whether to judge someone disrespectful or not. I tend to show a lot of caution (in a large part because the very notion of "respect" is not really one that shows up on my radar very readily, so its going to take alot for me to notice any putative acts of disrespect) but I recognize that others are, due to various circumstances, not in a position to be able to not come to (what would look to me like) "snap judgments" about things like this.

If you are in situations where questions of respect are important, and where tardiness is generally acknowledged to be a sign of disrespect, and you do not generally have the resources or time available to assess people's brain function (and who does? :) ) then I think you can be justified in deciding that someone is disrespectful because they are late. But I don't think all situations are like these situations. I think a lot aren't.

-FrL-

[Contrapuntal]

If you are in situations where questions of respect are important, and where tardiness is generally acknowledged to be a sign of disrespect, and you do not generally have the resources or time available to assess people's brain function (and who does? :) ) then I think you can be justified in deciding that someone is disrespectful because they are late. But I don't think all situations are like these situations. I think a lot aren't.It isn't so much a matter of being in a situation where respect is important. It isn't the matter of respect that pisses me off. It's that the other person values her time more than mine, and is unconcerned whether mine is wasted. 'Disrespectful' is just a label.

I would never accuse anyone of such behavior unless I knew that they were in fact capable of making appointments. It bugs me to hear a bunch of bullshit excuses when we both know that they can be on time, they just choose not to when it involves me. No one in this thread has claimed that it is impossible to be punctual, only that in some circumstances it is not worth the effort. For me to be told that I am not worth the effort is an insult. I choose not to associate with people who insult me.

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

It's that the other person values her time more than mine, and is unconcerned whether mine is wasted.

Who gives you the right to assume you understand another's motivation?
Who gives you the right to ascribe motivation to someone and condemn him for that motivation?
When did you learn to read minds???

How dare anyone do this? How do you allow yourself to do this? Is it not within your comprehension to see that this is unfair, not to mention unreasonable and illogical?

None of us can know another's mind - hell, half of us cannot describe our own motivations when asked so how dare anyone make these assumptions and consider it fair?

[Kalhoun]

I also have a policy of not setting appointments with people I don't think will keep them. In my case, I do this without a thought as to whether they are being respectful toward me or whether their tardiness says anything about their character.

To your post and Kalhoun's last post I will say: I think it's turning out to be a matter of how much caution a person thinks they should show in deciding whether to judge someone disrespectful or not. I tend to show a lot of caution (in a large part because the very notion of "respect" is not really one that shows up on my radar very readily, so its going to take alot for me to notice any putative acts of disrespect) but I recognize that others are, due to various circumstances, not in a position to be able to not come to (what would look to me like) "snap judgments" about things like this.

If you are in situations where questions of respect are important, and where tardiness is generally acknowledged to be a sign of disrespect, and you do not generally have the resources or time available to assess people's brain function (and who does? :) ) then I think you can be justified in deciding that someone is disrespectful because they are late. But I don't think all situations are like these situations. I think a lot aren't.

-FrL-
I don't think it's possible to come to a snap judgement. It's chronic tardiness we're talking about. A person has to create a pattern of not giving a shit about my time before I'll call them rude or disrespectful. I agree, the word "respect" is kind of a strange one, but it boils down to whether or not you're making an effort to join me in the social contract YOU entered into. This isn't rocket science. I find the "brain damage" excuse to be a cowardly cop out.

[Contrapuntal]

Who gives you the right to assume you understand another's motivation?
Who gives you the right to ascribe motivation to someone and condemn him for that motivation?
When did you learn to read minds???

How dare anyone do this? How do you allow yourself to do this? Is it not within your comprehension to see that this is unfair, not to mention unreasonable and illogical?

None of us can know another's mind - hell, half of us cannot describe our own motivations when asked so how dare anyone make these assumptions and consider it fair?I don't have to be a mind reader. If she can be on time for other people,she can be on time for me. If she chooses to be late rather that honor her commitment to me, she is placing a greater value on her time than she is on mine. Q.E.D.

[nashiitashii]

Right: You have further data about them other than simply the fact that they are late alot, and that is what justifies you in not being forgiving of them.

One problem: You said the majority of latesters you know generally think rules don't apply to them. But what about that minority of latesters you know who don't think this? Is there some reason you think you shouldn't be forgiving of them as well?

-FrL-

I very rarely make exceptions for people on this point; however, I am lax about 5-10 minutes late. Most of the people I know who have chronic lateness will call me when they're running late, apologize, and try to let me know as soon as they realize they're late.* This is what makes me forgiving of them is that they make an effort to assume that it is their responsibility to let me know if they're having problems meeting me at the time originally proposed. I also generally tend to aim more for a window of time as opposed to a specific time with these people, and only meet with them when I'm not so busy that waiting about for an hour is an ordeal. By making this form of social contract, the people are acknowledging with me that they have trouble meeting the stricter social contract of being on time (or close to it) almost all the time and are willing to have a relationship of a more restricted sort as a compromise between their problems with time and my need to get things done in a timely manner. Generally it means that they have less opportunities to meet with me than a person who is consistently on time and knows that I often have limited time for meeting with them.

*One of my best friends from college was chronically late, and I understood some of the reasoning behind it. Where he lives does not orient one well to timekeeping, and he was not on any sort of regular schedule, so things were a bit erratic [timewise] to start with. Our social agreement basically amounted to "let's go do this evening thing on this day, and I'll call to remind you about it earlier in the day." This also included him giving me a call when he was just about to leave his house so that I knew I had about 20 minutes to get ready and finish what I was doing before we went anywhere. We saw each other no more often than once a week, but neither of us was dissatisfied with the arrangement and enjoyed each other's company.

[nashiitashii]

Who gives you the right to assume you understand another's motivation?
Who gives you the right to ascribe motivation to someone and condemn him for that motivation?
When did you learn to read minds???

How dare anyone do this? How do you allow yourself to do this? Is it not within your comprehension to see that this is unfair, not to mention unreasonable and illogical?

None of us can know another's mind - hell, half of us cannot describe our own motivations when asked so how dare anyone make these assumptions and consider it fair?

My time is wasted because they are acknowledging that their end of a social contract is not necessary to be upheld. There is a HUGE difference between coming in late, [after having called me if possible] and apologizing for being more than 15 minutes late and waltzing in as if they were 5 minutes early and that I should be understanding/commend them for their timing. Is it really that difficult to understand that a person's lateness is infuriating if it's both consistent and without remorse?

I have every right to assume that a person does not care if they do not show any particular regrets or offer apologies for being habitually late.

[Kalhoun]

I very rarely make exceptions for people on this point; however, I am lax about 5-10 minutes late. Most of the people I know who have chronic lateness will call me when they're running late, apologize, and try to let me know as soon as they realize they're late.* This is what makes me forgiving of them is that they make an effort to assume that it is their responsibility to let me know if they're having problems meeting me at the time originally proposed. I also generally tend to aim more for a window of time as opposed to a specific time with these people, and only meet with them when I'm not so busy that waiting about for an hour is an ordeal. By making this form of social contract, the people are acknowledging with me that they have trouble meeting the stricter social contract of being on time (or close to it) almost all the time and are willing to have a relationship of a more restricted sort as a compromise between their problems with time and my need to get things done in a timely manner. Generally it means that they have less opportunities to meet with me than a person who is consistently on time and knows that I often have limited time for meeting with them.

*One of my best friends from college was chronically late, and I understood some of the reasoning behind it. Where he lives does not orient one well to timekeeping, and he was not on any sort of regular schedule, so things were a bit erratic [timewise] to start with. Our social agreement basically amounted to "let's go do this evening thing on this day, and I'll call to remind you about it earlier in the day." This also included him giving me a call when he was just about to leave his house so that I knew I had about 20 minutes to get ready and finish what I was doing before we went anywhere. We saw each other no more often than once a week, but neither of us was dissatisfied with the arrangement and enjoyed each other's company.
I dunno...sounds like excuses from them and concessions from you. I don't understand how someone can live somewhere where they can't "orient" to timekeeping. Is this a magnetic zone where clocks and watches are rendered useless? Maybe if he got on a regular schedule he wouldn't be late for appointments! Hello!

What is this about constantly calling and announcing the fact that they'll be late yet again? Sorry...it doesn't fly with me. It sounds like you're bending over backwards to accommodate their rudeness. That's your choice, but it doesn't change the fact the they're the ones being rude.

[Contrapuntal]

Who gives you the right to assume you understand another's motivation?
Who gives you the right to ascribe motivation to someone and condemn him for that motivation?Let me further elaborate on this. I make no assertion about motivation. I only describe behavior. My condemnation (another strong word), concerns behavior, not motivation. I don't give a rat's ass why she thinks her time is more important, only that she does.

[Contrapuntal]

That's your choice, but it doesn't change the fact the they're the ones being rude.I'd have to disagree with you there. If nashiitashii doesn't think it's rude, then it isn't rude. De gustibus non est disputandum ...

[Kalhoun]

I'd have to disagree with you there. If nashiitashii doesn't think it's rude, then it isn't rude. De gustibus non est disputandum ...
I suppose in a one-on-one situation, that would be true. But if nashiitashii and someone else were waiting on Mr. Late Guy, that could change the situation. If I didn't care personally, but my husband did, I would still consider it rude.

[nashiitashii]

I dunno...sounds like excuses from them and concessions from you. I don't understand how someone can live somewhere where they can't "orient" to timekeeping. Is this a magnetic zone where clocks and watches are rendered useless? Maybe if he got on a regular schedule he wouldn't be late for appointments! Hello!

What is this about constantly calling and announcing the fact that they'll be late yet again? Sorry...it doesn't fly with me. It sounds like you're bending over backwards to accommodate their rudeness. That's your choice, but it doesn't change the fact the they're the ones being rude.

That specific friend lives in the woods in the middle of nowhere, and when I was in college, he didn't have a job or take classes. Days blend into each other when I'm on that sort of schedule, and I lose track of time easily when visiting at his house. It does make a difference. Now that he's got a regular job, he's much better about timekeeping and is probably never late to work.

I rarely keep friends who call me all the time to say they're late. Generally their laissez-faire attitude about punctuality coincides with other personality quirks that don't jive with my rhythm. I rarely, however, make exceptions for people when I'm not the only person waiting; it's a bit rude to be the last person at a meeting, and be much more than five minutes late.

My sense of what's rude and what's not is based on frequency, their willingness to accomodate my need to know what's going on, and whether their other personality traits conflate or minimize their problem with timekeeping.

[Renee]

This was on pg.4 of this thread: Then they're drama queens. 'Damage they can potentially cause'? Puhleeze. At best it's an inconvenience. People need to get over themselves. Seriously.
People are "drama queens" if they find your chronic lateness rude and annoying? Yeah. Every time you're late, you're saying that your time is more important than the person's you are meeting with. Bottom line.

You have mentioned several times in this tread where certain things "live in your head" as needing a certain amount of time, which you know is the incorrect amount of time. (the workout being 2.5 or 3 hours, etc.) Here's the problem I have with that: You know that these times are incorrect! You know your workout actually takes 3 hours total. You know that because you've written it here several times. So when you plan your day, plan for 3 hours for your workout, not the 2.5 you know isn't correct. Does your conscious brain have absolutely no say in anything? Really, in combination with the quoted statement, you basically just sound like you don't care about other people's time.

[Kalhoun]

That specific friend lives in the woods in the middle of nowhere, and when I was in college, he didn't have a job or take classes. Days blend into each other when I'm on that sort of schedule, and I lose track of time easily when visiting at his house. It does make a difference. Now that he's got a regular job, he's much better about timekeeping and is probably never late to work.

I rarely keep friends who call me all the time to say they're late. Generally their laissez-faire attitude about punctuality coincides with other personality quirks that don't jive with my rhythm. I rarely, however, make exceptions for people when I'm not the only person waiting; it's a bit rude to be the last person at a meeting, and be much more than five minutes late.

My sense of what's rude and what's not is based on frequency, their willingness to accomodate my need to know what's going on, and whether their other personality traits conflate or minimize their problem with timekeeping.
Got it. Thanks for the clarification on the woods-dweller.

[Maastricht]

Man, I hate reading this thread. I'm chronically late, and I have made resolutions to change that silly trait time and time again, in vain. It's hard to read hear how much other people are insulted by my tardiness. That never was the intention, in fact, I hate it when people have waited for me, I wished they'd just go ahead with whatever they were planning to do.
I'm never angry if someone is late to me, so it is hard to imagine the anger of the punctual person who has to wait for me. Obsidian and others, thanks for being so brave.

I'm better then my parents, though. My mom usually leaves when she is supposed to arrive. As I live a three-hour drive from her, she's usually three hours late. I had just gotten used to that, and planned accordingly, but now she has lately become totally unreliable; every once in a while, she's actuallyon time :mad:
My dad once forgot an appointment with a friend/business associate. To make up for it, he invited the guy to dinner in a restaurant. He then forgot that appointment, too. :smack:

The post upthread about a girl who was always 20 minutes late because she couldn't bear to wait for someone, as she would be worrying herself sick they wouldn't show up; that remidned me that one of the reasons for my own tardiness might be to avoid the social talk beforehand. A habit that, for me, started in elementary school..

Now, what was I saying? Oh yeah. Obligatory link to Amazon self-help book on late-ness, with a 5 star rating. (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0971649995/ref=ord_cart_shr/104-0202801-2917517?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance) I ordered it after reading this thread.

[Kalhoun]

Man, I hate reading this thread. I'm chronically late, and I have made resolutions to change that silly trait time and time again, in vain. It's hard to read hear how much other people are insulted by my tardiness. That never was the intention, in fact, I hate it when people have waited for me, I wished they'd just go ahead with whatever they were planning to do.
They can't. In addition to waiting for you, they're worrying about you. Did you get a flat? Did you have an accident? Are you lost? How will he feel if he shows up and we're not here?

I'm glad you're taking steps to improve your punctuality. It really makes a difference. Good on ya.

[Contrapuntal]

Man, I hate reading this thread. I'm chronically late, and I have made resolutions to change that silly trait time and time again, in vain.Not trying to be a smartass here, but maybe if you didn't think it was silly you would take it more seriously.



It's hard to read hear how much other people are insulted by my tardiness. I don't think anyone here is insulted by you. I am only insulted by the ones who make me wait. And the question of intent is a bit of a red herring. Whether or not you intend an insult, if you choose to do something that prevents you from keeping an appointment with me, than you have placed a higher value on that something. The insult is implicit. Intent really is irrelevant.

[Stratocaster]

No because people who are late is the group being discussed and is therefore the specific group.Not that this is a critical point, but, no, you're wrong. When you draw an analogy with another similar (at least with regard to a particular premise) but different situation, that does not somehow make it a logical fallacy. Reductio ad absurdum by definition is a comparison with another entity or circumstance. You understand what an analogy is, right?

Again, I bring this up because you like to toss around words like "ignorant" and "dishonest" pretty freely, it seems to me. Then when you're called on it, you respond with a sentence that's barely English ("No because people who are late is the group being discussed and is therefore the specific group") that makes clear you don't know what you're talking about. Just thought I'd let you know that I didn't buy your bullshit response, which was either, (a) ignorant or (b) dishonest.

[Stratocaster]

This was a locked dorm with constant supervision, so serious were the behavioral issues. Now, if ANY people could be said to "not be able to help themselves" when it comes to their actions, it would be the residents of this dorm.

There were a handful of staff who were brutal when it came to enforcing discipline on this dorm. I'm talking about dealing out serious pain when the residents didn't "behave". These residents, even though they had severe retardation, would look out of the window at shift change to see who was coming on duty. If they saw one of these staff members coming, they would IMMEDIATELY go to their chairs and stay quietly seated for the entire 8 hour shift unless told otherwise.That is absolutely appalling. Why didn't you report this to someone who could have put a stop to it?

[amarinth]

Let me further elaborate on this. I make no assertion about motivation. I only describe behavior. My condemnation (another strong word), concerns behavior, not motivation. I don't give a rat's ass why she thinks her time is more important, only that she does."thinks her time is more important" is making an assertion about motivation.

The behavior is showing up late. You're assigning motivation all over the place.

[Contrapuntal]

"thinks her time is more important" is making an assertion about motivation.

The behavior is showing up late. You're assigning motivation all over the place.You are confusing what she thinks with why she thinks it. "What she thinks" is the behavior, "why she thinks it" is the motivation. The logic is inescapable. If she is capable of meeting on time, and she chooses not to, then she has assigned a higher value to the thing she chooses to do. Is this such a difficult concept? If I note that you choose black shoes over red shoes, am I speaking to your motivation? If I remember that you prefer wine to beer, am I assigning a motivation to you when I serve you Chardonnay?

The behavior is choosing to do something else rather than uphold her commitment to me. What motivation have I assigned? Where have I suggested why she does anything?

[Heffalump and Roo]

Okay, so you do not understand. Thanks for clearing that up. (Tho I guess we could debate whether your obduracy reflects a choice or results from a "broken brain"! ;))

[Off-topic] This has me wondering about something that I've been thinking about recently. If the person that's responding to you shows an inability or at least an unwillingness for reasoned debate, is it right to smash their points? Recently, I've seen someone with a clearly superior reasoning force smash someone with clearly less of a reasoned ability. It was uncomfortable for me to watch. . . .like watching an adult beat a 4 year-old in a basketball game. Any thoughts?

If this creates a hijack, I'll create a new thread, and apologize for hijacking this one, but this has me wondering. [/off-topic]

[Contrapuntal]

[Off-topic] This has me wondering about something that I've been thinking about recently. If the person that's responding to you shows an inability or at least an unwillingness for reasoned debate, is it right to smash their points? Recently, I've seen someone with a clearly superior reasoning force smash someone with clearly less of a reasoned ability. It was uncomfortable for me to watch. . . .like watching an adult beat a 4 year-old in a basketball game. Any thoughts?

If this creates a hijack, I'll create a new thread, and apologize for hijacking this one, but this has me wondering. [/off-topic]It's up to them to abandon the field. Unsupported assertions cannot be allowed to stand. The rules of GD preclude any personal attacks. Arguments rise and fall on their own merits. Usually, someone who is a bit confused will be gently advised to refrain from posting until he can mount a stronger argument. This advice generally falls on deaf ears.

[Frylock]

[Off-topic] This has me wondering about something that I've been thinking about recently. If the person that's responding to you shows an inability or at least an unwillingness for reasoned debate, is it right to smash their points? Recently, I've seen someone with a clearly superior reasoning force smash someone with clearly less of a reasoned ability. It was uncomfortable for me to watch. . . .like watching an adult beat a 4 year-old in a basketball game. Any thoughts?

If this creates a hijack, I'll create a new thread, and apologize for hijacking this one, but this has me wondering. [/off-topic]

Its not clear from your post, and I just gotta know: Who is it you are implying is smashing the other person's argument? (And who's the smashee also?)

-FrL-

[enipla]

This has been a very interesting thread. And there have been other threads about the same subject.

I’m on time. So is my Wife. That is our nature. And, for myself and my other friends we know that it is important. I do not like to have to worry about my friends unnecessarily.

Should I worry, or become slowly aggravated that someone did not do what they said they would do?

It’s a rather conflicting position to be in. Are you in the ditch, or are you doing a final post on the SDMB?

When you arrive, safe and sound, with no excuse, I will be glad to see you but will wish you had not made me worry about you.

Also, I live in the sticks. There is very little other than bad weather (which we get boat loads of) or accidents or break downs that should prevent a person from being on time.

I suspect, though, it is the same in the city. Break downs occur, violence occurs.

I don’t like to worry. And I avoid it.

I have structured my life so that I can avoid problems like lost keys or a wallet that can’t be found. I discovered when I was in grade school that little things like that can save ME and others a lot of grief.

Chalk me up to one that does not understand why others can’t do this.

For MOST, we really aren't talking about ADD or brain damage. We are talking about common courtesy.

[Ferret Herder]

Then they're drama queens. 'Damage they can potentially cause'? Puhleeze. At best it's an inconvenience. People need to get over themselves. Seriously.
Inconvenience? That's an awfully slight word to describe missed flights, damaged reputations with business contacts, losing customers, and so forth.

On a side note, if ADD involves frontal lobe damage causing a lack of ability to keep track of time, why don't we see a lot of chronically early (and confused about it) people with ADD?

[Heffalump and Roo]

It's up to them to abandon the field. Unsupported assertions cannot be allowed to stand. The rules of GD preclude any personal attacks. Arguments rise and fall on their own merits. Usually, someone who is a bit confused will be gently advised to refrain from posting until he can mount a stronger argument. This advice generally falls on deaf ears.

Thanks for your thoughts. I was thinking more of people who don't know the meaning of unsupported assertions or can't adequately identify them. Many people don't have enough perspective to know that they don't know.

Its not clear from your post, and I just gotta know: Who is it you are implying is smashing the other person's argument? (And who's the smashee also?)

Sorry if you read from my post that I implied that it pertained to this thread. It was a general hypothetical prompted by Dinsdale's post. Evidently, I should have placed the question in another thread, but I didn't want to start a new thread for a quick answer.

Apologies again to the OP for the hijack.

[/end of hijack]

[amarinth]

You are confusing what she thinks with why she thinks it. "What she thinks" is the behavior, "why she thinks it" is the motivation. And unless you can read minds, you have no idea what she thinks.
What she does (being late) is the behavior. Why she's doing it (_____________ - I don't have psychic abilities. I can't fill in that blank) is the motivation. As soon as you enter into the contents of someone's thoughts - you've hit motivation. Thoguhts are not behaviors. Actions are behaviors.


You claim that you know that it's because "she thinks her time is more important." You've assigned that as the motivation.

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

I will bold relevant passages throughout; this is my note to that effect:

StarvingButStrong
And, frankly, if a boyfriend doesn't consider spending time with you pretty high on his priorities, or is so rude that he thinks leaving you to sit around waiting for him needlessly doesn't matter
This is my point. You are stating with great certainty that you know what this person thinks and considers. How can you possibly justify this?

Vinyl Turnip
it's difficult for me to understand how a rational person can fail to realize that consistently failing to fulfill one's promises, including being where you say you will when you say you will, shows a real lack of consideration toward the person(s) you are inconveniencing with your unreliable behavior.
You have your own thoughts and opinions. Others have different thoughts and opinions. It is not all that complimentary to you to state that you are incapable of conceiving that others may not think exactly as you do. It only requires a little imagination.

Stratocaster
That's where the disconnect occurs in this thread. Those "on the other side of the aisle" would counter that you may well tell yourself that you respect these people. But in practice you don't do the things you need to do to demonstrate respect, which is more important.
You have created a symbolism that is not shared by everyone. This is your own construct. It is your interpretation that this behaviour construes disrespect. It is not mine. I'm not sure how you arrive at the conclusion that others are required to live by your particular set of rules and symbols.
The punctuality contingent would tell you that if you can find a way to make it to a "one time event" on time then you've conceded that you can decide to be punctual and figure out a way to make that happen.
And, for the third time at least, people who deal with people with executive function deficits all know that the deficits do not manifest exactly the same way every single day.
After that it just becomes a question of whether you'll apply that discipline in any given instance or conversely decide it's not worth the effort.
Again, your interpretation. Do you acknowledge that your interpretation could be completely wrong?
So in my mind, when someone makes me wait they have done a similar cost-benefit analysis in their head that told them I am not important enough to pay the price to be punctual.
And again, this is a thought process which you ascribe to them. You cannot possibly know this and therefore only believe it because - well because you feel like it, I guess.
[QUOTE]Someone else in the thread already made the point, that if you needed to show up on time somewhere to get a million dollars, you'd find a way, because that would be important enough for you.
Sure. Once. In extraordinary circumstances. Proves nothing.

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

Shagnasty
Like I said before, if people are truly oblivious to the meaning of time, you would expect them to get places early as well as late in nearly equal measure.
Well the symptomology is 'chronic lateness' along with 'inability to plan' and 'inability to foresee consequences' so perhaps 'oblivious to time' is a misspeak. I think 'chronically understimating' is a better characterization.
Another word for being constantly behind other people is retarded.
That is really unnecessary.

Stratocaster
For me, chronic lateness is the equivalent of someone promising something, then deliberately not delivering. Over and over again. And in the process inconveniencing me. You may classify this any way you want, but for me it's not respectful, and it's hard for me to fathom how someone--even if he disagrees--can't understand that perspective.
Again, it should not be difficult to fathom that not everybody thinks like you. I enjoy figure skating and you may think it's ridiculous. I hate sushi, which you may adore. Humans are different. Period. This is not a difficult concept.

Vinyl Turnip
Even accounting for the percentage that may have ADD, this is a still ultimately a behavioral problem
No, it's an actual busted brain bit. Accommodations can be learned. Sometimes.
But that last clause is the sticking point: it has to be important enough to them to make that extra effort. Clearly for some, it is not worth it for many of their social engagements.
Again, assuming you can know the content of a person's thoughts is not a valid way to go about living your life.
And that's actually fine, if that's the choice they make. But I believe it is fundamentally a choice, and throwing up one's hands and saying "I have ADD, therefore I am incapable of being on time" is not going to get a lot of traction with me.
They don't make the 'choice' and you'll only very rarely see people not agonize about it. You've seen just that in this thread.

Kalhoun
I find the "brain damage" excuse to be a cowardly cop out.
Nice. You go argue with the brain scans and the experts, then. :rolleyes: Go tell them they are all wrong and you, Kalhoun, are the only correct person.
Here's who to contact: (http://www.addwarehouse.com/shopsite_sc/store/html/International_Consensus_Statement_on_ADHD.html)

Contrapuntal
I don't have to be a mind reader. If she can be on time for other people,she can be on time for me. If she chooses to be late rather that honor her commitment to me, she is placing a greater value on her time than she is on mine. Q.E.D.
See, there's where you're doing the mind-reading. You assume she 'chooses to be llate'.

nashiitashii
Is it really that difficult to understand that a person's lateness is infuriating if it's both consistent and without remorse?
I haven't been discussing people who don't even apologize. That's a whole other issue.

Contrapuntal
Let me further elaborate on this. I make no assertion about motivation. I only describe behavior. My condemnation (another strong word), concerns behavior, not motivation. I don't give a rat's ass why she thinks her time is more important, only that she does.
What is motivation if it's not what a person thinks? You right there just said 'she thinks her time is more important'. You are saying you know what she thinks. You do not. You are merely assuming. And you know what that does.

Renee
Every time you're late, you're saying that your time is more important than the person's you are meeting with. Bottom line.
No, that is how you happen to choose to interpret it. I don't. Other people don't. People think differently and therefore yours is no more right than anybody else's.
Does your conscious brain have absolutely no say in anything? Really, in combination with the quoted statement, you basically just sound like you don't care about other people's time.
No, it's more that all those nifty numbers you came up with simply do not compute.

What people don't understand about people with ADD is that they don't get it. And that sucks because they are considered stupid when it's not stupidity at all. It's just some things don't compute the same way. ADD is not correlated with low IQ.

Stratocaster
Not that this is a critical point, but, no, you're wrong. When you draw an analogy with another similar (at least with regard to a particular premise) but different situation, that does not somehow make it a logical fallacy.
It makes it a logical fallacy if what you deem a similar premise is in fact not.
Reductio ad absurdum by definition is a comparison with another entity or circumstance. You understand what an analogy is, right?
You understand what a false analogy is, right? :rolleyes:
Again, I bring this up because you like to toss around words like "ignorant" and "dishonest" pretty freely, it seems to me.
What is the motto of this whole place but 'fighting ignorance'. People don't understand/know about deficits in executive function. That is the classic definition of ignorance - lack of knowledge of.
Then when you're called on it, you respond with a sentence that's barely English ("No because people who are late is the group being discussed and is therefore the specific group") that makes clear you don't know what you're talking about.
No it meant I was in a rush and didn't have time to type it all out. I (mistakenly, I guess) thought you would understand.
The Converse Fallacy of Argument is to argue from a special case to a general rule. I am talking about the case of people who are late and the circumstance that cause it. You extrapolated from that to an irrelevant group.
Originally posted by Smitty
This was a locked dorm with constant supervision, so serious were the behavioral issues. Now, if ANY people could be said to "not be able to help themselves" when it comes to their actions, it would be the residents of this dorm.
Thanks for the anecdote.

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

Contrapuntal
Is disrespect a character flaw or not?
You have chosen to interpret 'late' as 'disrespectful'. That is your interpretation. IT is not in the dictionary. It is not a rule. It is your own particular idea. It is shared by some other people but by no means all other people. And since, so far as I know, nobody has appointed you the arbiter of the definition of disrespect, you do not get to feel that your interpretation is the valid interpretation for all people.

No one who suffers from ADD related tardiness should ever make such a commitment
There are a lot of adults with ADD who don't know they have it. A few people in this thread have mentioned that they might have it but never thought so before. It's only in the past ten years that it was realized that ADD persisted into adulthood so people who left school before then weren't usually diagnosed. All they know is they are late and disorganized and they can't figure out why.

Contrapuntal
You are confusing what she thinks with why she thinks it. "What she thinks" is the behavior
No. What she thinks is the content of her thoughts, which are inside her head, where you are not.
and she chooses not to, then she has assigned a higher value to the thing she chooses to do.
You cannot say that she has made this choice. This is assuming you know her thoughts.
If I note that you choose black shoes over red shoes, am I speaking to your motivation?
If you haven't actually seen me do so, nor heard that I did so, and you only assume it was done, then you are pretending to know my thoughts.

If I remember that you prefer wine to beer, am I assigning a motivation to you when I serve you Chardonnay?
Presumably I have told you that I prefer it. However in the case of this 'choice' to be late, you have no such knowledge, do you? It's an assumption on your part and only that.

Contrapuntal
Is disrespect a character flaw or not?
You have chosen to interpret 'late' as 'disrespectful'. That is your interpretation. IT is not in the dictionary. It is not a rule. It is your own particular idea. It is shared by some other people but by no means all other people. And since, so far as I know, nobody has appointed you the arbiter of the definition of disrespect, you do not get to feel that your interpretation is the valid interpretation for all people.

No one who suffers from ADD related tardiness should ever make such a commitment
There are a lot of adults with ADD who don't know they have it. A few people in this thread have mentioned that they might have it but never thought so before. It's only in the past ten years that it was realized that ADD persisted into adulthood so people who left school before then weren't usually diagnosed. All they know is they are late and disorganized and they can't figure out why.

Contrapuntal
You are confusing what she thinks with why she thinks it. "What she thinks" is the behavior
No. What she thinks is the content of her thoughts, which are inside her head, where you are not.
and she chooses not to, then she has assigned a higher value to the thing she chooses to do.
You cannot say that she has made this choice. This is assuming you know her thoughts.
If I note that you choose black shoes over red shoes, am I speaking to your motivation?
If you haven't actually seen me do so, nor heard that I did so, and you only assume it was done, then you are pretending to know my thoughts.

If I remember that you prefer wine to beer, am I assigning a motivation to you when I serve you Chardonnay?
Presumably I have told you that I prefer it. However in the case of this 'choice' to be late, you have no such knowledge, do you? It's an assumption on your part and only that.